Tang Code

The Tang Code was the penal code of China's Tang dynasty, synthesizing Legalist and Confucian approaches to law into a single, systematic legal text. Work on it began around AD 624 and continued through revisions in 627 and 637 before it was formally promulgated in 652 as a text of 502 articles arranged in twelve sections, with an official commentary added in 653 to guide its interpretation and application. Its twelve sections addressed general legal principles, imperial security, the conduct of officials, family and peasant affairs, military matters, personal offenses, forgery, torture procedure and judicial administration. It is the earliest Chinese legal code to survive to the present day in its complete form, and it went on to become the template for later Chinese dynastic law as well as for legal codes elsewhere in East Asia, including Japan, Korea and Vietnam, a reach that has led legal historians to call it one of the greatest achievements of traditional Chinese law.