Introduction: The Downward Extension of Ritual Governance and the Practice of Community Compacts
Grassroots order in traditional China was not maintained by government statutes and decrees alone. From the appearance of The Lu Family Community Compact in the ninth year of the Xining era of the Northern Song (1076), a community compact system—taking ritual governance as its core, moral instruction as its means, and mutual aid as its bond—gradually took shape under the impetus of the gentry. By the Ming and Qing dynasties it had further merged with the baojia mutual-surveillance system, community granaries, and clan rules, becoming an important resource of governance within a structure in which imperial power did not reach down to the county level. Taking community compact texts and the thought of ritual governance as its thread, this article traces back to the civilizing tradition of the Rites of Zhou and the Three Elders system of the Han dynasty, and extends forward to the Ming dynasty's public proclamation of the Six Maxims and the Qing dynasty's promotion of the Sacred Edict in Sixteen Articles. It examines the concrete operations of the compact head, the deputy compact head, and the ritual of reading the compact, and analyzes scholarly debates over the autonomous spirit of community compacts and their transformation into an instrument of official corvée. In doing so, it reveals how ritual practice shaped local consensus, and how it underwent institutional deformation as state power extended downward.
1. The Intellectual Origins of the Ritual-Governance Tradition and Grassroots Order
The idea of governance through ritual can be traced back to the Western Zhou. The Duke of Zhou established rituals and music, using a system of ceremonial procedures covering sacrifices, court audiences and diplomatic visits, funerals, and the village drinking ceremony to distinguish the noble from the base and the close from the distant, so that each social stratum rested content in its place within the hierarchical order. The Book of Rites, in the "Summary of the Rules of Propriety, Part I," states: "Ritual is that by which close and distant relations are determined, doubts and suspicions are resolved, similarities and differences are distinguished, and right and wrong are made clear," explicitly defining ritual's function as establishing order and adjudicating disputes. Confucius responded to the governance path of "leading with government and regulating with punishments" with "leading with virtue and regulating with ritual," setting the tone for later arguments that ritual governance is superior to rule by law. Xunzi went further in his "Discourse on Ritual," asking, "Whence does ritual arise? I say: People are born with desires; when desires are not satisfied, they cannot but seek; when seeking lacks measure and boundaries, they cannot but contend," attributing the origin of ritual to the settling of strife and the fixing of shares—this provided the philosophical basis for grassroots society to bind its members through ritual.
From the Warring States through the Qin and Han, the practice of ritual gradually seeped from the court down into the villages. The Rites of Zhou, in the "Offices of Earth," establishes posts such as "village grandee," "district head," and "ward chief," charged with the moral instruction of villagers and the reading of laws; the Guanzi, in the "Entering the State" chapter, records a system of care for the aged whereby "every capital and city had officials in charge of the elderly." In the Han dynasty, the Thrice-Venerable oversaw moral instruction; in the twelfth year of Emperor Wen (168 BC), an edict ordered that "the Thrice-Venerable, the Filial and Fraternal, and the Diligent in Farming be established as standing posts," using village officials to promote ethical edification; the Book of the Later Han, in the "Treatise on the Hundred Officials," records that "villages established the salaried chief, the Thrice-Venerable, and the patrolling constable," with the Thrice-Venerable "in charge of moral instruction" and the constable "in charge of patrolling and suppressing thieves and bandits." Although these institutions differed from later village covenants, they shared a basic presupposition: grassroots order must be maintained by local elders and scholars through ritual and moral instruction. The Han dynasty village drinking ceremony, held in commandery and county schools and presided over by local officials, feasted the aged and virtuous to order seniority and clarify rank—this may be seen as an early form of ritual governance filtering downward.
Yet the village organizations of the Han and Tang were mostly administrative extremities; the text that truly coalesced a grassroots community in the form of a "covenant" and stipulated the rights and obligations of its members did not appear until the Northern Song. In the ninth year of the Xining era (1076), Lü Dajun composed the Lü Family Village Covenant, promoting in Lantian the four principles of "encouraging one another in virtue and achievement, admonishing one another against faults, associating with one another in ritual and custom, and succoring one another in hardship and calamity." The covenant members elected a covenant head and deputy to manage affairs; those who violated the covenant were first admonished by the members, and if they offended again, their names were recorded in a register; those who repeatedly offended without reform were ostracized. This is the earliest extant and systematically complete village covenant text in China, marking an institutionalized attempt to shift ritual governance from state edification toward popular self-governance. The Xining era of the Northern Song coincided with Wang Anshi's reforms implementing the baojia and green sprouts laws; the appearance of the Lü Family Village Covenant in the same period shows that the reconstruction of grassroots order was a matter of common concern to court and countryside alike—only the paths differed: the reform faction relied on administrative control, while the Guanzhong scholars advocated the self-transformation of ritual and custom.
2. The Creation of the Lü Family Community Compact and Master Zhu's Additions and Deletions
The emergence of the Lü Family Community Compact was bound up with the scholarly ethos of the Guanzhong region. Lü Dajun, together with his brothers Lü Dazhong, Lü Dafang, and Lü Dalin, were known collectively as the "Four Lüs of Lantian." Influenced by Zhang Zai's Guanzhong Learning, they attached great importance to the role of ritual in cultivating virtue and transforming the people. The community compact stipulated that members should gather once a month, at which the compact chief would read aloud the text of the compact and record good and bad deeds; the provision that "those in the same compact encourage one another in virtue and achievement" included specific items such as "being able to manage one's household," "being able to serve one's father and elder brothers," and "being able to instruct one's sons and younger brothers," while "admonishing one another against faults" covered such items as "drunkenness, gambling, brawling, and litigation" and "conduct that oversteps the bounds." The compact established a "manager of affairs" and a "monthly duty officer" serving in rotation, and when members encountered hardships such as illness, funerals, orphanhood or weakness, or false accusation, the whole compact would contribute funds and labor to assist them. Its organizational principles were voluntary participation, equal recommendation, and collective adjudication, bearing a distinctly contractual character. In his Reply to Liu Pingshu, Lü Dajun emphasized that "the people of the village make a pact among themselves, encouraging one another to small good deeds," which shows that his intent lay in gradual moral improvement rather than official coercion. According to the supplementary record in the Song History, Biographies of Lü Dafang, when the community compact was first put into practice, "the customs of Guanzhong were transformed thereby"—though this is inevitably an exaggeration, it nonetheless reflects contemporaries' recognition of its civilizing effects.
In the Southern Song, Zhu Xi, in the fourth year of the Qiandao era (1168), revised the Lü Family Community Compact, compiling it as the Expanded and Abridged Lü Family Community Compact. In terms of format, he added "the ritual of gathering on the first of the month to read the compact," stipulating that at the assembly a incense table should be set up, the compact chief installed, and participants seated in order of age; first the text of the compact was read, then good and bad deeds were recorded, and finally a meal was shared. Zhu Xi also deleted the excessively harsh and detailed penalties of the original compact, emphasizing that "all who are in the same compact shall encourage one another in virtue and achievement, admonish one another against faults, interact according to ritual and custom, and assist one another in hardship; if there is good, it shall be recorded in the register, and if there is a fault or a breach of the compact, it shall likewise be recorded; after three offenses, punishment shall be carried out, and those who do not reform shall be expelled." Through Master Zhu's editing, the community compact was elevated from a local experiment in a corner of Lantian to a universally applicable program of governance by ritual, exerting a profound influence on later ages. The designs concerning ancestral halls, sacrificial fields, and clan rules in Master Zhu's Family Rituals complemented the community compact, forming a complete blueprint for scholars to transform grassroots society.
Zhu Xi's disciple Huang Gan, in the Mianzhai Collection, further expounded the relationship between the community compact and ritual, holding that "the establishment of the community compact is meant to supplement what ritual instruction cannot reach." In the late Southern Song, Zhen Dexiu, during his tenure in Tanzhou (present-day Changsha), promoted the community compact alongside community granaries and charitable schools; in his Proclamation Urging Agriculture at Tanzhou, he required the villagers to "make compacts with one another in order to encourage farming and sericulture." This shows that in the course of its transmission the community compact gradually became combined with the local government's functions of encouraging agriculture and providing famine relief. But Zhu Xi's line still insisted on the popular and voluntary nature of the community compact and opposed turning it into an instrument of official coercion—a stance that became the source of later controversies. From the perspective of institutional history, the Lü Family Community Compact provided a model for maintaining order not through administrative commands but through consensus and moral instruction, and its influence endured through the Southern Song, Yuan, and Ming without decline. Although the Yuan dynasty did not promote community compacts on a large scale, the fact that popular daily-use encyclopedias such as the Comprehensive Record of Affairs and Forests included the text of the community compact shows that it still circulated at the grassroots level.
3. The Officialization of Community Compacts in the Ming Dynasty and the Sinking Down of Ritual Governance
In the early Ming, Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang placed great importance on grassroots moral instruction. In the thirtieth year of the Hongwu reign (1397), he promulgated the "Notice for Instructing the People," which stipulated that a wooden bell be placed in every village and that an elder carry the bell on patrol, proclaiming the Six Maxims: "Be filial to your parents, respect your elders, live in harmony with your neighbors, instruct your children and grandchildren, each settle into your proper livelihood, and do no wrong." At the same time, the lijia and elder systems were implemented: each li had a li chief, and elders were separately appointed to handle civil disputes. During the Hongwu reign, community schools were also ordered established in every li to teach the Great Pronouncements and the legal codes. These measures paved the way for the officialization of community compacts. During the Yongle reign, community compacts began to be combined with the proclamation of the Six Maxims; local officials were ordered to establish compact lodges in the villages, recommend compact heads and deputy heads, and regularly assemble the people to listen to the readings.
After the Zhengde and Jiajing reigns, community compacts were promoted on a large scale. When Wang Yangming served as grand coordinator of southern Jiangxi in the thirteenth year of Zhengde (1518), he promulgated the "Community Compact of Southern Jiangxi," combining the community compact with the baojia and community granary systems. It stipulated that "all people of the same compact should be filial to your parents, respectful to your elder brothers, instructive to your children and grandchildren, and harmonious with your neighbors," and established positions such as compact chief, deputy chief, compact head, and compact scribe. On the fifteenth of each month they gathered to read the compact and record good and evil deeds. Wang Yangming emphasized that "from now on, all you people of the same compact should be filial to your parents, respectful to your elder brothers, instructive to your children and grandchildren, and harmonious with your neighbors," regarding the community compact as the key to rebuilding order after pacifying a region. His compact carried a certain coercive character: if compact members did not participate, they were to be "reported to the authorities for investigation and punishment," which already differed from the voluntary principle of the Lü Family Community Compact.
In the eighth year of Jiajing (1529), the Ming court formally promulgated community compacts, ordering each prefecture and county to "establish a compact lodge in every li and select one person of advanced age and eminent virtue as compact head, and two as deputy heads," to proclaim the Six Maxims on the first and fifteenth of each month, and to keep a "register of good and evil" for recording. During the Wanli reign, Lü Kun promoted community compacts while serving as grand coordinator of Shanxi and compiled the "Community Compact and Baojia Regulations," completely merging the community compact with the baojia system: ten households formed a jia, ten jia formed a compact, and the compact head and jia chief were responsible for moral instruction and public security. Lü Kun also instituted the privilege that "compact heads and deputy heads be exempted from corvée labor," making the compact position a symbol of local authority. By this time the community compact had transformed from a voluntary popular organization into a semi-official auxiliary organ of grassroots administration; compact heads and deputy heads were appointed by government authorities, the reading of the compact became a compulsory ritual, and the voluntary spirit of ritual governance was eroded by officialization.
After the mid-Ming, community compacts interwove with clan rules, community schools, and the village drinking ceremony, forming a composite grassroots order. In places such as Huizhou and Fujian, lineages wrote community compact clauses into their genealogies, requiring clan members to "gather in the ancestral hall on the first and fifteenth of each month to read the community compact and clan rules." Members of the Taizhou School such as Wang Gen and He Xinyin also used the form of community compacts to organize the people in their popular lectures. In his "Hall of Gathering Harmony" experiment in Yongfeng, Jiangxi, He Xinyin combined the community compact with communal family property and shared education, attempting to construct an ideal community; he was later arrested for offending the authorities. These practices show that in the Ming dynasty the community compact was both a tool of government governance and a vehicle for popular self-governance and intellectual experimentation, its nature varying according to its promoters and local circumstances.
4. Imperial Edict Lectures and the Institutional Mutation of Community Compacts in the Qing Dynasty
After the Qing entered the passes, it continued the Ming community compact system while remolding it. In the ninth year of Shunzhi (1652), the "Six Sacred Edicts" were promulgated, identical in wording to the Six Edicts of the Ming founder. In the ninth year of Kangxi (1670), the "Sixteen Sacred Edicts" were issued, including: "Promote filial piety and fraternal duty to emphasize human relations; strengthen the clan to manifest harmony; harmonize the villages to settle disputes; value agriculture and sericulture to secure food and clothing; uphold frugality to conserve resources; exalt schools to rectify the conduct of scholars; reject heterodoxy to honor orthodox learning; explain the laws to warn the foolish and obstinate; clarify propriety and yielding to enrich customs; devote effort to fundamental occupations to settle the people's aspirations; instruct the young to prohibit wrongdoing; settle false accusations to preserve the good; warn against harboring fugitives to avoid implication; complete taxes and levies to reduce pressing demands; link the baojia to eliminate banditry; and resolve enmity and anger to value life." In the second year of Yongzheng (1724), each article was annotated one by one and compiled into the Amplified Sacred Edict, totaling more than ten thousand characters, promulgated throughout the country, requiring each prefecture and county to establish compact offices, where on the first and fifteenth of each month the compact heads and deputy heads would gather the people for lectures.
The lectures on the Yongzheng Amplified Sacred Edict became a fixed ritual at the grassroots level in the Qing dynasty. According to the Collected Statutes of the Qing, each prefecture, subprefecture, and county "established compact heads and deputy heads at public offices, selecting the mature and experienced among the licensed scholars to fill the posts." On the first and fifteenth of each month, the compact head read the sacred edict aloud while the people gathered around to listen. During the lecture, an incense table was set up, the sacred edict tablet was enshrined, and the ritual of three kneelings and nine prostrations was performed. This ritual had become completely officialized, and the community compact became the outermost tip of the court's civilizing system. Although the compact heads and deputy heads were recommended by local people, they had to be approved by the government, and their duties often overlapped with those of the baojia heads and village heads. During the Qianlong reign, community compacts in various places were mostly merged with the baojia, forming the "bao-compact" system, in which the compact head concurrently managed public security, tax collection, dispute mediation, and other affairs.
The officialization of community compacts in the Qing dynasty brought two consequences. First, the posts of compact head and deputy head became burdensome duties, often filled by those whom local people recommended because they were honest and easy to bully, so that "the name of compact head was feared and avoided by all." During the Daoguang reign, the Zhejiang provincial governor Shuai Chengying once memorialized to abolish community compacts, holding that "the establishment of community compacts was originally meant to spread civilizing influence, but now it merely creates harassment and burden." Second, the lectures became a mere formality, with "few listeners," and the content of the sacred edicts became disconnected from daily life. Nevertheless, community compacts still played a certain role in mediating disputes at the grassroots level. The Ba County archives and the Dan-Xin archives of the Qing dynasty preserve a large number of records of community compacts handling disputes over marriage, land, and debt; after mediation, the compact head issued "guarantee statements" and "settlement statements," which became important evidence in prefectural and county trials.
At the same time, spontaneously organized community compacts among the people continued. In Qing-dynasty Huizhou, Jiangxi, Fujian, and other places, clans and villages voluntarily established compacts. For example, the Complete Genealogy of Xiaojiang in Wuyuan contains "community compact rules," requiring clan members to "promptly pay public taxes, cultivate filial piety and fraternal love, harmonize the clan, and care for orphans and widows." These popular compact rules were often closer to actual life than official community compacts, and, combined with clan rules and family instructions, constituted a hidden transmission of rule by propriety at the grassroots level. The Qing scholar Feng Guifen, in his Protest from the Jiaobin Cottage, advocated "restoring community compacts," arguing that the voluntary spirit of the Lü Family Community Compact should be revived, with the "compact head" presiding over civilizing instruction, supplemented by community granaries and charitable schools. His views reflect late Qing literati reflection on the officialization of community compacts.
5. Ritual, Law, and Human Feeling in the Operation of Community Compacts
The operation of community compacts relied on a set of ritual arrangements. The ceremony for reading the compact usually included such steps as setting up an incense table, offering the imperial edict or the compact text, the compact chief taking his place, the assembled members standing in order of age, reading the compact aloud, recording good and evil deeds, and a communal meal. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the village drinking ceremony was often combined with community compacts, using seating order at the banquet to express rank and seniority. According to the Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty, in the sixteenth year of the Hongwu reign (1383), the village drinking ceremony was established, with the rule that "those of advanced age and virtue sit at the top, those of advanced age and sincere honesty next, and the rest arranged in order of age," and violators were "dealt with as having violated the regulations." Such rituals gave concrete form to the spirit of rule by ritual, leading participants to embody order through bodily practice. When the Qing-dynasty Sacred Edict and Amplified Instructions was expounded, the people were required to perform the ritual of three kneelings and nine prostrations, further reinforcing the presence of state authority.
In dispute resolution, community compacts often complemented the laws and decrees of the government. When the compact chief mediated disputes over land, marriage, or debt, he relied on "human feeling and principle" rather than strict legal provisions. In the Qing-dynasty Ba County archives, after handling disputes the compact chief often issued a "compact certificate," stating that "through the persuasion of compact chief so-and-so the matter was settled, and both parties willingly agreed to reconciliation," and the prefectural and county officials generally recognized it. This mediation model, combining "feeling, principle, and law," reduced the pressure of litigation on the government and also sustained the grassroots community. But community compacts had no power of compulsory enforcement; if one party refused to accept the outcome, the matter still had to be brought before officials. During the Qianlong reign, the Jiangxi provincial judge Ling Chou, in A Record of Observing the Law in Jiangxi, criticized compact chiefs for "arbitrarily accepting petitions from the people" and demanded that the authority of community compacts be limited to moral instruction, with no interference in litigation, reflecting official vigilance against compact chiefs overstepping their authority.
The relationship between community compacts and clans, the baojia system, and community granaries also deserves attention. Clans were centered on ancestral halls and maintained their members through clan rules, clan fields, and clan schools; the baojia system took ten households as a unit and was responsible for security and taxes; community granaries stored grain against famine. Community compacts, by contrast, focused on moral instruction and mutual aid. In the Ming dynasty, Lü Kun's Compact of the Village and the Baojia integrated the three, and the Qing-dynasty bao-compact system also often combined them. This composite structure gave grassroots order multiple safeguards, but it also led to a concentration of power, as compact chiefs, clan heads, and bao heads were often held by the same group of local elites, creating an interweaving of "gentry power" and "official governance." The "rule of elders" proposed by Fei Xiaotong in From the Soil is precisely a summary of this structure.
6. The Scholarly Debate Between Self-Governance and Official Governance
Academic discussion of the nature of the community covenant has a long history. In the late Qing and early Republic, Liang Qichao praised The Lu Family Community Covenant in his On the New People as "the origin of Chinese local self-governance," holding that its principle of "encouraging one another by morality and aiding one another in adversity" embodied the spirit of self-governance. During the Republican period, Yang Kaidao systematically traced the origins and development of the community covenant in The Chinese Community Covenant System, pointing out that in the Song dynasty the covenant was a spontaneous folk institution, that after the Ming dynasty it gradually became an instrument of official corvée, and that by the Qing dynasty it had become a tool for government proclamation. He emphasized that the self-governing value of the covenant lay in "the voluntary association of covenant members, who jointly abide by it," whereas an officially run covenant lost this very foundation. In his Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Xiao Gongquan treated the community covenant, the baojia system, and the community granary as the three great instruments of imperial control over the countryside, arguing that their function lay in "instilling orthodox ideas" and "maintaining public order," with only limited elements of self-governance.
Since the 1980s, scholars have paid greater attention to the complexity of the community covenant in local practice. Zhu Honglin's research on the Ming-dynasty community covenant points out that its implementation often depended on cooperation between local officials and gentry, and that its effects varied by region, so it cannot be simply summarized as either "self-governance" or "official governance." David Faure, Liu Zhiwei, and others, examining the Pearl River Delta from the perspective of historical anthropology, found that the community covenant combined with lineage and deity worship to form a local identity under a "ritual label." They argue that the community covenant was not merely an edifying text but also a resource through which local elites acquired authority and integrated communities. Japanese scholars such as Wada Sei and Yamane Yukio, by contrast, focused on the institutional links between the community covenant and the lijia and baojia systems, emphasizing its administrative auxiliary function.
Taken together, the community covenant possessed a dual orientation of both self-governance and official governance. On the ideal level, it continued the tradition of rule by ritual, taking voluntariness, edification, and mutual aid as its principles; on the practical level, it was often requisitioned by state power and became an extension of administration at the grassroots. This tension was not unique to the community covenant but was the norm in traditional Chinese grassroots governance. The rise and fall of the community covenant suggests that the effective maintenance of grassroots order requires both an institutional framework at the state level and self-organization based on consensus in local society. What the rule of ritual provided was precisely such a flexible mechanism of integration, but once the state intervened excessively, the voluntary spirit of ritual could be replaced by formalized ceremonies.
Conclusion
From its origins as a private experiment in Lantian during the Northern Song, to its official sponsorship and public lecturing in the Ming and Qing, and then to its degeneration into mere formality after the mid-Qing, the community compact's trajectory of change reflects the inner tensions of traditional China's grassroots order. The rule of ritual, as an integrative mechanism employing moral instruction, ceremony, and human sentiment, was able to sustain local consensus when government power was limited, but its efficacy depended on the active participation of the gentry, lineages, and local elites. Once state power extended downward and incorporated the community compact into the administrative system, with the compact head and deputy head turned into corvée service posts and the reading of the compact reduced to ritual, the voluntary spirit of the rule of ritual could no longer survive. The mediation records in the Ba County archives of the Qing dynasty and the lecturing format of the Sacred Edict and Its Amplified Instructions constitute precisely the two poles of this tension: the former demonstrates the community compact's practical function in private disputes, while the latter exposes the formalistic predicament of official moral instruction.
Today, as a historical resource, the community compact still offers insights for understanding grassroots social governance. If the formulation of contemporary village regulations and community covenants remains confined to posting texts on walls and formalistic lecturing, it may repeat the mistakes of officially run community compacts; if, within a legal framework, it can inspire residents' voluntary participation and consultative co-governance, then the spirit of the rule-of-ritual tradition—"encourage one another in virtue and achievement, admonish one another against faults, and assist one another in adversity"—may achieve a modern transformation. The history of the community compact reminds us that the vitality of grassroots order ultimately comes from the community's own identification and practice, not from institutional design alone.