Sociology Mind
Vol.05 No.01(2015), Article ID:53056,5 pages
10.4236/sm.2015.51005
“Soul Stealer: 1768 Chinese Sorcery Scare” in Social Crisis
Di Wang
The Law School, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China
Email: guicaitang@163.com
Copyright © 2015 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
Received 17 October 2014; revised 3 December 2014; accepted 15 December 2014
ABSTRACT
The “Soul Stealer: Chinese Sorcery Scare 1768” written by Alden Kuhn is a successful example to research more profound problem areas by use of legal history. In the aura of prosperity and good governance by the determination of the Qianlong Emperor, a “Soul incident” occurred and broke this harmony. All the people, from the emperor to the common plebs, were confused for a witchcraft events, with a kind of panic filled in the whole country. Emperors, officials and the plebs driven by different interests and motivations, took full advantages of the event to achieve their purpose of class. Behind the ordinary case of “soul stealer”, a huge social crisis is hidden.
Keywords:
Soul Stealer, Sorcery, Social Crisis, Legal History
1. Introduction
In 1768, a hex panic known as “soul stealer” suddenly occurred in Deqing County of Zhejiang
Kuhn’s
“Soul Stealer: Chinese Sorcery Scare 1768” is to pass very rich information to the reader, so the “soul stealer” contains a wealth of historical knowledge. By means of a unique perspective, readers can learn about all aspects of China’s economic background, social status, political system, legal system and people’s mental awareness in the 18th century. Kuhn explained the various problems for the reader about vividly-portrayed people, bureaucrats, monarch behind “Soul stealer” event. Both real and illusory witchcraft exhibited attitudes and behaviors of the monarch and bureaucrats, the multiple relationships between local and central, locals and outlanders, politics and trickery, in deep discussions, which can be described as small incident for “a big issue”. We can grasp the social reality of flourishing under perilous Soul event, and this phenomenon will also closely link to some characteristics of
2. “Soul Stealer” Interpretation and Cases Recorded in the Book
“Soul Stealer” is also called “spiritualism”, both of which mean “calling for the soul”. Both the parents of beloved children and the evil warlocks are calling for souls, of which one is to bring back the soul to the body, the other is to take the soul out of the body. “Soul Stealer” is the masterstroke of “Soul Stealer: Chinese Sorcery Scare1768”. In the 33rd year of Qianlong reign, the large area of witchcraft panic in
Generally speaking, all the cases involved with “Soul Stealer” events contain three elements: the so-called “criminals” are basically the local refugees who have no one to depend on and no home to return to, including wandering monks, priests, beggars, etc.; for the action of “criminals”, they mostly use hallucinogen to make others faint, and then cut their hair braids and thus control the human soul; for the results of “criminals”, almost all of them were escorted by ordinary demos to the local authorities for treatment. This structural similarity, expresses the author’s overall grasp of this event, and also shows some of the structural elements have deep cultural significance. With the expatiation of the text, we find that “braids, refugees” and “ordinary demos” have played an important role. The display of a series of similar cases seems to be able to indicate the actual existence of “Soul Stealer” phenomenon, but the final results are surprising: scholar Fu Hen et al demonstrated that many cases are seemingly real but no one can be ascertained. Ancient “confessions doctrine” means “not guilty, without confession”. In the event of “Soul stealer” incident, local officials are cautious initially, because they are doubtful of the cases, and the provisions on “Unjust Verdict” in the “Qing Laws” undoubtedly has deterrent effect.
Although the local officials in Qing Dynasty are elected by examinations, but they are lack of political practice and experience, especially in the law. Therefore, they can not “factually” talk about the fact for this legal case, instead of possible following the instruction of imperial authorities, while the emperor had recognized the “Soul stealer” had profound political implications. And only a few of them are prestigious jurists or able officials, and I suspect most of the rest have no enough unwavering judiciary sense to contend with the political pressure accompanying to their positions, so pleasing the emperor is the center to implement judiciary, 2006). Thus, in order to maintain and even enhance the emperor’s recognition of them, local officials have to abuse torture to extract confessions (Foucault, 2007) . In the past, rough or empty words were used in academic circle to criticize the evils of torture, and the analysis here applies its effectiveness to affect the panic in several provinces of the Qing Empire and more sharply exposes the potential threat of torture, as said by Foucault: “In fact, power can produce the reality, the production target”. In the book, the relation between power and rule is discussed under bureaucratic monarchy system, and autocratic monarch pursues the expansion of power. On the one hand, the statute laws were used to constrain the bureaucrats in their service, on the other hand, it made the boundary for the division of responsibility of the bureaucrats, to confront the autocratic requirements of monarch. This analysis from the perspective of system, make us have a new understanding of the relations between the law and power in the traditional cultural backgrounds. The new perspective offered by Kuhn for the study of law history is: the nomology for the study of law history, is to base on the nomological issues to explain these issues from the system level through the interpretation of history.
3. The Fear Level of the Soul Stealer Case
The fear about the relationship between hair and the soul stealer was always there. We can see the origin of the soul stealer case where produced real case due to cut hair soul stealer and fear. The local official dealt with it as a civil case. People were furious, but there is no great agitation. But when Hong Li knew that there happened several cases about the soul stealer news in Jiangnan region, he then ordered provincial governments to suppress them, which it increased fears undoubtedly. Through understanding cases in
4. Social Background of “Soul Stealer” Case
After good governance of two dynasties under the reign of Emperor Kangxi and Emperor Yong Zheng, in 1768, the 33rd year under the reign of Qianlong, it was the peak of his reign. “In the 18th-century China, the economy was prosperous; the government was in good governance; people were harmonious and peaceful; in this period China was known as prosperous, aggressive and self-confident Chinese empire, different with the collapsed and out-of-order Chinese Empire in the 19th-century”. Due to the development of production and gradual increase of state revenues since from the 28th year under the reign of
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the emperor established and promulgated orders that were opposed by the majority of Han people. The relations became exacerbating. In the early Qing Dynasty, the ethnic conflicts triggered in Jiangyin and Jiangnan,
In the “Soul Stealer” case, the social hierarchy of three representatives or the social forces is people, bureaucrats and emperor. From their different social roles and experiences, for different interests, driven by motives, they had interpreted the “Soul Stealer” event in their own methods. Monarchy and bureaucracy were to shape this event around the event and re-defined the event in order to obtain inner interests for their system through grasping the influence trend of the event. Ultimately, the reason why the panic on the “Soul Stealer” case evolved into a nationwide hex-eliminating political movement, mainly caused by the crisis of confidence among all levels of society. First, people had a crisis of confidence. With other place’s accent and unfamiliar faces, people feared their braid being cut, clothes being torn and feared themselves or their families being controlled by others, resulting that the unrest feeling of people developed from fear and distrust into hysteric and crazy persecution. Second: Bureaucrats had a crisis of confidence. For bureaucrats who need to protect their own vested interests from beginning to the end, they sandwiched between the supreme monarch and the foolish man and woman of lower social level and had to deal with this seemingly ordinary case. They felt themselves overwhelmed and battered. When the final collapse of the foundation of this case happened, the wise sovereign, in order not to be harmed from collapse debris, eventually found some officials as his scapegoat to end the persecution due to the “Soul Stealer” case. In Ancient China, the Chinese judicial system is not separated by the administrative system. The local officials were called their magistrate. They boasted the sky, and treated the people as ignorant man, so that people with high social level accepted people’s worship. When the “Soul Stealer” case happened, the officials in every place would implement a routine torture on suspects in the trails. Third, the emperor had a crisis of confidence. The appearance of the “Soul Stealer” case met the wish of the Accuser Qianlong Emperor of this case. He needed a specific event as a breakthrough to resolve the long-troubled problems, namely the existence of various long-standing defects in Qing Dynasty. The most prominent problems are bureaucratic conspiracy, Chinesization threat and the governance and control of the country under bureaucracy. In addition to the bloody fight on haircut, Emperor Qianlong remained fresh in his mind. The rich in Jiangnan region and Han elites nurtured by the affluent soil of the historic Han culture were so familiar and frightening to the emperor. What was more frightening to the emperor was that he found his good intentions were being perfunctorily by his officials. Confidential report, seeing Majesty, evaluation, supervision and guidance and a series of system with perfect design were easy to make officials deal with, but the emperor lacked reliable channel to get real information. However, the information in memorials was not trusted (Shuzo, 1998) .
5. Conclusion
Kuhn’s “Soul Stealer: 1768 Chinese Sorcery Scare” is a successful example by using the legal historic resources to break into a deeper problem field. We can say the occurrence of “Soul Stealer” case and expansion were just an imagined crisis in mind caused by the comprehensive reaction of various elements. Kuhn’s work has shown externality explanation of the legal history. The law is part of social life. The value of legal history is also not limited to the interpretation of the scriptures evolution and other issues. It can sometimes be just a look at the broader perspective of the problem space. Only in this way can the legal history become the cultural network’s law of history. It can truly indicate the position of law in traditional society and its self-realization possibility. History is always the surprising similar. Through existing historical archives, Professor Kuhn reproduced the political event “Soul Stealer” case dating back two hundred years ago. We can not but recall the crazy years― the Cultural Revolution. The difference is that the main reason is the fear of emperor, but in those crazy years, the main reason for the event is the cult of personality except for the right phobia. The rising of a political movement gave people the illusion of power. The falsely accuser of the “Soul Stealer” case is so similar with the revolutionary persons in the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, every kind of power needs to be monitored or restricted; otherwise, it will surely go mad, and this madness will be the disaster to the people and the disaster to the history.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. I gratefully acknowledge the help of my supervisor, who has offered me valuable suggestions in the academic studies. In the preparation of the thesis, he has spent much time reading each draft and provided me with inspiring advice. Without his patient instruction, insightful criticism and expert guidance, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible.
I also owe a special debt of gratitude to all the professors in foreign languages institute, from whose devoted teaching and enlightening lectures I have benefited a lot and academically prepared for the thesis. I would finally like to express my gratitude to my beloved parents who have always been helping me out of difficulties.
References
- Kuhn , P. A. (1999). Soul Stealer: 1768 Chinese Sorcery Scare. Shanghai: Joint Publishing.
- Foucault, M. (2007) Discipline and Punish. Shanghai: Joint Publishing.
- Shuzo, S. (1998). The Civil Trial and Civil Contract in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Beijing: Law Press.