Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China

9. Justice, Morality, and Skepticism in Six Dynasties Ghost Stories

251 9 Justice, Morality, and Skepticism in Six Dynasties Ghost Stories Mu-Chou Poo The concept of ghost in early China is often characterized by the function that ghosts played in the moral system. Ghosts appeared for a reason : to avenge wrongs that a person suffered, to settle an injustice, and so forth. This is to say, people’s imagination with regard to ghosts centered on what ghosts could do to the living. Stories about ghosts in the pre-Qin and Han periods, moreover, usually depict ghosts in a negative light—it was better not to confront a ghost under any circumstance. There was nothing amicable about ghosts. It was not until the end of the Eastern Han that ghosts in written sources began to participate in the human world and have a certain intimate relation with the living. Ghost stories of this sort flourished during the Six Dynasties. This paper tries to explore the religious and ethical implications of the ghost stories of the Six Dynasties, in particular those represented by the zhiguai 志怪, the anomaly tales. I shall first delineate the traditional system of justice upheld by avenging ghosts, and proceed to discuss the new elements in the Six Dynasties ghost stories. I shall then discuss how ghost stories can provide a vehicle for the zhiguai writers to express their particular sense of justice, their comments on social morality, and their sense of humor and skepticism toward life. The issues of intentionality, of readership , and of the relationship between literary work, social reality, and religious beliefs will also be examined. Clarification of such issues can help us understand the general mentality of the literati class concerning life and death as well as ghosts and spirits, and provide a basis for our understanding of the treatment of ghosts in the Daoist and Buddhist religions in early medieval China. 252 Mu-Chou Poo The Traditional System of Justice Upheld By Avenging Ghosts One way to tackle the issue of ghosts is to see the idea of the ghost as a cultural phenomenon and the existence of ghosts as a cultural construct. Just like other human cultural constructions about personal emotions, group morality, and social ethics, the concept of ghost in any society often consists of a mixture of opinions, some easier to discover than others. Since ghosts usually exist throughout society as a cultural phenomenon, people of different social and cultural backgrounds understand them differently and devise different strategies to deal with them. In early China, evidence concerning people’s attitudes toward ghosts is meager but indicative . Shang oracle bone inscriptions reveal that in daily life, even with the royalty, ghosts were sources of illness and distress.1 What is still unclear is the relationship between ghost attacks and morality. The oracle bone inscriptions record specific questions about the sources of illnesses, but they do not provide further details that would lead to an understanding of the speculations of the Shang people on the moral or ethical implications of ghost attacks. This, of course, should not simplify our view of the possible connections between ghosts and morality in that period. There is more evidence regarding the Eastern Zhou period, on the basis of which we begin to have a sense of the multivocal reality of people’s attitudes toward ghosts. The more rational discussions offered by the high elites explain the origins and the nature of ghosts, usually with little or no explicit condescension. In a famous episode in the Zuo zhuan 左傳, Zichan子產, the minister of the state of Zheng 鄭, made the following comment about the origin of ghosts: When a man is born, that which is first created is called the po and, when the po has been formed, its positive part is called hun. If one is well provided, his hun and po grow strong, and possess intelligence and clarity, and could even reach the divine luminaries. When ordinary men and women die of violent death, their hun and po can still attach to the living and become aggressive demons, all the more so for Liangxiao (Boyou), who was the descendant of our former lord Mugong, the grandson of Ziliang and son of Zier, the official of our estate, and who had been in political service for three generations. . . . And since he died of violence, it is appropriate that he should become a ghost. 人生始化曰魄， 既生魄， 陽曰魂。 用物精多， 則魂魄強， 是以有精爽， 至於神 明。 匹夫匹婦強死， 其魂魄猶能馮依於人， 以為淫厲。 況良霄， 我先君穆公 之冑、 子良之孫、 子耳之子、 敝邑之卿， 從政三世矣。 . . . 而強死， 能為鬼， 不 亦宜乎。 2 Justice, Morality, and Skepticism in Six Dynasties Ghost Stories...