Bulletin Winter 1975

that part of the land cultivated by Yang-shao farmers would require a short two-year fallow ； and that the loess soil of superior moisture-holding capacity could grow Setaria millet consecutively without difficulty. His most important conclusion, hitherto little understood by archaeologists specializing on China, is that the crucial problem in the slash-and-burn system is fertility, while the crucial problem in Yang-shao agriculture is not fertility but moisture. The Yang-shao system of short fallow which Dr. Harlan and I have reconstructed out of principles of agronomy accords almost exactly with the fallow system described in those parts of The Book of Documents and The Book of Odes that can be ascertained to have been written very early in Chou times. The three key terms for agricultural land in these early Chou works are: tzu � , hsin 新 , a n d y ü 畬 . T h e character tzu consists of three components—the upper part is the radical for grass, the middle part is an archaic form of the character which means "to bring calamity to" or "to kill", and the lower part means the field. From various ancient Chinese etymologists' commentaries we learn that tzu has two essential meanings: first, the process by which "grass residues are returned to the soil" after the virgin sods have been turned, and second, the first- year land that is not yet ready for planting. As a matter of fact, without previous experience in field agriculture, the first Yang-shao farmers would almost certainly plant millet soon after the sods were broken up. It should not take them long to learn that the yield of the first year was meagre but the yields of the second and third years were much better. This is because during the first year the nitrogen in the soil is mostly consumed by the various microorganisms which are the main agent in decomposing plant residues. This is precisely the first meaning of tzu, a process by which grass residues are returned to the soil. By the second year, when the plant residues have already been decomposed, the various microorganisms, instead of continually tying up the nitrogen in the soil, release it to nourish the seed-plants. This phenomenon of vastly different yields would naturally lead Yang-shao farmers to In retrospect, it was largely nature, more specifically the loess, that from the very beginning shaped the self-sustaining character of the northern Chinese agricultural system. But it was mainly through human effort and ingenuity exerted for more than two thousand years that the southern Chinese agricultural system has become self-perpetuating and highly productive. Whereas progressive changes in soil salinity and sedimentation contributed to the breakup of past civilizations in Mesopotamia, and whereas the destruction of the local ecological patterns and the consequent failure of food resources contributed to the decline and fall of the ancient Harappan civilization in the Indus valley, even today Chinese agriculture still manages to support nearly a quarter of humanity out of a cultivated area amounting to only 75 percent of that of the United States. By virtue of its ability to endure, Chinese agriculture has contributed significantly the formulation of the simple rule that fresh-broken land be rested for a year and millet be grown from the second year onward. The term hsin means the land in its second year of preparedness, ready for planting. That this word literally means new is because it is the new land to be actually planted. The term y ü means the well- treated land in its third year of preparedness, still good for planting. For types of loess soil which do not hold moisture too well, the land that had grown millet for two consecutive years had to be rested for a year or two because of the necessity of conserving moisture. This short three-year cycle is further confirmed by the principle of land allotment stated in the Chou-li : " In case of the nonchanging land, each (peasant) household be allotted 100 mou; in case of the once-changing land, each household be allotted 200 mou; and in case of the twice-changing land, each household be allotted 300 mou”. The science of agronomy and archaic literary records, therefore, act like the two halves of a tally stick in establishing the essentially self-sustaining character of northern Chinese agriculture since Yang- shao times. 6