《二年律令》 / Er Nian Lu Ling

Overview

《二年律令》 is an excavated early Han legal text introduced through 张家山汉墓竹简. The current sources use separate parts of it to discuss punishment for trafficking people and for unauthorized coin production, making it evidence for both market-side liability and the enforcement ambitions of the early Han state.

Current Profile

In the trafficking branch, 《二年律令》 makes sellers, knowing buyers, and buyers claiming ignorance legally visible and is used to show severe moral and penal deterrence. In the coinage branch, its Money Statute is said to punish unauthorized minters, material or circulation helpers, and knowing non-reporters while rewarding capture. Together the sources present the text as evidence that early Han law attempted to govern not only a principal offender but the surrounding transaction, supply, reporting, and enforcement network.

Key Characteristics

• It is presented as an excavated Han legal text associated with Zhangjiashan bamboo slips.
• The episode uses it to discuss legal treatment of abducting and selling people.
• It is said to call trafficking conduct “虐人.”
• It supports the episode’s claim that buyer-side participation was punishable, not merely the initial abduction.
• Its Money Statute is used to argue that unauthorized minting and assistance were already prohibited during Lu Zhi’s rule.
• Both source branches extend liability beyond the principal act to people who enable or sustain the prohibited market.
• Its wiki role is source-scoped legal evidence, not a complete edition or technical reconstruction of Han statutes.

Evidence

• Excavated legal-text role: 《资治通鉴·汉纪》527-2丨抽筋扒皮？古代的人贩子真活该！ says the text was found among the Zhangjiashan Han tomb bamboo slips and records Han law.
• Trafficking punishment: 《资治通鉴·汉纪》527-2丨抽筋扒皮？古代的人贩子真活该！ uses it for punishments against abductors, knowing purchasers, and purchasers claiming ignorance.
• Moral-deterrence use: 《资治通鉴·汉纪》527-2丨抽筋扒皮？古代的人贩子真活该！ reads the severe penalties as a warning against harming innocents.
• Anti-minting law: Hanji 201 uses the Money Statute to describe death penalties for unauthorized minting and assistance, liability for knowing non-reporting, and capture rewards.
• Dating argument: Hanji 201 treats the statute as evidence favoring a Gao Hou year-two prohibition, while acknowledging a competing year-six view.

Qualifications

The episodes provide short public-facing summaries rather than the text, manuscript arrangement, variant readings, dating analysis, or specialist legal debate. Exact punishment, helper and non-reporter liability, reward conversion, the relationship between a text called 《二年律令》 and a specific regnal year, and the inference that Lu Zhi issued the prohibition in Gao Hou year two remain source-scoped.

What Changed

• Added the Money Statute branch covering unauthorized minting, enabling conduct, reporting duties, and capture rewards.
• Preserved the trafficking-law evidence while widening the profile from one offense to network-shaped early Han liability.

Relationships

• 张家山汉墓竹简 - excavated corpus through which this legal text is introduced.
• 汉代拐卖惩治 - legal-policy concept grounded in this episode’s reading of the text.
• 拐卖需求端责任 - buyer-side liability concept supported by the text’s described punishments.
• 早期汉代铸币禁令执行缺口 - distinction between the statute’s severe design and the episode’s claim of weak practical enforcement.
• 劣币驱逐良币 - circulation incentive used alongside the Money Statute to explain why punishment did not preserve the heavier coin.