A Tentative Investigation on the Rise and Decline of the Scholar-Official Sout h of the Yangtze in the Tang Dynasty

Scholars usually consider that the scholars south of th e Yangtze had been completely destroyed in the late Liang Dynasty, or had compl etely declined by the Tang Dynasty. However, through the case investigation on the deputy to the scholars south of the Yangtze, the eight great surnames Wang, Xie, Yuan, Xiao, Zhu, Zhang, Gu and Lu. In fact, we discover that a small number of them had been completely destroyed, mostly came from a long line of officia ls and family education from the South and North Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty. Though the scholar-officials south of the Yangtze didn’t compary with the sc holar-officials of Shandong and Guanzhong in position and function in Tang’s r egime, they also had regular political force. Though their forces in politics a nd economics had declined in the Tang Dynasty than in the Six Dynasties, they a lso had very high social position and traditional superiority of cultural arist ocratic families, thus their children could adapte themselves to the change from the hereditary to the highest imperial examination system,and kept the positio n of the scholar-officials to the late Tang Dynasty.