Literary Inquisition

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Literary Inquisition (Chinese: 文字獄 wénzìyù "imprisonment due to writings") (or Speech crime Chinese:以言入罪) refers to official persecution of intellectuals for their writings in Imperial China. Wénzìyù took place under each of the dynasties ruling China, although the Qing was particularly notorious for the practise. Such persecutions could owe even to a single phrase or word which the ruler considered offensive. Some of these owed to the naming taboo. In a serious case, not only the writer but also his immediate and extended families would be killed.

Contents 1 Pre-Ming 2 Ming 3 Qing 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading

Pre-Ming

The practise of literary persecution has been recorded since the Qin Dynasty, and has been used by each of the succeeding dynasties ruling China. It is uncertain how frequently the persecutions occurred.^[1] The poet Su Shi of the Song Dynasty was jailed for several months by the emperor owing to some of his poems. In the bandit novel Water Margin, which has its setting in the Song Dynasty, the leading character Song Jiang, originally a petty official, became the head of a bandit group after he was sentenced to death for a poem he had written while drunk.

Ming

There are records of literary persecutions during the Ming dynasty and the beginning of the period was the most severe. Before he became the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang was illiterate and had been a beggar. While he established his empire, he surrounded himself with scholars, treating them with respect while he learnt to read and familiarise himself with history. He sent out requests to scholars for their presence, and while many agreed others declined for fear of the repercussions if they made a mistake. On occasion the emperor, who was learning to read, would order the execution of someone who had written something he misunderstood.^[2]

Qing

Qing rulers are particularly notorious for their use of literary inquisitions. The Qing were an ethnic minority who had defeated the Ming dynasty; as such, they were sensitive to public feeling towards them.^[3] Writers and officials usually took the stance of drawing distinctions between the Chinese and the Manchus, who were viewed as a barbarian people. However, while the Manchus were in charge writers resorted to veiled satire.^[4] According to Ming Dong Gu, a specialist in Chinese literature and intellectual thought,^[5] the Qing became almost paranoid about the meanings associated with the Chinese characters for bright and clear, Ming and Qing respectively.^[3] One inquisition was the "Case of the History of the Ming Dynasty" (明史案) in 1661–1662 under the direction of regents (before Emperor Kangxi came in power in 1669) in which about 70 were killed and more exiled.^[6]

Under the Qing, literary inquisition began with isolated cases in Shunzhi and Kangxi times, then evolved into a pattern. There were 53 cases of literary persecution during Emperor Ch'ien-Lung's reign.^[7] Between 1772 and 1793, there was an effort by Ch'ien-Lung to purge "evil" books, poems, and plays. He set out to get rid of works by Ming loyalists whom he believed were writing subversive anti-Qing histories of the Manchu conquest. The scale of the destruction cause by this "literary holocaust" is uncertain due to gaps in the imperial archives, however as many as 3,000 works may have been lost. An estimated 151,723 volumes were destroyed by the inquisition in this period. Amongst the works subject to this treatment were books considered disrespectful towards Qing emperors or non-Chinese dynasties that could be viewed as analogous to the Qing. From 1780 onwards, plays could also be destroyed if they were vulgar or contained anti-Manchu material. Writers who criticised the Qing dynasty could expect to have their entire work erased, regardless of content.^[8] The inquisition was often used to express local ambitions and rivalries that had little to do with the ruler's own political interests. It thus generated interclass, as well as intraclass, warfare. For example, commoners could lay charges against scholars.^[9]

• 1753: The Qianlong emperor's frequent tours of Jiangnan were partly funded by local governments, and therefore indirectly by the local people. One local official by the name of Lu Lusen, using a higher ranking minister's name, Sun Jiajin, sent a memorial to Qianlong pleading with him to stop the tour for the sake of the local people. The text achieved widespread popular support. Eventually Lu Lusen was sentenced to death by slow slicing for sedition, his two sons were beheaded, and more than a thousand relatives and acquaintances were either executed, exiled, or thrown into jail according to the notion of "collective responsibility" that automatically applied in cases of sedition.^[10]

• 1755: A Provincial Education Commissioner named Hu Zhongzao (胡中藻) wrote a poem in which the character qing 清, the name of the dynasty, was preceded by zhuo 浊, which means "murky or muddy." The Qianlong emperor saw this and many other formulations as the taking of a position in the factional struggle that was taking place at the time between Han official Zhang Tingyu and Manchu official Ertai, who had been Hu's mentor. Hu was eventually beheaded.^[11]

• 1778: The son of a Jiangsu poet called Xu Shukui (徐述夔) had written a poem to celebrate his late father. Qianlong decided that the poem was derogatory towards the Manchus, and ordered that Xu Shukui's coffin be unearthed, his corpse mutilated, all his children and grandchildren beheaded.^[12]

• Cai Xian (蔡顯) wrote a poem 'Any color not true color but red color, alien flowers has become king flowers', to show that he preferred red colored peonies over purple peonies, and stating 'red peony is king peony' and 'Other color peonies are aliens'. In Chinese, 'red' and the surname of late Ming dynasty emperors shared the same character: 朱 (zhū). Qianlong then accused the poet of trying to attack the Manchus by innuendo and ordered the beheading of the poet.

See also

• Treason by the Book

Notes

References

Further reading