Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (36 page)

Bureaucratic Resistance

How the bureaucracy responded to such royal bullying must be
teased out of the documents with some care. There seem to have
been several varieties of resistance. Some was, no doubt, calculated;
some may have been simply the viscosity of bureaucratic procedure
that stalled prompt response to urgent demands. Some may have
been the disdain of agnostic officials who could not bring themselves
to take soulstealing seriously. Some may have reflected fear of how
the prosecution might affect bureaucratic careers. And finally, some
may have been principled refusal to prosecute innocent commoners
on trumped-up charges.

That there was resistance is beyond doubt. It started before Peking
got wind of the spring incidents in Kiangnan: these curious affairs
were simply not reported to the Throne. Because preemptive control
of information did not succeed in keeping the matter quiet, various
kinds of damage control followed. Every one of the measures I am
about to describe can be explained on other grounds. Taken together,
I am persuaded, they indicate a cautious, pervasive resistance to
autocratic pressure. That they were concerted is unlikely, that they
were deliberate cannot be proved. But neither connivance nor deliberation is needed to make the case. The bureaucratic work-style,
which followed well-worn mental tracks, was quite enough to do the
trick.

Busy Inaction: Wu Shao-shih in Kiangsi

When someone told Hungli, a year before the soulstealing crisis, that
people were referring to his Kiangsi governor, Wu Shao-shih, as "old Buddha" (a compliment), he was concerned lest the old man had
become so passive and indulgent that he could not attend to busi-
ness.72 Wu was in fact seventy, the patriarch of a family of noted
jurists.'-3 So highly did Hungli esteem the family that Wu and his
sons, Huan and 'Fan, had been allowed on two occasions to serve in
the Board of Punishments together, postings that would normally
have been precluded by the "rule of avoidance" that kept families
prudently separated in bureaucratic assignments.

Fast of Kiangsi's core area, the valley of the Hsin River offered
convenient access from neighboring Chekiang, whence rumors of
soulstealing seeped into the province as early as mid-June. Governor
Wu did not report them. Instead, he told Hungli later, he had "verbally ordered" his subordinates to be watchful for "suspicious persons" traveling about. No arrests were made, and nobody reported
any queue-clipping in Kiangsi. Hungli, unwontedly restrained toward
this elderly and respected figure, contented himself with a mild
rebuke: not reporting the rumors had been "an error on your part."
In early October, however, Wu proposed a dragnet more finely
meshed than that of any other province: a corps of spies "who would
change both their clothing and their surnames" to cover every county
and report suspects to officialdom every ten days. Also, every prefecture would appoint special agents to inspect "Taoist and Buddhist
temples, as well as shrines and academies, whether busy or secluded."
Wu soberly warned his master about practitioners of "deviant ways
and black arts": They "establish an organization that purports to
burn incense and do good deeds," which "overtly gathers men and
women from among the ignorant rustics, but covertly hooks up with
desperate scoundrels." Under pretext of avoiding calamities and
defending against bandits, they "concoct magic sayings, prepare
weapons, and lure followers." All suspicious persons, whether
Buddhist monks, Taoist priests, or persons of furtive demeanor or
uncertain abode, were to he reported promptly to local officials.
(Vermilion: "Probably empty talk. Very hard to believe." )"

Indeed, absolutely nothing came of it. With profuse and abject
apologies, Wu reported six weeks later (after Hungli had called off
the prosecution) that not a single queue-clipper had been found.75
No documents survive to suggest even a roundup of "usual suspects,"
like those faithfully reported by governors of neighboring provinces.
What can we make of it? Either Wu's dragnet was never deployed,
or else it failed to catch plausible suspects. Conspicuously lacking are the torture and perjury we have seen in other provinces. We have to
conclude, I think, that Governor Wu was simply not prepared to
pursue what he considered a bad case, and that the somber warnings
and elaborate preparations he conveyed to the Throne were so much
window dressing. Governor Wu got away with it: not only did the
sovereign not rebuke him, but the following year he named him
president of the Board of Punishments. Shielded by his juristic reputation, and also perhaps by his immediate superior, imperial in-law
G'aojin, Wu was not so easily to be disciplined for his unwillingness
to play with the team.

Diversion: The Prosecution of the Soochow Sectarians

Wu's Shao-shih's younger son, Wu T'an, was provincial judge of
neighboring Kiangsu and, like his father, was a respected legal
scholar. He had decided, like his superiors, not to report the spring
soulstealing cases to the Throne. He, too, had later been embarrassed
by Textile Commissioner Sacai's exposure of the cases and had faced
the withering imperial attack that I related earlier. But soon this
"ingrate of a thing" was able to send his master more creditable news.
Around September 28, three weeks after receiving his vermilion
scolding, he reported that, although he had caught no soulstealers,
he had discovered, through his own investigations, eleven "sutra
halls" established by lay Buddhist congregations just outside the Soochow city walls.76 Two related groups were involved: the Greater
Vehicle sect (Ta-sheng chiao) and the Effortless Action sect (Wu-wei
chiao), the latter of which, it will be recalled from Chapter 6, had
been persecuted in Pao-an just a few weeks before. The Wu-wei sect,
and possibly the Ta-sheng sect as well, revered the patriarch Lo
Ch'ing and had been banned by imperial order since 1727. Now
some seventy people were arrested by Wu T'an. Their depositions
revealed the astonishing fact that these groups had been in existence,
in their present locations, since the year 1.677, when the first of their
sutra halls had been erected.77

We must shift to conjecture here. I infer (though I cannot prove)
that proscribed sects of this size could not long have remained
unknown to some level of local government in a busy city like Soochow. County functionaries probably had been extorting protection
money from them for years. Not by nature secret groups, the sects
afforded solace and shelter to Grand Canal boatmen from the grain tribute fleet, and some of those living in the halls were evidently
retired boatmen. The provincial judge, pressured to produce soulstealers, must in turn have pressed his subordinates for results.
Someone down the line must have decided that the secretarians
would make a fair substitute. Turning in these inoffensive but vulnerable groups would, for the moment, appease the imperial appetite
for prosecutions and would allow the shamefaced Wu T'an to display
his attention to duty. Hungli, predictably, responded harshly-toward
the sectarians. He ordered that they be treated severely in order to
discourage others from joining such sects, and that they be questioned narrowly on possible connections to soulstealing. Wu T'an was
to be especially vigilant for "seditious writings" like those unearthed
in Pao-an.78

Criminal prosecution of the sect also triggered the bureaucratic
impeachment of officials who had "failed to investigate" it.79 Because
the sects were deemed to have been active in and around Soochow
since 1677, when the first sutra hall was built, a host of former officials
of several counties, along with their superiors, were technically
accountable for having failed to prosecute it.80 The cumulative result
was laughable. The list of former incumbents to be disciplined retroactively included sixty-eight county magistrates, twenty-two prefects, fourteen circuit-intendants, thirty-two provincial judges,
twenty-nine provincial treasurers, twenty-six governors, and fourteen
governors-general. Many of' course were already dead, and some
were excused because they had served in the jurisdiction less than
six months. Others were let off because they had taken part in
breaking the case. Some had since risen to high position: Yenjisan,
former Kiangsu governor, now a grand secretary and grand councillor, was slapped with a fine of nine months' nominal salary, which
for a man in his position had about the force of a parking ticket.
Though a few lower ranks suffered demotion and transfer, most got
off with token penalties. This elaborate impeachment proceeding was
an embarrassing farce, yet Wu T'an and other Kiangsu leaders may
have accounted it a modest price to pay for relief from Hungli's
relentless pressure.

Unanimity: The Chueh-hsing Case

In the matter of the amorous monk of Hunan, whose story I related
in Chapter 7, Governor-general Dingcang afforded his sovereign scant satisfaction. After Chueh-hsing had recanted and told the full
story of his dalliance with the young wife of innkeeper Liu, he had
been absolved of soulstealing charges and had merely been beaten
and exiled for adultery. Dingcang returned to his yamen in Wuchang
and wrote Hungli on October 31 that no progress had been made in
the sorcery prosecution. The monarch was furious. He now understood the reason for Dingcang's conscientious desire to travel more
than two hundred miles to be present at the investigation. Vermilion:
"You use your tricks and hateful techniques once again to present
unanimity in order to close a case (shen-ch'u wan-shih). How can you
be said to earn your governor-general's salary? What can be done
about a shameless, useless thing like you?"81 Nothing in the rules
required the presence of the governor-general at a provincial trial.
We can safely assume, along with Hungli, that provincial officials had
presented a united front so that he would have had to discipline the
lot of them if the outcome were not to his liking. The record is full
of cases in which interrogations were attended by a number of officials on the scene, presumably for safety in numbers. A seamless joint
report by high provincial officials would more likely turn aside imperial wrath than a report from an isolated bureaucrat, and would
minimize the danger of a discrepant opinion from someone else.82

Routinization: Switching to a Safer Track

Karl Mannheim observed that "the fundamental tendency of all
bureaucratic thought is to turn all problems of politics into problems
of administration."83 By this he meant that bureaucrats are incapable
of seeing beyond their "socially limited horizon," their rationally
ordered sphere of work, to the clash of irrationally generated interests in the larger political world. I would credit Ch'ing bureaucrats
with more insight and guile, and assume that they were quite capable
of purposely redefining political problems as administrative
problems.

In the soulstealing case, there are numerous instances in which
bureaucrats did their best to channel the monarch's urgent, nonroutine demands into conventional, routine channels. After all, showing
attention to duty was the next best thing to achieving concrete results,
and a hard-pressed official had many routine activities in which he
could busy himself, with minimal risk. For example, the pao-chia
system of mutual responsibility had long been on the books but was always in need of updating and tightening up. The Nanking provincial treasurer dutifully suggested such a measure during the sorcery
prosecution as a way of checking the backgrounds of all commoners
in the Nanking area. Hungli saw the suggestion for what it was: a
device to seem busy but avoid the unrewarding task of ferreting out
soulstealers. Vermilion: "This is all empty talk. The habits of you
provincial officials are really hateful."84 G'aojin himself was not above
suggesting an empire-wide re-registration of monks and priests, most
of whom were "failed literati" and whose heterodox ways did the
populace much harm. G'aojin assured His Majesty that he dared not
reply on "empty words." Vermilion: "You have not caught a culprit
in ages. How can you say `no empty words'?" It was easy enough to
unleash a routine crackdown on a vulnerable group, and the monarch
plainly understood what was going on .115 A similar proposal, floated
by the Chekiang provincial judge, suggested that monks and priests
who lacked ordination certificates be required to carry travel passes
with them on their wanderings.86

By routinizing the search for soulstealers, local bureaucrats were
falling back on familiar techniques (such as pao-chia) that were not
susceptible to short-term evaluation. An official could in any case
count on having been transferred before the results could be assessed.
The effect would be to divert a case from the emergency channel
into the routine channel, where local bureaucrats were less vulnerable. This stratagem was not, however, notably successful in diverting
the alert Hungli from his purpose.

The Bureaucratic Monarchy as a Social System

The documentary record of the soulstealing crisis projects a double
image. The bolder lines depict the day-to-day prosecution of sorcery.
The subtler pattern is the relationship among the writers and readers
of documents. In this double image, we perceive the two aspects of
the Chinese imperial state: as instrument (managing the realm in the
interests of its proprietors, the Manchu monarchy and the Sino-
Manchu elite); and as system (allocating power and status among
political actors). The state-as-instrument (I shall call this "the government") fits our commonsense understanding of government: institutions set up to accomplish tasks such as collecting taxes, maintaining
order, and waging war. The state-as-system (which I shall call "the
bureaucratic monarchy") consists of relationships among men whose careers are measured by prestige and power, mobility and security,
within a hierarchical order. Every document generated by an
"event"-whether a routine report on taxes or an urgent report on
insurrection-must be read both as description of an outer reality
and as a reflection of the political needs of its author. ("Political
needs," of course, were not necessarily narrow, selfish interests. They
might also encompass the writer's principled defense of his institutional turf.) The interaction of men within the state-as-system was
not insulated from "events" in the world of action. On the contrary,
it was such "events" that made the two aspects of the state meaningful
in terms of each other.