The Formation and Changes of Ben Jie: On the Official System of Bei Zhou and Sui-Tang Dynasties
本阶官位形成与演化——北周隋唐官制研究

A kind of basic political status which is referred to as Ben Jie or Ben Pin lies in the structure of the official positions in Bei Zhou and Sui-Tang Dynasties. It is the basic class with which officials were transferred in the bureaucracy hierarchy. It used to be a position of the military officers with real responsibilities, and later it gradually developed from the position of scattered government officials who were lax in duties into a steady and continuous sequence of the political status. Ben Jie has much to do with officials, and it's much more important in raising the officials' political status than those of other sorts. In the different historical periods of Bei Zhou and Sui-Tang Dynasties, this political status had undergone the processes of a duty mixture, a social stratum division, and then a polarization of civilian and military posts. This paper investigates the formation and changes of Ben Jie in the political status, and tries to reveal the changes of the political status in its structures, functions and other aspects.