Abstract Around the General Record of Imperial Examination Success in the Song Dynasty(Referred to as ″General Record″), the following three questions are studied.First, the evolution and influence of the imperial examination system in the Song Dynasty studied on the basis of the data of imperial Jinshi. The General Record recorded large amounts of imperial Dengke clan, including 904 explicitly identified individuals, 13 of whom lived in the Northern Song Dynasty and 852 in the Southern Song Dynasty. Influenced by the Song clan policy, the first large amount of Song imperial Dengke clan, who were mainly the sixth and seventh generations of Taizu and Taizong, emerged during the years of Shaoxing, under the reign of Gaozong in the Southern Song Dynasty. The proportion of Song imperial Dengke clan members had risen from 5% in the earlier stage to 10% in the middle and later stages of Southern Song Dynasty. The rankings and times of attending examinations of Dengke clan members had also increased, and in turn, a specialized Keju clan group had formed. Consequently, Jinshi had appeared in Southern Song Dynasty imperial clan for three successive generations, The formation of Song imperial Keju clan had several reasons such as the concentrated residence of imperial clan, the favorite Keju policy, the priority of official educational resources, and etc. The General Record contributes to the above results, which have been largely ignored in the researches of Song Keju History as well as family history.Second, the evolution of Tongzi Ke policy in the Song Dynasty studied on the basis of the biographical data of the successful imperial examination candidates. Through the analysis of biographical data of the successful candidates collected in the General Record, it could be seen that the opening frequency of Tongzi Ke and alteration in the numbers of examinees in the Song Dynasty is influenced by the imperial court's orientation of the examinations and the political trends in that era. The change of the examinee numbers in different dynasties was the result of the institutional reforms and political trends. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Tongzi Ke was presided over by the emperor and was appointed the officialdom immediately after passing the examinations. Since the middle Northern Song Dynasty, the government took some measures such as suspending the examination, reducing the number of admission and so on to prevent the increasing disadvantages brought by the preferential treatment for successful candidates. However the result was not idealistic. Since the Southern Song Dynasty, the government had adopted the methods of reducing the favored treatment, of standardizing the examination contents and procedures, and of taking the grade of the system. Such methods had achieved good results in solving the problem of the unfairness of the examination. Third, the General Record's influences on the new development of the international researches on the history of the imperial examination are discussed. At present, the international academic researches on the Song Dynasty imperial examinations can be divided into four groups:imperial examination system, social&cultural history of the Song Dynasty, historical materials of imperial examination system, historical biographies of characters. The General Record includes the world's best research results on the imperial examination system of the Song Dynasty. The large amount of literature data provided by the General Record will promote the relative academic research innovation.
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