ughout
the realm, which had already been successfully introduced in Ch'in: the
realm was split up into provinces and the provinces into prefectures;
and an official was placed in charge of each province or prefecture.
Originally the prefectures in Ch'in had been placed directly under the
central administration, with an official, often a merchant, being
responsible for the collection of taxes; the provinces, on the other
hand, formed a sort of military command area, especially in the
newly-conquered frontier territories. With the growing militarization of
Ch'in, greater importance was assigned to the provinces, and the
prefectures were made subordinate to them. Thus the officials of the
provinces were originally army officers but now, in the reorganization
of the whole realm, the distinction between civil and military
administration was abolished. At the head of the province were a civil
and also a military governor, and both were supervised by a controller
directly responsible to the emperor. Since there was naturally a
continual struggle for power between these three officials, none of them
was supreme and none could develop into a sort of feudal lord. In this
system we can see the essence of the later Chinese administration.

[Illustration: 3 Bronze plaque representing two horses fighting each
other. Ordos region, animal style. _From V. Griessmaier: Sammlung Baron
Eduard von der Heydt, Vienna_ 1936, _illustration No_. 6.]

[Illustration: 4 Hunting scene: detail from the reliefs in the tombs at
Wu-liang-tz'u. _From a print in the author's possession_.]

[Illustration: 5 Part of the 'Great Wall'. _Photo Eberhard_.]

Owing to the centuries of division into independent feudal states, the
various parts of the country had developed differently. Each province
spoke a different dialect which also contained many words borrowed from
the language of the indigenous population; and as these earlier
populations sometimes belonged to different races with different
languages, in each state different words had found their way into the
Chinese dialects. This caused divergences not only in the spoken but in
the written language, and even in the characters in use for writing.
There exist to this day dictionaries in which the borrowed words of that
time are indicated, and keys to the various old forms of writing also
exist. Thus difficulties arose if, for instance, a man from the old
territory of Ch'in was to be transferred as an offic