Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Read Free

by Yungde, the succeeding Chekiang governor." But fear of sorcery was not so easily
exorcised from the public mind.
    The Hsiao-shan Affair
    On the evening of April 8, 1768, four men, marked as Buddhist
monks by their dark robes and shaved heads, met at a rural teahouse in Hsiao-shan County, Chekiang, just across the river from
Hangchow. All were based in Hangchow temples and were wandering
the nearby villages to beg alms. Sketches of these men may be drawn
from their own later testimony.12

    Scene at the entrance of a county yamen in the lower Yangtze region. The
convicts in cages are being left to die of starvation. At lower right are two
convicts wearing the cangue.

    Chu-ch'eng (this was his dharma-name, assumed when he was
tonsured as a monk), aged forty-eight, lay surname Hung, was a
native of Hsiao-shan County. When he was forty-one, after his parents and wife had all died, he entered a temple in Hangchow called
Ch'ung-shan-miao, where he assumed the tonsure.13 There he shared
a teacher (master, shih-fu) with the younger monk Cheng-i, and the
two addressed each other, in the conventional clerical "family" way,
as elder and younger brothers. Chu-ch'eng had not, however,
reached the next stage of monastic life, that of ordination. Because
his temple had no means of supporting him, he went begging in his
native county, where we now find him.
    Cheng-i, twenty-two, a native of Jen-ho in Hangchow Prefecture,
lay surname Wang, was Chu-ch'eng's "younger brother." Because he
was a sickly child, his mother had him tonsured at the age of nineteen
at the God-of-War Temple outside the city gate. He later studied
alongside Chu-ch'eng at Hangchow, but like him did not receive
ordination. He joined his "elder brother" to go begging across the
river in Hsiao-shan.
    Ching-hsin, aged sixty-two, was from the Grand Canal city of Wu-
hsi in Kiangsu Province; his lay surname was Kung. At the age of
fifty, after his parents, his wife, and his children had all died, he
journeyed to Hangchow to take the tonsure at a small Buddhist
retreat, where he then resided. Later he was ordained at the monastery called Chao-ch'ing-ssu. In the course of his travels to study at
various monasteries, he met the monk called Ch'ao-fan, whom he
later invited to join him as his junior acolyte.
    Ch'ao-fan, forty-three, from poor and mountainous T'ai-p'ing
County in Anhwei, lay surname Huang, was Ching-hsin's acolyte. He
had been tonsured at eighteen at a local temple. Later he received
ordination at the Tzu-kuang-ssu monastery, whose location is
unknown but was probably in Hangchow. He went to live with Chinghsin in 1756.
    The great cultural and religious center of Hangchow had attracted
all four: two had forsaken lay life because family deaths had left them
alone at what in eighteenth-century China was considered old age.
Two had been tonsured in youth: one because of sickness (an eco nomic liability to his family), and the other for reasons unknown.
Two bore the government-mandated identity papers (ordination certificates) and two did not. Now all four were pursuing the most
common outside occupation of monks: begging. Apart from the spiritual benefits of begging (a demonstration that they had renounced
worldly concerns), their monastic homes lacked the means to support
them. We do not know exactly the extent of the catchment basin of
Hangchow mendicants, but Hsiao-shah was right across the river
from the city, and at the teahouse the four decided to set forth
together there the next day. Chu-ch'eng and the elderly Ching-hsin
would spend the day begging in the villages, while the juniors would
carry everyone's traveling boxes to the old God-of-War Temple near
the west gate of Hsiao-shan City.

    A wandering Buddhist monk, in an eighteenth-century
Japanese impression gleaned from Chinese merchants at
Nagasaki. The stubble of hair betrays a degree of
indiscipline that would not have been tolerated at
an established