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17 Austl. J. Asian L. 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/ajal17 and id is 1 raw text is: Australian Journal of Asian Law, 2016, Vol 17 No 1, Article 1: 1-21

Sorcery Crimes, Laws, and Judicial Practice in
Traditional China*
Xiaohuan Zhao1
Wugu is a general term for all sorts of black magic in China, just as 'sorcery' or 'witchcraft' is understood in a
Western context. Wugu sorcery is a living tradition that has been practised for more than 3,000 years and has
been strictly prohibited and severely punished since ancient times. This study will examine rules and
punishments laid out against sorcery crimes in traditional China from the pre-Qin (221-206 BC) period through
to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), followed by a case study of relevant judicial practice. I argue that sorcery was
treated primarily as a heretical or political crime in early and early medieval China, before politically
motivated sorcery crimes were distinguished from non-politically motivated ones. The distinction made between
them ld to a sharp drop in political sorcery charges mId trials in China's hter dynuasties blut did not do much to
prevent miscarriage of justice from occurring from time to time. mainly due to widle judicial discretion, lack of
specific legal p>enalties, ald the ab sence of effective means ofUgatahering andl verifying evidence.
Iugu is a living Iralition that has been pralisedl in China fIor more tmhan 3.000 years. as seen fIm
the inscriptions on oracle bones from the Shang dynasty (circa 1600 to circa 1016 B4') (Cho. 2011:
258-(0; I)eng 1198). The woNd wu is a general term to reler to (people who pralcise) magical arts.
while or black. Gu refe rs to a particular type of black magic that involves breeding and( using
poisonous insects or evil spiris t hrough wu sorcery and( ritual. or which involves the maleficeni use
of human images in combination with the casting of spells and curses. This is a kinI of black magic
commonly referred to in posI-Tang (618-107) text s as yanmei. lhe subduing or summoning of ghosts
and1 spirits. \\When wu1 is combined with gu into wugu. the resulting compounl wordNI will become an
umbrella term for various types of black magic. Thus. Ihe word ugu will be trleled in this study
as an equivalent to 'maleficium. 'sorcery' or 'black magic as und(ersIood in Western contexts unless
ot herwise noted.
There has never been a shortage of scholarly interest in Chinese sorcery. \ good example is The
Religious System of (China by the eminent I)utch Sinologist Johann Jacob lMIria de (Grot (1851-
192 1). In this multi-volume work. de (1ro   (19)(4: 320-125) offers an encyclopaedic survey of
various fiorms and( types of sorcery and( magic in tralitional China. Ie (1)(;: 826-69)) has a chapter
dIelicatedI I gu sorcery unler the title of 'Sorcery by means of small reptiles and insects' but the
great bulk of this chapter is filled by a wugu incidlent that happened during the reign of Imperor
This study was graciously supported by a University of Otago Research Grant (UORG) 2011. My
gratitude goes first to Dr Jiefen Li for her expert assistance, without which I would never have been able
to complete this project. At the XIX Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies
(EACS), Paris, 4-8 September 2012, I presented a first draft of this article, which, after being revised, was
read at the Univesity of Sydney School of Languages and Cultures (SLC) Research Day, 26 June 2014. I
benefitted greatly from feedback from the audiences at these two events. I am also grateful to Professor
Geoffrey MacCormack of Aberdeen University in Scotland for reading an earlier version of this paper and
kindly offering me his insightful thoughts and comments, which have been incorporated into this much
enlarged and revised version. Similar thanks are due to the AJAL editors for their editorial advice and
also to the two anonymous referees for their thought-provoking comments. Needless to say, any errors
that remain are my alone.
1   Senior Lecturer in Chinese Literature, Department of Chinese Studies, the University of Sydney;
Overseas Professor of the One Hundred Talents Scheme of Shanxi Province, School of Theatre, Film and
Television, Shanxi Normal University.
2   It must be pointed that no single Chinese term that covers all the meanings of sorcery or witchcraft
simply because neither 'sorcery' nor 'witchcraft' is a concept native to Chinese culture, as noted by Kuhn
(1990: 95-96). In this paper I will use 'sorcery' rather than 'witchcraft' to refer to 'wugu', following the
distinction made by Evans-Pritchard (1937: 21) between magic power or skill that can be learned (sorcery)
and that innate to the practitioner (witchcraft).

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