venteen years later, by a rescript
forbidding provincial governors to exact forced labour for tilling
their manors.

That this did not check the evil is proved by an official record,
compiled in 797, from which it appears that princes and influential
nobles possessed manors of great extent; that they appointed
intendants to manage them; that these intendants themselves engaged
in operations of reclamation; that they abused their power by
despoiling the peasants, and that dishonest farmers made a practice
of evading taxes and tribute by settling within the bounds of a
manor. These abuses reached their acme during the reigns of Uda and
Daigo (888-930), when people living in the vicinity of a manor were
ruthlessly robbed and plundered by the intendant and his servants,
and when it became habitual to elude the payment of taxes by making
spurious assignments of lands to influential officials in the
capital. In vain was the ownership of lands by powerful nobles
interdicted, and in vain its purchase by provincial governors: the
metropolis had no power to enforce its vetoes in the provinces, and
the provincials ignored them. Thus the shoen grew in number and
extent.

The second factor which contributed to the extension of manors was
the bestowal of estates in perpetuity on persons of conspicuous
ability, and afterwards on men who enjoyed Imperial favour. Land thus
granted was called shiden and enjoyed immunity from taxation. Then
there were tracts given in recognition of public merit. These koden
were originally of limited tenure, but that condition soon ceased to
be observed, and the koden fell into the same category with manors
(shoen).

Finally we have the jiden, or temple lands. These, too, were at the
outset granted for fixed terms, but when Buddhism became powerful the
limitation ceased to be operative, and moreover, in defiance of the
law, private persons presented tracts, large or small, to the temples
where the mortuary tablets of their families were preserved, and the
temples, oh their own account, acquired estates by purchase or by
reclamation. The jiden, like the other three kinds of land enumerated
above, were exempt from taxation. Owned by powerful nobles or
influential families, the shoen were largely cultivated by forced
labour, and as in many cases it paid the farmers better to rent such
land; and thus escape all fiscal obligations, than to till their own
fields, the latter were deserted pan passu with the