Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (16 page)

What to Do about Soulstealing?

What did this elaborate legal code mean for the prosecution of soulstealing, and where did the particular offenses of 1768 fit within it?
Every public officer who dealt with soulstealing, including Hungli
himself, was surely aware of the extent and variety of the Code's
prohibitions against the "evil arts." When Hungli said that soulstealing did "great harm" to the common people, he must have
assumed that it could be prosecuted under the law. But under exactly
which law, in this welter of definitions and prohibitions, would an
eighteenth-century jurist have put it? Soulstealing as such is not
mentioned by the Code, so prosecution would have required analogic
reasoning, a common recourse when a particular variant of a crime
was not covered by specific legal penalties.

Communicating with "evil spirits" (statute 162) might have seemed inappropriate, because the "spirits" involved were simply the souls of
the victims. A more plausible basis for prosecution would have been
the statutes on practicing hiodynamic sorcery by "extracting vitality"
(statute 288) or on injuring people by charms or incantations (statute
289 [3]). If human hair contains vitality, as I will suggest in Chapter
5, then cutting it off and using it for magical purposes may have
stirred the same revulsions as the quasi-cannibalistic perversions mentioned earlier. If the common man shared the jurist's horror at such
practices, then prosecuting soulstealers under those statutes would
have soothed the feelings of all concerned. Here the reader may
wonder why we cannot discover how soulstealing was classified in
► 768 by simply turning to the record of sentences against convicted
soulstealers. A fair question indeed. The difficulty is that the soulstealing prosecution of i 768 generated no case record of sentences.
The reasons for this odd situation will emerge as the story moves
along.

We do know, at least, that Hungli had decided to launch the campaign against queue-clipping for its sorcery and not for its politics.
Indeed, at first he eschewed any reference to the political significance
of the Ch'ing tonsure and focused his attack on sorcery, pure and
simple. This resolution is entirely in keeping with the official
approach to tonsure questions in the eighteenth century: the tonsure
issue lay far in the past, and no purpose was served by reviving it.
On the contrary, the panic factor forbade even mentioning it as such
in imperial communications. For the time being, the implied threat
to Manchu legitimacy was too sensitive it matter to be whispered,
even in confidential court letters.26

Hungli's fear of the panic factor was evident in the Ma Ch'ao-chu
affair of 1752, when reports of tonsure violation were considered
unmentionable. But even in the prosecution of sorcery, extreme care
was needed. Take, for example, a sorcery case that occurred six years
before the soulstealing crisis. In Han-shan County, Anhwei, about
forty miles southwest of Nanking, a mendicant monk named Taosheng had been "stealing the souls of living persons by means of
spells and charms."27 Tao-sheng had reportedly attracted some followers, some of whom had been caught. Hungli found the measures
taken by the local authorities to be clumsy and inflammatory. Of
course the people must be protected from sorcery that employs
"magic poison and curses" (ku-tu yen-mei). Nevertheless, the governor's heavy-handed dragnet was sure to attract public attention. "Ig norant persons who do not know the causes of things" may develop
fears, leading to popular disturbances. Public panic was to be avoided
by rigorous but discreet investigation.` 8 But the phrases ku-tu and
yen-mei are taken directly from the Ch'ing penal code and are a wholly
conventional overt response to reports of sorcery. Why not scour the
countryside for the rascals and then prosecute them openly? The
reason was the potential for panic, and here prudence overrode
justice. The danger posed by sorcery had both a supernatural dimension (an obligation by the state to protect the common people from
criminal magic) and a political dimension (the explosive nature of
public hysteria over sorcery), one leading to action and the other to
caution. Six years later in Shantung, the linkage of sorcery and queueclipping required caution all the more. Indeed, here was potential
for panic that touched the Ch'ing power structure directly: all the
more reason for keeping quiet about the tonsure aspect, even in
secret communications with his own officials. Consequently, it was
not mentioned in imperial edicts for the first six weeks of the campaign. Even the hunt for sorcerers was to be undertaken with extreme
discretion.

It was as if' monarch and commoner were grasping two handles of
an explosive device. For the Throne, the potential for public unrest
(whether over the tonsure or the sorcery threat) touched the security
of the regime. The Throne could appease public fears by prosecuting
sorcerers, but the ultimate effect on the public temper was unpredictable. For the people, however, the sorcery threat was immediate
and personal: malevolent forces were threatening to sever the link
between body and soul. The queue-clippers would give them no rest.
Reports of queue outrages continued to cross official desks as sorcery
spread relentlessly from its Chekiang center. In far southern Fukien,
for example, one victim told his county magistrate that he had been
studying in the county academy and as evening approached had
fallen asleep on his bench. When shaken awake by an attendant, he
found that his severed queue-end was resting nearby in an incense
burner. Another victim had been walking out the city gate to buy
firewood when he heard voices behind him. He turned but saw
nobody. Suddenly something seemed to strike his back, and he felt
"dizzy"-the end of his queue had been clipped. Yet a third had been
chatting with villagers at it temple doorway when he felt a "strange
wind" and fell senseless to the ground. When he regained consciousness, he discovered that half his queue was missing.29

On their way to join the rebellion of Wu San-kuei (1674-1681), two
sorcerers (shu-shih) stopped to pass the night at a county town. One
lay down to sleep against the western wall. The other said, "Don't
sleep under that wall. It is going to collapse at g P.M." The other said,
"Your arts are not sufficiently profound. The wall is not going to
collapse toward the inside, but toward the outside." When the hour
arrived, the wall collapsed toward the outside, just as predicted.'

In the early eighteenth century, there was a retired official in Ch'ang-
shu, a connoisseur of magic tricks, who was visited by all the famous
sorcerers of the day. Once there came a monk who could cause images
to appear in his begging bowl; there could. be seen the great ocean,
with fish and dragons leaping. The monk invited the official to travel
with him in the mountains. They stopped for refreshment at a
temple, whereupon the monk suddenly disappeared. When the official inquired of the temple monks, they answered, "Oh, he said you
were going to shave your head and remain here, never to return
home." When the distressed official pleaded with them, they offered
to release him if he would donate ioo,ooo ounces of silver for the
repair of the great hall. The official had to give them a chit for the
whole amount. His companion suddenly reappeared, thanked him
ceremoniously, and showed him the magic begging bowl. There the
official saw his whole household assembled before his own front gate.
Suddenly he found himself actually standing before the gate, with no trace of the monk. When he went inside for his money sack, it
was missing ioo,ooo taels. In their place was his chit. Some people
said this was done by White Lotus magic.'

An eighteenth-century resident of Ch'ang-chih named Ch'en had a
beautiful and talented daughter. Once a wandering Taoist beggar
caught a glimpse of her and stationed himself with his begging bowl
near the Ch'en gate. When the Taoist saw a blind man exiting, he
asked his business. The blind man answered that he had been called
in to tell the family's fortunes. The Taoist alleged that he himself
had been asked to serve as an intermediary for the girl's marriage
and that he needed to know her birth-signs (the year, month, day,
and hour of birth). When he had the information, he departed. Some
days later, the girl felt her legs grow numb and fell into a trance.
Drawn mysteriously out of her house, she found herself on a deserted
road with only the Taoist leading her on. He brought her into a
house that seemed like her own, then drew a knife and stabbed her
to the heart. She felt her soul floating out of her body and could see
the Taoist daubing drops of her heart's blood upon a wooden doll
while muttering incantations. She felt that she was one with the
wooden doll. "Henceforth," commanded the Taoist, "you must do
my bidding. Fail not!"3

From the curious to the hideous, these are samplings of the thousands
of sorcery stories in Chinese fiction and folklore. What I call "sorcery"
in such accounts is the enhancement of personal power by manipulating the spirit world, which is the general definition I shall use.
"Sorcerers," in this sense, were persons who were portrayed as having
several kinds of enhanced power: cognitive (the power to see through
time and space, but mainly to foretell the future); telekinetic (the power
to move matter through space); and biodynamic (the power to manipulate life-force by extracting it from living beings or instilling it into
inanimate matter). These powers were commonly described as "arts"
(shu), which suggests that we should call them "sorcery" rather than
"witchcraft," following Evans-Pritchard's distinction between powers
that can be learned by anyone (sorcery) and powers innate to the practitioner (witchcraft)." There is no single Chinese term that
embraces all the meanings of sorcery, largely because "sorcery" is not
a unified Chinese concept.5 Establishment foes of unauthorized communications with the spirit world used the general terms hsieh-shu or
yao-shu (evil arts) and tso-tao i-tuan (deviant ways and perverse principles). Both terms appear in the language of the criminal codes.
Also used were yao jen (wizard or sorcerer) and yao-shu (books of
sorcery). Common folk might use less opprobrious terms, depending
on exactly what was thought to be going on. A sorcerer might be shushih (lit., an educated man who possesses magical arts). A spiritmedium might be called wit, a very ancient term for communicators
with the world of shadow. There exists no comprehensive study of
Chinese sorcery in any language.' I shall explore that vast subject
here only from certain angles that relate to the events of 1768. These
involve ideas about the human soul, about the magical animation of
inanimate objects, and about how one could protect oneself against
sorcery. What beliefs could give rise to a vision of soulstealers fearsome enough to drive ordinary subjects to homicide and an emperor
to a disruptive national campaign?

Body and Soul

The Separability of Soul f roni Body

The notion that human agency can divide a person's soul from his
body rests on a complex belief about the composition of the soul
itself. The Chinese believed in a soul with multiple aspects.' A very
old tradition held that in the living person dwelt the hun, or spiritual
soul, and the p'o, or bodily soul. This dualism existed as early as the
second century B.C., by which time it was already linked to the cosmological dualism of yin and yang, which, by joining, brought the
world (including the human person) into existence. Like yin and yang,
the two parts of the soul exist harmoniously in the body during life
and separate at death. The hun-soul corresponds to the yang (associated with maleness, light, and activity) and the p'o-soul to the yin
(femaleness, heaviness, and passivity). The hun-soul governs the
higher faculties (mind, heart); the p'o-soul governs the physical senses
and bodily functions.' For our purposes, the point to notice is that
the light, volatile hun-soul may be separated from the living person
with alarming ease. It normally separates during sleep. It normally returns, of course, but its absence, if prolonged, produces various
kinds of pathology and abnormality, including disease, trance states,
madness, or death. The Dutch sinologue J. J. M. de Groot found, in
his southeast Chinese community (Amoy), that "fright, anxiety, and
sleeplessness may be associated with prolonged absence of the soul
from the body."" Soul-loss seems to have been especially important
in the etiology of children's ailments. Nineteenth-century sources
such as de Groot are echoed by modern fieldwork in this respect. In
contemporary Taiwan, loss of soul is blamed for listlessness, fretfulness, or sickliness in children. The soul may have been driven out as
the result of "fright," in which case the child may be cured by taking
him back to the place where he was frightened and calling hack the
soul. 10

The idea of "recalling" a soul that has been separated from its
body is a very ancient one. It is associated with death ritual as well
as with healing.'' It seems to have played a part in shamanistic death
rituals in south-central China by the early third century B.c. By Han
times it is part of a ritual called fu (recall), of which pictures have
been recovered from a second-century B.C. tomb (Ma-wang-tui):
immediately after someone has died, it member of the family, acting
as a "summoner," climbs to the eastern eave of the roof and, facing
north, waves a set of the deceased's clothes, calling "0! Thou [name
of deceased], come back!" Because it was assumed that the soul was
temporarily separated from the body during sleep or unconsciousness,
it might be coaxed back by such things as familiar clothing. The ritual
has been taken to mean "to summon the hun-soul of the dead back
to reunite with its p'o-soul" on the assumption that the hun is the airy
component of' the spirit, quick to dissipate and relatively easy to
separate from the body, whereas the p'o departs rather slowly on its
journey back to earth. 't'his explains why the him
soul is the part that
has to be recalled.'2 (It is the hun-soul that is the target of eighteenthcentury soulstealing-chiao-hun.)