The local record of "establishing new households according to theSpring Ordinance" in the written tablet no-1 unearthed at Yin-wan.Chiang-shu sheds light on our understanding of the origin anddevelopment of the institution of monthly ordinances in the Former Handynasty. This paper attempts to examine related texts on bamboo, wooden, andsilk documents unearthed recently, and to trace the origin anddevelopment of the institution of monthly ordinances of the Former Hangovernment. The idea of "matching males and females in spring" can be tracedback to the classics of ffsia Hsiao'cheng and the chapters Shih-ling andHsiuan-kung of Kuan-tse. Yet it is not echoed in any institution until ihereign of Emperor Yuan or Ch'eng in the first century B. C. As this papersuggests, the institution of "establishing new households according to theSpring Ordinance" is a realization of this idea. It should be taken as a partof the so-called "Contemporary(or Han) Monthly Ordinances." The monthly ordinances of the Han government are changed fromtime to time. They are influenced by Confucian classics and pre-Hantraditional practices- Some of them are rather out of contemporary needs.