On the Change and the Characteristics of the Social Role of Scholars in the Mid-Tang Dynasty

An important social class in ancient China,scholars experienced very complicated changes in social position in the pre-Tang times.The evolution of the scholar's social role in the Tang Dynasty was closely associated with the social and political evolution in those days.And the most essential expression of this role found the way in the trinity of the Confucian scholar, the scholar and the official.In the Tang society,the secretary,the member of the imperial academy,the remonstrator,the high-rank assistant and the state sheriff were basically the social positions of scholars active in political and cultural life,of which the secretaries,high-rank assistants and state sheriffs were the most active and played more remarkable parts in the then society.Most of such social positions resulted only from slight adjustment of the former bureaucracy except for the membership of the imperial academy,which was a fresh-created position for scholars.To change and transform their social position and social role,most scholars in those days took two frustrative paths,to be admitted in the assistantship or to take the imperial examination,especially the latter.Therefore,the co-existence of the admission into the assistantship and that by means of the imperial examination was characterstic of the evolution of the social role of scholars in the Tang Dynasty.