From the first, however, members of the gentry who were connected with the imperial house were given a privileged position; then officials were excluded from the prohibition of leasing, so that there continued to be tenant farmers in addition to the independent peasants.  Moreover, the temples enjoyed special treatment, and were also exempted from taxation.  All these exceptions brought grist to the mills of the gentry, and so did the failure to carry into effect many of the provisions of the law.  Before long a new gentry had been formed, consisting of the old gentry together with those who had directly aided the emperor’s ascent to the throne.  From the beginning of the eighth century there were repeated complaints that peasants were “disappearing”.  They were entering the service of the gentry as tenant farmers or farm workers, and owing to the privileged position of the gentry in regard to taxation, the revenue sank in proportion as the number of independent peasants decreased.  One of the reasons for the flight of farmers may have been the corvee laws connected with the “equal land” system:  small families were much less affected by the corvee obligation than larger families with many sons.  It may be, therefore, that large families or at least sons of the sons in large families moved away in order to escape these obligations.  In order to prevent irregularities, the T’ang renewed the old “pao-chia” system, as a part of a general reform of the administration in 624.  In this system groups of five families were collectively responsible for the payment of taxes, the corvee, for crimes committed by individuals within one group, and for loans from state agencies.  Such a system is attested for pre-Christian times already; it was re-activated in the eleventh century and again from time to time, down to the present.

Yet the system of land equalization soon broke down and was abolished officially around A.D. 780.  But the classification of citizens into different classes, first legalized under the Toba, was retained and even more refined.

As early as in the Han period there had been a dual administration—­the civil and, independent of it, the military administration.  One and the same area would belong to a particular administrative prefecture (chuen) and at the same time to a particular military prefecture (chou).  This dual organization had persisted during the Toba period and, at first, remained unchanged in the beginning of the T’ang.

The backbone of the military power in the seventh century was the militia, some six hundred units of an average of a thousand men, recruited from the general farming population for short-term service:  one month in five in the areas close to the capital.  These men formed a part of the emperor’s guards and were under the command of members of the Shensi gentry.  This system which had its direct parallels in the Han time and evolved out of a Toba system, broke down when short offensive wars were no longer fought.  Other imperial guards were staffed with young sons of the gentry who were stationed in the most delicate parts of the palaces.  The emperor T’ai-tsung had his personal bodyguard, a part of his own army of conquest, consisting of his former bondsmen (pu-ch’ue).  The ranks of the Army of conquest were later filled by descendants of the original soldiers and by orphans.