A Study On The Chief Examiners Of The Capital Examination In Ming Dynasty

The capital examination in Ming Dynasty, as an important threshold to an official career for the scholars, has received much attention from numerous men of letters. The chief examiner of the capital examination is regarded as a plum job for the reason that on one hand he, as a member of the examiners inside the curtain, is in charge of the marking and enrollment and on the other hand, he can enroll 300Chin-shih as his disiples once he became a chief examiner. Besides, the emperor will also show his grace to a certain cabinet minister or Han Zhan, an offical position, who used to be the teacher of the emperor by appointing him as the chief examiner. Thus it can be seen that the court attached great imprtance to the chief examiner of the capital examination. After referring to the research directions of the students in Ming Dynasty,this paper intends to study the chief examiner of the capital examination in Ming Dynasty based on the previous researches. The research resources were mainly collected from two books, Chin-shih teng-k’o lus of Ming Dynasty and the fourth book of ming dai zhi guan nian biao. After combing the resources, 89 capital examinations of Ming Dynasty and 144 chief examiners were finally targeted for the resources of materials. This paper explored the following three aspects:Firstly, a brief introduction to the capital examination and the chief examiners of the capital examination was presented. As for the contents of the capital examination,the time, the place, the qualifications for participanting the capital examination and the importance of the capital examination in Ming Dynasty were discussed. While for the chief examiners of the capital examination, this paper showed the 89 capital examinations and 144 chief examiners according to Chin-shih teng-k’o lus of Ming Dynasty and the fourth book of ming dai zhi guan nian biaoSecondly, a statistical study was made referring to the information of the 144 chief examiners. This part includes that geographic composition, household type,origin, age, imperial Shi Renguan, Xi Jing and the posthumous titles. Due to the fact that the chief examiner being regared as a plum job, this paper tried to summarize the features and universal tendency of it after analyzing the eight aspects mentioned above.Thirdly, the contributions made by the chief examiners of the capital examinationin Ming Dynasty were provided. The thesis discussed the political status of the chief examiners of the capital examination in the history and related literature which spread in peoples from the two aspects: culture and politics.