Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (45 page)

55. TCSCSH 93.1 (1750).

56. TCHTSL 78.8.

57. This contrasts with his father's instinct for regularity; at the outset of
his reign, Injen reinstituted the Capital Investigation, which had been
suspended since 1685, and decreased the interval from six years to three.
The self-evaluation requirement remained in effect. TCHTSL 78.8.

58. R. Kent Guy has begun to explore the appointment process as it affected
governors-general and governors: "The Appointment of Provincial Governors in Qing China: a Preliminary Analysis" (typescript).

59. TCSCSH g1.4 (1742).

60. CPTC, nei-cheng, chih-kuan CL 34-1.27-

61. In one example from 1768, twenty-three lines of an official's reply follow
sixty-six lines of an imperial edict. CPTC 86o.11, CL 33.9.15 (Funihan).

62. One memorial, for instance, dutifully quoted five separate scoldings, all
quite humiliating. CPTC 815.13, CL 33.8.15 (Feng Ch'ien).

63. CPTC 861.6, CL 33.8.11 (Asha).

64. CSL 814.27, CL 33.7.11. In vermilion, inserted into a later court-letter draft: "How can you not impeach such negligent subordinates?" KCTC
CL 33-7-15-

65. CPTC 862.2, CL 33.7.14 (Jangboo).

66. KCTC CL 33.7.15•

67. CPTC 863.2, CL 33.7.21.

68. The execution of Chang Kuang-ssu, for allegedly botching the military
campaign against the Chin-ch'uan aborigines in 1749, was notorious. In
the Burma campaign of 1767, Hungli had two officials put to death for
mendacious reporting from the field. On these cases, see Chapter 3. In
the case of the Bogus Memorial of 1751, Hungli jailed the Shantung
governor, Juntai, and confiscated all his property for failing to report
material evidence. KCTC CL 16.8.27.

69. CPTC 862.4, CL 33.7.20.

70. See, for example, CPTC 853.6, CL 33.7.21 (Jangboo).

71. KCTC CL 16.8.27 (October 15, 1751). This edict does not appear in
CSL. On the Bogus Memorial case, see Chapter 3.

72. CSL 78o.23b, CL 32.3.7. Wu was also said to be in ill health. When
the monarch queried Governor-general G'aojin, however, G'aojin said
he had heard nothing about Wu to justify alarm. G'aojin promised a
follow-up report later, which I have been unable to unearth. In any
event, Hungli believed Wu to be an experienced official with "a sincere
character" and kept him on the job.

73. Biographies of Wu and his sons are in CSK 327.10777-79.

74. CPTC 856.7, CL 33.8.22 (Wu Shao-shih).

75. CPTC 862.26 CL 33.10.7.

76. Wu T'an's original memorial has not been recovered, but it is summarized by Governor Jangboo, to whom Wu sent an urgent report, as well
as in Hungli's edict in response. CPTC 862.15, CL 33.8.26, and CSL
817.36, CL 33.8.29. For the background of this case, see David E. Kelley,
"Temples and Tribute Fleets: The Luo Sect and Boatmen's Associations
in the Eighteenth Century," Modern China 8.3 (1982): 361-391; also his
"Sect and Society: The Evolution of the Luo Sect among Qing Dynasty
Grain Tribute Boatmen, 1700-1850" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1986), esp. chap. 3-

77. CPTC SLHK 281, CL 33- 10.1 (Jangboo).

78. KCI'C, CL 33.8.29, CSL 817.36, CL 33.8.29. The caution about "seditious writings" was added to the court letter with the vermilion brush.
In the end, Jangboo recommended that the Soochow sectarian leaders
be sentenced to strangulation with execution deferred (i.e., jailed indefinitely under sentence of death) and that followers suffer heavy beatings
and exile. CPTC SLHK 281, CL 33.10.1 (Jangboo).

79. The routine-channel memorials that handled the impeachment, submitted in April and June of 1769, are Li-k'o t'i-pen, packet 71, CL 34.3.23;
and packet 52, CL 34.5.14.

80. The date from which accountability was calculated differed from place
to place, depending on when the sect was known to have been transmitted to a particular jurisdiction.

81. CPTC, 865.19, CL 33.9.1 1 (Dingcang).

82. On one occasion when Governor-general G'aojin personally interrogated
a soulstealing suspect, he brought along Feng Ch'ien, governor of
Anhwei, who happened to be in Nanking on other business. CPTC
862.21, CL 33.9.12 (G'aojin).

83. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of
Knowledge (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936), 118.

84. CPTC 862.10, CL 33.8.15 (Jordai).

85. CPTC 862.9, CL 33.8.13 (G'aojin). G'aojirE was, however, authorized to
carry out the re-registration in Kiangsu.

86. Hungli accepted this for discussion and referred it to the Board of Rites.
CPTC 864.12, CL 33.9.2 (Tseng Yueh-li).

87. CPTC 866.1, CL 33.8.18 (Surde).

88. CSL 81g.16b, CL 33.9.24• Surde has completely dropped out of the
biographical record, perhaps for reasons that seemed good at the time.

10. Theme and Variations

1. Roger Chartier uses "representation," in one of its aspects, to mean "the
operation of classification and delineation that produces the multiple
intellectual configurations by which reality is constructed in contradictory
ways by various groups." Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1888), g.

2. SYT CC 15-5-22-

3. Shen Pao-chen, Shen Wen-su-kung cheng-shu, 188o ed. (reprint, Taipei:
Wen-hai ch'u-pan-she, 1967), 6.67; CSL.Kuang-hsu 34.2, KH 2.6.1;
CSL.Kuang-hsu 38.17, KH 2.8.14; CSL.Kuang-hsu 39.iob, KH 2.8.23;
Chiao-wu chiao-an tang, 3rd ser., 3 vols., comp. Chung-yang yen-chiu
yuan, Chin-tai-shih yen-chiu-so (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1967), 627.
See also de Groot, The Religious System of China, V, 489-490, for a discussion of this episode. In the 1870s the "evil arts" were associated, in
the official mind, with gangs of armed outlaws, so that prosecuting
sorcery was really part of a general repression of public disorder. Christian converts were immune from prosecution, not only because the
treaties guaranteed them freedom of worship, but also because foreign
powers (particularly France) looked for excuses to send gunboats to
protect their co-religionists.

4. On these campaigns, see Chuang Chi-fa, Ch'ing Kao-tsung shih-ch'uan wukung yen-chiu (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1982), chaps. 4 and 6.
We have already seen how Hungli dealt with the commanders of the
Burma campaign after receiving the report of his advisor Fulinggan; see
Chapter 3.

5. For example, a report from Jangboo that certain criminals had been
clipping queues drew from Hungli the marginal vermilion comment:
"How?" CPTC 853.5, CL 33.7.18. The documents contain other hints
of this sort that suggest a morbid curiosity about the techniques of
sorcery as such.

6. Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), 36-37. On diabolism, see also Keith Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 521-525.

7. Hsiao, Ch'ing-tai t'ung-shih, II, 1-13-

8. Recent Chinese history has seen an abundance of such fantasy-power
injected into society. I am reminded of a 1982 conversation in Peking
with a former Red Guard, then a low-paid service worker. Mao's "Cultural Revolution," he said wistfully, was a wonderful time for people like
him who lacked the formal qualifications to advance in society through
conventional channels, but whose ambitions were well served by the
sudden access of power from the top, in the form of Mao's summons to
the young to make revolution. Now, he complained, society was so
"exam-ified" (k'ao-shih-hua) that he had no hope of rising above his deadend job.

9. Edwin M. Schur describes the social function of "labeling": "Through
deviation ... we construct the social meaning of conformity and delineate
the boundaries of the social system." Labeling Deviant Behavior: Its Sociological Implications (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 147.

10. Lester C. Thurow, The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for
Economic Change (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

11. I am advisedly not speaking of "the elite" here, for the archives of
soulstealing bear not a trace of those literati not in office, the "local
gentry" whose presence became so visible a century later. These gentlemen stayed discreetly out of sight throughout the soulstealing crisis.
Local gazetteers, which reflected gentry interests, breathe scarcely a word
of it. Certainly nobody in government asked the gentry to lend a hand,
and they stuck their necks out for nobody-whether as pursuers of
sorcerers, as protectors of innocents, or as mediators. The days of
"gentry" activism were yet to come.

12. CPTC 861.1o, CL 33.q.11 (Asha). Asha's complete list of soulstealing
suspects arrested in Honan over a three-month period is as follows:

Hsiang fu County: A roving monk from Hu-kuang who sold medicinal
ointments.

Nan-yang County: a roving monk from Kiangnan, who had been "begging" by intimidating people. Though no outright criminal activity
could be found, he deposed that his "elder brother" monk had the
same dharma-name and native place as a suspect named by the
Shantung criminal Ts'ai T'ing-chang.

Hsin-yang County: A Kiangnan beggar accused of clipping women's
lapels, along with his wife and four other beggars. Also, a criminal
from Kiangnan who was reported to be carrying a queue-end and
a knife, presently being sent to the provincial capital for further
interrogation.

Lu-shan County: A roving monk from Kiangnan whose name sounded
something like that of a monk implicated in one of the Shantung
confessions.

Pi-yang County: Two roving monks from Hu-kuang.

Feng-ch'iu County: A roving monk from Hu-kuang.

Nan-yang Prefecture: A wandering stranger who turned out to be Ho-
nanese; also three wandering monks and a lay Taoist from Hukuang.

Ku-shih County: A monk from the Kuan-yin Temple who had been
implicated by the Shantung criminal monk T'ung-kao.

Chang-te Prefecture: Three wandering monks from Shantung, and a
Shantung beggar.

Yen-ling County: Two lay vagrants from Shantung.

Hsu-chou Sub-prefecture: Two criminals from Hu-kuang who were
carrying medicinal charms.

13. Twenty-one million was the official count from the census of 1787, which
probably represented considerable underreporting. See Ho, Studies on
the Population of China, 281-283. A comparison with witchcraft prosecutions in England, though it can be only suggestive, provides a reference
point for the scale of state effort. In the county of Essex, where the
population may have been in the neighborhood of ioo,ooo, in the peak
years of witchcraft prosecution the courts produced 35 convictions in
1584, and 50 in 1645. For population estimates, see William Hunt, The
Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 25; and J. A. Sharpe, Crime in
Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 15; and on witchcraft prosecutions, Macfarlane,
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 26-27.

Bracketed numbers after romanized Chinese and Japanese titles refer
to Part II of the Glossary.

Archival Sources

The archives on which this study is based are, unless otherwise noted, held
in the First Historical Archives of China, Peking. The principal classes of
documents are:

Chu-p'i tsou-che, CPTC [i]. Imperially rescripted palace memorials. These are
reports sent directly to the emperor by officials in provinces and capital.
They bear the emperor's comments and instructions in his own hand, written
in vermilion ink. Unless otherwise noted, the document numbers in the notes
refer to memorials currently classified under "Peasant Movements, AntiCh'ing Struggles" (nung-min yun-tung, fan-Ch'ing tou-cheng).

Kung-chungshang-yu, KCSY [2]. Imperial edicts in the palace collection. Often
edited and augmented in the emperor's vermilion, these are open-channel
imperial pronouncements drafted by the grand councillors.

Kung-chung t'ing-chi, KCTC [3]. Court letters in the palace collection. Drafted
by the grand councillors and often emended in the emperor's vermilion,
these are confidential instructions to specific provincial officials, sent to the
field and later returned to the palace.

Lu-fu tsou-che, fa-lii, ch'i-ta, LFTC/FLCT [4]. Grand council file copies of
memorials, legal affairs, miscellaneous. When a memorial had been read by
the emperor, it was copied out by Grand Council clerks before being returned to the sender. The copy was filed along with any enclosures (such as lists,
exhibits, or courtroom confessions) that had been sent to Peking with it. For
my purposes, the enclosures are the most useful. They include not only the
confessions of sorcery suspects but also detailed reports on local management
of soulstealing cases. These materials have to be used with care. The "confessions," for example, are not necessarily verbatim transcripts of what a suspect
said. They must be considered government documents and viewed with due
skepticism. Most can be checked against other evidence (the findings of a
lower court against those of a higher court, or facts reported in memorials
from other quarters).

Shang-yu-tang fang-pen, SYT [51. Grand Council record book of imperial
edicts, square volumes. These volumes include copies of both open-channel
edicts and confidential court letters. They also include confidential memoranda from the Grand Council to the Throne, which are not available from
any other source, except an occasional unrescripted memorial from a grand
councillor in the lu-fu tsou-che collection.

Hsing-k'o shih-shu [6]. Chronological summaries of routine memorials relating
to "Punishments."

Li-k'o shih-shu [71. Chronological summaries of routine memorials relating to
Civil Office.

Hsing-k'o t'i-pen and Hsing-pu t'i-pen, hsu fa [8]. Routine memorials relating to
"Punishments: Retention of Hair." These memorials, which came up through
the open channel, bear the red rescripts of imperial decisions drafted by the
Grand Secretariat and sanctioned by the Throne. They are sometimes
referred to as hung pen (red [rescripted] memorials).