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Unless otherwise specified, the descriptions of sources in this section are extracted from Pierre-Etienne Will and collaborators, Handbooks and Anthologies for Officials in Imperial China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography, 2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2020
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Description
documentTypeBook
TitleZheyu xinyu 折獄新語 [Latest Anecdotes on Judicial Decisions]
Topic2.1 Judicial cases: general casebooks
Historical periodLate Ming (1585-1644)
CountryChinese
Reprint (year of)2005
AuthorLi Qing 李清
CollectionLidai panli pandu 歷代判例判牘
Volume12
Number of volume4
Publisher中國社會科學出版社
Place of publication北京
Publication typePrint
Abstract

An anthology of judicial cases (mostly  reports  introduced by the phrase  shende 審得, “it is found that”) dating from the period when the author was prefectural judge of Ningbo (1631-37).  The  234  cases presented in ten chapters deal with marriage (hunyin  婚姻), inheritance (chengxi  承襲), real estate (chanye  產業), forgeries (zhawei 詐偽), sexual crimes (yinjian  淫姦), banditry (zeiqing  賊情), taxes (qianliang  錢糧),  administrative mistakes (shiwu  失誤),  recidivists  chongfan  重犯), and injustices (yuanfan  冤犯), respectively; an appendix features three cases of “doubtful cases” (yifan  疑犯) and 21 communications (xiangyu  詳語). The publisher‟s note suggests that a draft (gao) was used. The text of the modern edition, edited (重訂) by Wang Ji 王季, apparently  reproduces the heavy  punctuation  and underlining of the original.  According to Tam (see below) this collection belongs to a genre of “heavily edited” cases rewritten as narratives aimed not only at practioners of justice but also at the larger public for its instruction and entertainment concerning crime and punishment.  In many of the cases the final decision is omitted.  In  the Chongzhen ed. (copy at Jilin daxue) the compilation and editing of the work are attributed to Wang Siren  王思任  (Z. Jizhong  季重, 1575-1646, js. 1595), an official with legal expertise and popular author who retired to his native Shaoxing in 1636, to whom  a preface is also attributed; according to Tam, “Justice in Print” [see below], 157-8, this is probably spurious. 

Comment

An anthology of judicial cases (mostly reports introduced by the phrase “it is found that” (審得), dating from the years 1631-37, when the author was prefectural judge (推官) of Ningbo 寧波 (Zhejiang). The 210 cases deal with marriage (婚姻, j. 1), inheritance (承襲, j. 2), real estate (產業, j. 3), forgeries (詐偽, j. 4), sexual crimes (淫姦, j. 5), banditry (賊情, j. 6), taxes (錢糧, j. 7), administrative mistakes (失誤, j. 8), recidivists (重犯, j. 9), and injustices (冤犯, j. 10). An appendix features three examples of “doubtful cases” (疑犯) and 20 “reports” (詳語) (the last are absent from the Beitu copy). The cases in this xiangyu section are introduced by the words kande 看得 instead of shende 審得 in the rest of the work. The text of the Guoxue zhenben wenku ed. apparently reproduces the heavy punctuation and underlining of the original (similar in both Chongzhen eds., but lost in the Lidai panli pandu modern ed.). According to Tam (see below), this collection belongs to a genre of “heavily edited” cases rewritten as narratives aimed not only at practioners of justice but also at the larger public to instruct and entertain about crime and punishment. Indeed, in his note handwritten on the Beitu copy Huang Shang says that the text recalls Ming fiction literature; he also remarks that the work is “not without its usefulness” to study the circumstances of urban society (市井人情). In many of the cases the final decision is omitted. In both Chongzhen copies the authorship (著) is attributed to Li Qing, while Wang Siren 王思任 (z. Jizhong 季重, 1575-1646, js. 1595), an official with legal expertise and a popular author who retired to his native Shaoxing in 1636, and who also signs the pref. (in the Jilin copy), is given as “reviser” (訂); according to Tam, 157-8, Wang’s role as editor and preface writer is probably spurious and a bookseller’s invention.

SubjectLaw
LanguageChinese
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