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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



others, as the Sung, it was only a fraction over two persons, accord- 

 ing to Sacharoff, 1 though Biot 2 contends that in this period it was a 

 fraction more than 5 persons, as in the preceding period of the 

 Tang. Under the Yuan dynasty, according to Amiot, the " house- 

 hold " comprised 5 persons, and in the succeeding Ming dynasty it 

 seems to have varied from about 5 to over 6.6. Even during the 

 present dynasty we are in grave doubt as to the numeric value of 

 the term hu ("household," "family"). Father Amiot and other 

 foreign writers have thought it represented 5 persons, de Guignes 3 

 says 2 to 3, but in the opinion of E. H. Parker it averaged 6 persons. 4 

 In the census of 1842, which gave the number of households and of 

 individuals, the former averaged 2.3 persons to the family ; and in 

 a census of the city of Peking for 1846, it averaged 3.1. I am dis- 

 posed to accept 4 as a fair figure for enumerations of the XVIII 

 and XIX centuries.'"' 



During the Han dynasty, from a. d. i to 156, we have ten enumer- 

 ations, the first, taken in a. d. 1, gave 12,233,062 "households" 

 and 59,594,978 " individuals." The last, taken in 156, gave 16,070,- 

 906 " households " and only 50,066,856 " individuals." The terri- 

 tory over which these censuses extended did not vary appreciably 

 during the whole of this period of 155 years; it was substantially 

 the same as at the present day. The population during this century 

 and a half was nearly stationary. 



In a. d. 606, when China was again united under one rule, what 

 has been held by western writers to be a very careful census was 

 taken. It again gave the population of the Empire at about 55,- 

 500,000/ 



During the VII, VIII and IX centuries, although a considerable 

 number of enumerations of the people are recorded, they are so 

 confused that it is impossible to fix with more than the roughest 

 approximation the population, at that time, of China proper, which 



1 Hist. Uebersicht tier Bevblkerungs-Verhaltnisse China's, p. 157. 



2 Journal Asiatique, 1836, tome 1. 



3 J 'oyagc a Peking, ill, 69. 



* See infra, pp. 307-308. In Japan the average number of persons by house- 

 hold, which often includes several families, was 5.55 at the close of 189S. 



5 It is true that, in the case of the prefecture of Wen-chou in Che-kiang, 

 n was found in 1881 that the average number of persons per home was about 

 5.14 (see infra, p. 314), and in the case of Ch'ung-k'ing in Ssu-ch'uan in 1877 

 a detailed census of the city gave about 4.3 persons to a family (E. C. Baber, 

 Journ. of Explor. in West. China, p. 25). 



8 Ma Tuan-lin, Wen-hsien t'ung-k'ao, Bk. 10. 



7 See Biot, op. cit., pp. 451-452. 



