ABSTRACT
Attempts by imperial administrations to impose ‘Orthodoxy’ on religious life can be traced at least to the Tang, when the Taizong emperor decreed in 632 that Buddhist monks and nuns, as well as Daoist hermits, were under obligation to venerate their parents. During the Qing, the legal basis for government action was provided by the ‘Legal Examples for Purging Evil’ (Qingbai leichao https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203968659/61c314ee-3e79-4fa2-9412-b74e19edc2bc/content/figu528_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>) and the ‘Legal Statutes of the Qing Empire’ (Daqing huidian https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203968659/61c314ee-3e79-4fa2-9412-b74e19edc2bc/content/figu529_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>). The ‘Qing Codex’ (Daqing lüli https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203968659/61c314ee-3e79-4fa2-9412-b74e19edc2bc/content/figu530_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>), in a section devoted to the suppression of witchcraft and sorcery (https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203968659/61c314ee-3e79-4fa2-9412-b74e19edc2bc/content/figu531_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>), stipulates that ‘all wizards and sorcerers … who write talismans or curse waters, pretend to pray to sacred forces … are dedicated to perverted crafts and heresy, secretly harbour icons and statues, light incense to attract the crowds, congregate from dusk till dawn, who feign to be engaged in virtuous pursuits, who incite and confuse the populace, their leaders be strangled or imprisoned, while their followers are to receive one hundred beatings with the cane or to be exiled three thousand li’. 1
