Qin Feng Mud Historical Geography Research

During the last ten years of the twentieth century, in Xi’an phase Lane,archaeologists found many Qin lute, which makes up of the main body of the unearthed Qin lute. Providing some scattered finds were added to,the quantity of the Qin lute was sizable.These Qin lute contained a large number of administrative division class names,as well as some geographic information about horse business.This paper try to collect,arrange these lute and calssify them on the bases of county and xian, reflect the geographical information we found from the lute on the map, and then analyze the geographic information of spatial features of geographical distribution from the perspective of historical geography.The basic content is divided into the following several aspects.Firstly, the Qin lute of Xi’an phase Lane mainly contains two sorts of Administrative Divisions’name. one sort is the county level of the lute,which has totally24item and121class, such as "Nelson Lang Cheng", the other is a county level of lute, which has totally253item and650class, such as" street Cheng printing" and so on.Secondly, by putting the geography information of administrative divisions’name which contained in the lute on the map, the geographical distribution features of these counties could be clearly saw.There are four places in which the counties were concentratedly distributed:1. The counties and xian concentratedly distributed arrounding the capital of the anciently warring states.There are two reasons. In the first place, during the Qin’s conquering,the exchange of letters among Xianyang and other six kingdoms were more frequent.Next, After Qin’s conquer,although the populations near the capitals of other six kingdoms were greatly decreased, there were still many counties and xians arounded the capital compared with other regions.2. The xian contained in lute also concentratedly distributed arrounding the counties’capital which set up by Qin dynasty after its unification.This attribute to Qin’s seting up counties for governing in some important regions, the political,economic and mitilary situation of the county should be submitted to the central authorities by the officers of the counties,while,keeping up regular correspondence was also needed.3. The counties and xian concentratedly distributed along the traffic lines,whether the waterway traffic or the land transport.It was because the convenience of the traffic and correspondence had contributed to the recording and preserving of the counties and xians’information.4. These counties and xians are mainly distributed in the northern areas, on the contrary,there was a little in the southern areas. Because the norther areas developed earlier, and that the norther areas, especially the reaches of Yellow River was still the economic center of the Qin dynasty. Qin’s ruling of this area was strict. Meanwhile, the southern area was far from Qin’s central area, so the quantity and quality of the Qin lute about this region was largely affected. Thirdly,A few names of horse administration officials in several counties, such as" home of Ma Cheng" Ma Cheng" Mt. Hengshan" were found in the lute.By ananlysing these lute, this paper draw a conclusion:After Qin’s unification, the counties which located between the northern farming and nomadic areas still use the region pasture advantage, and at the same time, developing the horse business. The regional horse administration system then became the inseparable part of the national one.