Sima Guang 司馬光 and Ennin 圓仁 on reports of imperial cannibalism: A correction

Abstract

Recent scholarship on the ritual and religious killing of human beings in medieval China is reviewed here in the light of new textual evidence. The sources recommending human sacrifice in military contexts are noted, and the role of deliberate slander of Daoists by Buddhists in cases of supposed imperial cannibalism is further explored.

Keywords:

• Sima Guang
• Ennin
• Tang Wuzong
• human sacrifice
• cannibalism
• Buddho-Daoist polemics

Notes

1. See Barrett, “Human Sacrifice and Self-sacrifice,” 239.

2. Fuller details in Yates, “Human Sacrifice and the Rituals of War,” 171–2.

3. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume V, Part 6, 25, 60.

4. Yates, “Human Sacrifice,” 172.

5. Dalton, The Taming of the Demons, 77–94.

6. Dalton, Taming of the Demons, 9; Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修.Xin Wudai shi 新五代史 74, 914, though this may simply reflect an eleventh century perspective on the matter.

7. Dalton, Taming of the Demons, 9, speaks of ‘surprisingly strict boundaries.’

8. Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian 181, 5658–9; cf. Xiong, Emperor Yang, 150–151.

9. Such is the translation of Sima’s principles of composition given by Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism,” 163.

10. The following remarks on the topic thus correct those on Timothy Barrett, “The Madness of Emperor Wuzong,” 184, which attempts to explain the background to the reported events of 845.

11. Daoxuan, Xu Gaoseng zhuan 續高僧傳 (Further Biographies of Eminent Monks) 24, 634a22; Ji gujin fodao lunheng 集古今佛道論衡 (A Collection of the Past and Present Disquisitions of the Buddhists and Daoists) 3, 381c2.

12. Namely Yancong 彥悰 (c. 610–690), Falin biezhuan 法琳別傳 (Separate Biography of Falin) 2, 205b29; Falin, Bianzheng lun 辯正論 (Discourse Distinguishing the Correct) 5, 522c20.

13. Jülch, Bodhisattva der Apologetikvol. I,14, 53, 163, 169; vol. II, 197; vol. III, 75, 225.

14. ter Haar, Telling Stories, 112–115.

15. See E. O. Reischauer, Ennin’s Diary, 385–386, and Ono, ed., Nittō guhō junrei kōki no kenkyū, vol. IV, 234.

16. ter Haar, Telling Stories, 112.

17. See Chen and Strassberg, eds., Idle Talk, especially the contributions by Sarah M. Allen and Stephen Owen.

18. See Zhang Gong, ed., Dunhuang dianji, 440–463, for a survey: the best-preserved edicts are Acts of Grace promulgated at the time of imperial successions, but these are not at issue here.

19. Ono, Kōki vol. IV, 20, and cf. Reischauer, Ennin, 333, concerning the burial of Buddhist images reported for 29^th of the sixth month of 843.

20. The case of the slaughter of the Manicheans recorded by Ennin in the middle of the fourth month of 843 falls exactly into this category: cf. Ono, Kōki, vol. III, 496 (note to 491), and Reischauer, Ennin, 327.

21. For example Ono notes (Kōki IV, n. 7, 191) with regard to an edict Ennin cites in his diary as having been issued prior to the twenty-fifth day of the fifth month of 845 (185; Reischauer, Ennin, 373) that in other surviving sources the seventh month is indicated; cf. however 226, n. 2, for the apparent repeated proclamation of the same edict more than once.

22. Thus Ono, Kōki IV, 132 on the third day of the third month of 845 (Reischauer, Ennin, 357), for a ‘possible’ edict, and IV, 47m n. 33 on the thirteenth day of the ninth month of 843 (Reischauer, Ennin, 338), for a ‘not impossible’ edict said to have precipitated the execution of over three hundred monks.

23. ter Haar, Telling Stories, 111.

24. It might be objected that tong 童 implies virginity, and that this could have diminished considerably the potential pool of candidates. But though Chang’an no doubt had its share of unruly teenagers, it was surely not Sodom and Gomorrah.