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The Simin yueling 四民月令 "The monthly decretes to the four [groups of] people" is an agricultural treatise from the Later Han period 後漢 (25-220) . It was written by Cui Shi 崔寔. The book is arranged according to the twelve months of the year, and it is noted down which agricultural activity the landowner ordered to be fulfilled. It names and describes a lot of agricultural plants and planting methods, and how to raise cattle. It thus shows that the large estates of the Han period were able to act as economic entities which were totally self-sufficient. The peasants could furthermore be recruited to defend the estate against robbers and bandits. This was of great importance in a time when the central government more and more lost its grip on the provinces.
The book was lost at the end of the Northern Song period 北宋 (960-1126). It could be reconstructed to a part from fragments preserved in other agricultural books or in encyclopedias, a work which was done by the Qing period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Yan Kejun 嚴可均. Modern commenaries were written by Tang Hongxue 唐鴻學 (in his collectaneum Yilantang congshu 怡蘭堂叢書), Shi Shenghan 石聲漢 (Simin yueling jiaozhu 四民月令校注) and Miao Qiyu 繆啟愉 (Simin yueling jishi 四民月令輯釋).
Source: Wu Shuping (1992) 吳樹平. "Simin yueling 四民月令", in: Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中國大百科全書, Zhongguo lishi 中國歷史, vol. 2, pp. 966 f. Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe.
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Chinese literature according to the four-category system
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