| Biji (miscellaneous notes), produced in the Tang Dynasty, recorded many supernatural cases involving crimes prohibited by the Tanglv (Tang Code) and zhaochi (edicts), such as violating private property, personal safety and kinship, disrupting social order, and endangering political stability. Both perpetrators and victims of such crimes came from all fields and classes in society. The victims might choose to swallow insult and humiliation silently, implement self-remedy, seek mediation, or appeal for a trial by law, and access to justice was never the only way to solve the problem. Once entering into the justice process, although the officials dealing with such cases were also affected by an atmosphere of firm belief in the supernatural, many of them could nevertheless judge the case by law. They would search for evidence to verify whether the parties’ statements about the supernatural were credible. Since it was hard for objective evidence to prove the subjective attitude of behavior, they would not regard misunderstandings of the supernatural as grounds of sentence reduction. More importantly, since the boundary between the supernatural and evil was fuzzy, officials would often actively and severely punish the creators of the supernatural who might delude the masses and harm the ruling power. They believed that good would always triumph over evil, which might help them overcome fears. However, it’s frustrating that the original purpose of the creation of some supernatural phenomena and the relevant legislation and judicial system was to encourage virtue and punish evil, but the results were often counterproductive. They either led to miscarriages of justice and false accusations, provided crime methods that could be imitated, or became the means of committing crimes directly. |
京公网安备11010102006664号 京ICP备2023015853号