"Official Recruitment" and "Monk Selection".

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A. D. ), the recruitment to the central bureaucracy is called "xuan guan"; the process to become monk is called "xuan fo". Although one is secular and the other non-secular, there are many similari- ties in both competition processes and therefore, the common practice of the bureaucratic officials and the religious monks of- ten match each other. For example, the officials and the monks not only borrow popular idioms from each other, but also mutually copy organization models and written forms. After the middle of the Dynasty, the bureaucracy system, which is based upon the imperial examination, is highly influenced by the religious xuan-fo system. The genres of poetry criticism, such as "xiu ju", "ge" and "shi" are all results from the co-influence of the two selection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]