The Qin Bamboo Slips Collected by Yuelu Academy are a series of precious bamboo slips bought and rescued by Yuelu Academy of Hunan University in 2007. The slips include chapters such as Zhiri, The Official Road, Books on Dream Interpretation, Book on SHU, Zou Yan Shu, Miscellaneous Copies of Qin’s Laws, and five volumes have been published in total. The third volume records the judicial precedents based on laws from Qin in the Warring States to the Qin Dynasty. It mainly consists of the precedents of the doubtful cases, part of which is about self-recommended promotion letters written by officials who had solved the problematic cases. Overall, the third volume is a crucial resource to study the laws and to learn the daily life in the Qin Dynasty.
The laws on The Qin Bamboo Slips Collected by Yuelu Academy can be compared with other Qin bamboo slips and Han bamboo slips, such as The Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips, Qin Bamboo Slips of Liye, and Zhangjiashan Bamboo Slips. Researchers not only find the above slips share consistency regarding judicial precedents but also indicate that Han Law originated from Qin Law.
There are 15 different kinds of cases in the Yuelu Academy Qin Bamboo Slips. Although lots of parts of precedents have disappeared, researchers are still able to recognize most of the contents. Since the slips were unearthed, many researchers have devoted themselves to exploring the mystery of these valuable documents. This paper divides Volume 3 into five categories. The first category, the Study of Theft, includes four stealing cases. The second category, The Study of Criminal Cases, includes three robbery and homicide cases. The third category, The Study of Rape, includes one rape case and one adultery case. The fourth category, The Study of Forging Official Letters and the Deserter, includes one case concerning using official seal unauthorized, and the other referring to someone running away the force illegally. Last but not least, the fifth category, the Study of Comprehensive Cases”, includes the cases which are not related to the above four categories, such as offenses of malfeasance in office and extortion.
This paper discusses the slips translations and terminology and provides individual research findings. Apart from the existing views on Qin Bamboo Slips, we hope our efforts could be beneficial to further related researches.