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
CHAPTER 5
The Roots of
Sorcery Fear
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 so
rcery 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.)
Voluntary and Involuntary Soul-Loss
Chinese believed that the soul could be separated from the body by both voluntary and involuntary means. Communication with the dead could involve either "soul-travel" (shamanism) or "spirit possession" (mediumism). Soul-travel, in which the shaman sent her soul to the nether regions to visit the dead, was considered a hazardous practice, to judge by stories of the occasional trouble shamans had in getting their souls back.13 Such stories reveal a nagging anxiety that the soul might not find its way back to its body, or that the body might meanwhile be thought dead and consequently destroyed (related, perhaps, to the fear of being thought dead while only asleep).14
Even more alarming, however, was the idea of involuntary soul-loss. In addition to the "fright" or other trauma'' that might jar soul from body, a soul might actually be stolen by either human or supernatural agents. "Vengeance-seeking ghosts" or demons might be held respon- sible.11i I)e Groot's Amoy informants told him of "a certain class of mischievous spectres, who are fond of drawing the vital spirits out of men." These demons are called tsou-ma t'ien-cheng (heavenly spirits riding horses), or pan-t'ien hsiu-ts'ai (literary graduates living halfway in the sky). A person who falls unconscious is taken to a priest (shihkung, Taoist exorcist) who will practice a rite called ch'iang ching-shen (snatch the spirit) to recover the soul from "the invisible being" who has stolen it." Soulstealing ghosts were known to lurk along roadsides at night, and many were the tales of "wretches who, having been accosted by such natural foes of man, were found dead on the roadside without the slightest wound or injury being visible: their souls had simply been snatched out of them." Roadside privies were particularly favored by such demons, because it was there that "man is so lonely and helpless.""' As if such invisible specters were not fearsome enough, evil men were also thought capable of soulstealing. These sorcerers might write paper charms that worked on their victims by contagious magic.1°
"Soul-calling" was employed, both as a death ritual and as a cure for childhood illness. In the case of the recently dead (whether adult or child), it expressed the survivors' unwillingness to accept the finality of death and their affection for the departed: they would cling to him and bring him back if they could. In the case of children, I have already mentioned that temporary soul-loss (perhaps caused by "fright") was blamed for various pathological symptoms. In such instances, the parents resorted to the ritual of soul-calling. The ritual was commonly called either chao-hun or chiao-hun, both meaning "to call (or summon) the hun-soul." Recall that chiao-hun is the same term as that used to describe soulstealing. Both devoted parent and malign sorcerer "called" the soul-the one to rejoin it to the body, the other to call it from the body.
Henri Dore observed late Ch'ing soul-calling rituals in Yangtze Valley communities. Here is one from Anhwei:
["I-]he method employed in recalling the soul of 'a child is as follows: the child's name is first mentioned, then the person adds "where are you amusing yourself, come back home." Or thus "where were you frightened, return home" . . . If' for instance the child's name is Ngai-hsi, little darling, the person will say: "little darling, where have you been scared, where have you been amusing yourself? Come back home." Another following behind, replies "he has returned." While they shout to burst their sides, a person within the house places the clothes of the deceased child on a broomstick, near the house or the door-way, and watches attentively whether a leaf or a blade of grass has moved in the vicinity, or whether an insect has been seen flitting by . . . any such occurrence is a sign that the soul has returned.2'
That the ritual action of the murderous soulstealer can be described in the same phraseology as that of the loving parent reveals in it a special loathsomeness. As shown in Chapter 4, the language of the Ch'ing Code indicates the peculiarly perverse character of sorcery: like the Black Mass of European demonology, it upended and mocked the most common human rituals associated with orthodox social life.
The fear of soul-loss grew from general assumptions about the biodynamic power of sorcerers: their ability to cause harm by proxy, giving life to inanimate matter by stealing the vitality of the living from a distance. Because such biodynamic sorcery played a major part in the panic of 1768, it is worth discussing briefly here. The objects by which sorcerers exerted biodynamic power could be of numerous sorts, but the commonest seem to have been paper mannikins (chih-jen) that were brought to life by incantations. The popular stories of the "strange tales" sort are full of such paper men.
A Ming dynasty story tells of a sorcerer in Kwangtung named Li who practiced "Prior-to-Heaven Magic Calculation," a kind of prognostication. He said he could
enliven "paper cutouts of men and horses, and of double-edged swords that could decapitate men." He also had a technique that could restore the dead to life. Such an accomplished magician was eventually recruited into a rebel band led by White Lotus sectarians.2'
A Hupei literatus named Wu publicly ridiculed the powers of Chang Ch'i-shen, a highly respected local sorcerer, who was thought to be able to steal men's souls. Expecting Chang's revenge, Wu armed himself with a copy of the ancient divination manual, The Classic of Changes (L-thing), and sat up that night waiting.22 An armored demon burst into the room and attacked him, but when Wu smote it with the book it promptly collapsed upon the ground. Wu saw there only a paper mannikin, which he inserted between the pages of the book. Next, two dark-faced goblins rushed in and were similarly disposed of. Shortly a tearful woman appeared at the door, claimed to be the wife of the sorcerer, and begged Wu to release her husband and sons, whose souls had entered the paper mannikins. There now remained at her home only three corpses, she wailed, which would not be revived once the cock had crowed. Wu scolded her, saying that she and her family had done enough damage and deserved their fate. However, out of pity he gave her back one mannikin. The next morning he learned that sorcerer Chang and his elder son had died, leaving only the younger son alive.23
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Page 11
