Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (18 page)

The use of charms and amulets to "ward off evil" (pi-hsieh) was
universal. Much of this protective activity was directed at vengeful
ghosts (kuei), which proceeded from the yang aspect of the soul: spirits
of the dead that had not been ritually cared for. In the same manner,
there were remedies against magical evil inflicted by sorcery. Because
the masons of Te-ch'ing were objects of a common popular suspicion
of builders, let me illustrate charm remedies by referring to builders'
hexes. According to the missionary folklorist N. B. Dennys, writing
from Canton: "There is a well-known legend amongst the Cantonese
of a builder having a grudge against a woman whose kitchen he was
called upon to repair . . . The repairs were duly completed, but
somehow or other the woman could never visit the kitchen without
feeling ill. Convinced that witchcraft was at the bottom of it, she had
the wall pulled down, and sure enough there was discovered in a
hollow left for the purpose `a clay figure in a posture of sickness.' "15

Why did people associate builders with sorcery? The Chinese
believe that the ritual condition of buildings influences the worldly
fortunes of their inhabitants. It is only natural, then, that builders
had special responsibilities for practicing "good" magic when putting
up structures. The timing, layout, and ritual order of construction
were deemed essential to keeping evil influences out of the completed
building. Of course, anyone capable of "good" magic is also capable
of "bad." A carpentry manual popular in Ch'ing times, the Lu-panching, accordingly contains not only rules for proper ritual construction but also baleful charms for builders to hide atop rafters or under
floors. Quite evenhandedly, it also includes charms to be used against
such evil builders."' Here are some examples of carpenters' baleful
magic:

A drawing of a broken tile inscribed with "Ice melts" [the rest of
the expression is "tiles scatter"-implying collapse or dissolution].
Appended is a charm: "A piece of broken tile, a jagged edge, hidden
in joint of roof-beam, husband die and wife remarry, sons move away, servants flee, none will care for the estate." (To be hidden in a joint of
the main roof-beam.)

A drawing of an ox-bone. The charm: "In center of room hide ox-bone,
life-long toil, life's end death but no coffin, sons and grandsons will
shoulder heavy burdens." (Bury under center of' room.)

A drawing of a knife among coils of hair. The charm: "A sword worn
in the hair. Sons and grandsons will leave and become monks. Having
sons who found no families, perpetual misery. Widow and widower,
orphaned and childless, do not forgive each other." (Bury under
threshold.)

But the reader is also offered powerful magic for defending the
household against builder-sorcerers:

When building a house, various kinds of carpenters, masons, and plasterers will plot to poison, curse, and harm the owner. On the day when
the roof-beam is raised, offer a sacrifice of the three types of animal,
laid out on a horizontal trestle, to all the gods. 't'hen recite the following
secret charm of Master Lu fan [patron saint of carpenters]: "Evil
artisans, do you not know that poisons and curses will rebound upon
yourselves, and bring no harm to the owner "Then recite seven times:
"Let the artisan [responsible for the sorcery] meet misfortune." [Then
say,] "I have received the proclamation of the Supreme Ruler [the jade
Emperor] ordering that I shall suffer no harm from others, and that
all will redound to my good fortune: an urgent decree." Burn copy of
charm in private place, especially where no pregnant woman can see
you. Mix ashes with blood of black and yellow dog, then dissolve in
wine. On day main roof-beam is raised, serve to builders (three cups to
boss). He who is plotting sorcery will himself receive the harm. (Copy
in vermilion ink and paste atop roofbeam.)

Such visions of offensive and defensive magic display the anxieties
that affected most common people all the time: premature death,
ritually faulty burial, loss of children, lack of proper ritual care after
death. Although these anxieties center on building-sorcery, they
really reflect a view of the world in which human fortunes are generally vulnerable to supernatural vandalism. In the unending confrontation between gods (shen) and ghosts (kuei), human life needs
the protection of whatever arts (fa or shu) can be mobilized, either
from ritual specialists or from laymen's lore."

Suspicions of the Clergy

In the campaign against soulstealing, Buddhist monks and the occasional "Taoist priest were the prime suspects from the very beginning. Why was Hungli so quick to believe in these monkish master-sorcerers
and to turn the energies of the state against them? And why was the
common man so quick to pounce on the nearest monk whenever
fears of sorcery crossed his mind?

Official Treatment of the Clergy

The commoner's daily battle against evil spirits was mirrored, at the
very top of society, by the concerns of the imperial state. Even as it
prohibited sorcery, the state was itself constantly dealing with the
spirit world. On every level of officialdom, from the imperial palace
to the dustiest county yamen, agents of the state were intermediaries
between man and spirits. Their role marks them, in a sense, as priests:
communicating with the gods on behalf of mankind to ensure the
proper ordering of worldly events, primarily good conditions for
agriculture and peace for the realm. At the top, the emperor himself
presided over solemn annual sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. At the
bottom, the county magistrate (a little emperor in his own realm)
regarded the City God (ch'eng-huang, a magistrate of the spirit world),
as an essential coadjutor in governing.

Although the common man was barred from celebrating the imperial and bureaucratic cults, he did share some of their theology.
Formal worship of Heaven was a monopoly of the monarch, but the
common people were already inclined to believe in Heaven's power
in human affairs. Because everyone's fate was governed by heavenly
forces (the succession of the "five actions," wu-Iasing, and the interplay
of the cosmological powers of yin and yang), people easily accepted
the connection of imperial Heaven-worship with human felicity. And
because the fate of the individual soul after death was thought to
depend on a judgment of merit by the City God, commoners considered that worship of that deity by local officials was performed on
behalf of the community as a whole."' If the state were to sustain
these popular beliefs in its own spiritual role, it had to watch carefully
for potential competitors.

The state's inclusive claim to be the rightful manager of man's
relations with spirits led to elaborate procedures for regulating the
organized Buddhist and Taoist clergy. There was, of course, something a bit absurd about the state's rules regarding the clergy. The
majority of ritual specialists were not "enrolled," in any formal sense,
under organizations that could be held to account for their activities. The priests of the popular religion, who headed an eclectic, deeply
rooted system of community practices, were not even full-time clerics,
in the sense that we might expect from a Western context. For the
state to forbid ambiguous status, insist on clear-cut demonstration of
master-disciple relationships, and require registration of all religious
practioners were ludicrous presumptions in view of the actual practice of Chinese religion. Marginality (as the state would define it) was
built into the social status of most ritual specialists. To fasten upon
them regulations such as those I shall summarize here would have
erased popular religion itself, which of course the state (in those days)
would have found an impossible task. This simple fact gives discussions of "state control of religion" an unreal and fantastic aspect.3°

Nevertheless, the attempt was made. We have to regard it as an
indication of state attitudes, rather than as a "system" that actually
functioned in anything like the way it was intended to. According to
the rules, all temples and monasteries, along with their clergy, had
to be registered and licensed. It was illegal to build a temple without
formal approval of' the Board of Rites. In the same spirit, the state
had for centuries required Buddhist monks and Taoist priests to
obtain certificates of ordination (tu-tieh).41) Why was the late imperial
state so concerned to register and control ritual specialists? When the
ninth-century T'ang empire confiscated vast monastic properties and
returned tens of thousands of monks to lay life, the reason was partly
economic: a man's withdrawal to a monastery removed him from the
liabilities of taxes and labor service and so deprived the state of
revenue. Yet this purpose was irrelevant in the late empires, when
labor-service obligations had been commuted to money payments and
assessed along with the land tax, in effect replacing corvee by paid
labor. A review of the Ch'ing efforts to control the clergy suggests
other purposes.

Although licensing and registration of monks and priests had been
practiced by the preceding Ming Dynasty, it was not until 1674 that
the Manchu throne issued its first general instructions on state governance of the clergy. In Peking, offices were established for the
supervision of Buddhists and Taoists, each to be staffed by sixteen
monks or priests, members apparently to be initially selected by the
Board of Rites, but to be replaced by co-optation from among the
capital clergy. The members of these supervisory bodies were to be
reported to the Board of Civil Office (h-pu).`" A parallel system was
decreed for the provinces: offices staffed by selected monks and priests were established in prefectures, departments, and counties.42
They reported up the regular chain of bureaucratic command.

The supervisory offices were to regulate the deportment of monks,
priests, and nuns, to ensure that they honored their vows by proper
discipline. Beyond this, however, was the all-important licensing.
Here the point was not so much to maintain the purity of the clergy
themselves as to insure against unreliable laymen representing themselves as clerics. The Throne feared that "riffraff and ruffians" would
falsely assume clerical habit and claim to be invoking the spirits of
(religious) patriarchs (tsu-ship) through divination. Such powers to
communicate with spirits and foretell the future would generate
"heterodox doctrines" and "wild talk" that could attract ignorant
people to become their followers and form illegal sects. By heterodox
doctrines and wild talk, the Throne meant not only pretensions to
magical powers by sect leaders but also prognostications about the
fate of the existing political order. Imperial decrees on this subject
show special sensitivity to religious activities in Peking, the seat of
dynastic power. Temples and monasteries in the capital were forbidden to "establish sects and hold assemblies where men and women
mix together" (a hallmark of popular religion-and further evidence,
to the imperial mind, of moral degeneracy). Nor were they allowed
to "erect platforms to perform operas and collect money, sacrifice to
the gods, or carry them in procession." "

Emperor Hungli himself was particularly irritated by ambiguity of
status, which led him to try to extend the regulations on the organized
clergy (those in major monasteries or temples) to the vast majority of
ritual specialists in lay communities. His first major pronouncement
on the clergy concerned persons who might be called secular clergyactually the majority of ritual specialists: those who lived permanently
outside monasteries and temples, owned property, and even married.
Such men played it vital role in communities by serving in funerals
and exorcisms, and otherwise filling people's needs for ritual services.
They were subject neither to monastic discipline nor to state control.
After denouncing the decayed state of clerical morals and learning,
Hungli ordered that these secular practitioners be forced either to
live in monasteries or temples, or else return to lay life. Their property, save for a bare subsistence allowance, was to be confiscated and
given to the poor. When it appeared that the decree was causing
panic among clergy in general and provoking disorder in the provinces, Hungli protested that he had never meant to harm those who hewed to clerical discipline. The problem, rather, was public order.
These secular personnel "steal the name of clergy but lack their
discipline. They even engage in depraved and illicit activities. They
are hard to investigate and control." The reason he was requiring
that they obtain ordination certificates "was so that riffraff would not
be able to hide in their midst and disgrace Buddhism and Taoism."
The newly enthroned monarch was evidently surprised by the reaction to his harsh measures. He now recoiled from the confiscation
order: "Finally, how can Our Dynasty's relief of the poor depend on
the seizure of such petty properties?" The decree was rescinded. But,
burdening the monarch's mind, there remained the irksome existence of a mass of ritual specialists who were not under any kind of
state supervision.44