Читать книгу Circulating the Code - Ting Zhang - Страница 10

In 1644, soon after the Manchus conquered North China and took over the government, the Regent Dorgon (1612–1650) ordered officials to “analyze the Ming Code” and “refer to the current situation” in preparation for compiling the formal Code and promulgating it to “all under heaven.”²¹ In May 1645 the compilation of the first edition of the Qing Code (the Shunzhi Code) formally started.²² It took only about three months for officials to finish the compilation. In August 1645 officials sent the complete draft to the three palace academies (neiyuan, the main policy-making agencies in the early Qing) for review.²³ The process of cutting woodblocks for printing the Code began immediately after the Board of Punishments finished compiling the draft. Two officials at the Board of Punishments took charge of assembling the woodblock cutters and preparing the printing. It is possible that the woodblock cutting and printing were done in the Classics Depot (Jingchang), one of the major publishing institutions of the Ming court, which was inherited by the Qing court and served as the official publishing institution in the early Qing.²⁴ The cutting of the blocks was in progress already even while the Code was still under review in the three palace academies. After revisions were completed, the Board of Punishments assigned an official to collate the woodblocks and correct mistakes.²⁵ In 1646 the book was sent to the throne for final review. However, Dorgon seemed unsatisfied with the quality of the Code. He decided to send it back to the three palace academies and ordered officials to scrutinize it again in a more careful, character-by-character way. The process of revision and correction was finished a year later. In 1647 the Shunzhi Code was finally published under the name Statutes of the Great Qing with Collected Commentaries and Appended Substatutes (Da Qing lü jijie fuli).²⁶

The Shunzhi Code may well have been the first imperially authorized book printed and published by the Qing central publishing institution. Although the central government carefully preserved its documents, the original edition of the Shunzhi Code is difficult to find, possibly because of the limited print run. Nowadays, scholars can only conjecture as to the form and content of the Shunzhi Code based on reprinted editions.²⁷ There were thirty chapters (juan) in the Shunzhi Code, including 459 statutes and 449 substatutes. The form and content of the Shunzhi Code borrowed heavily from the Ming Code issued by the first Ming emperor, and it was strongly influenced by various annotated editions of the Code published in the late Ming.²⁸

Only a small number of officials had access to printed copies of the Shunzhi Code, including some high officials in the central government and governors-general, governors, and provincial judicial commissioners. Officials in the Shunzhi period complained that the Code was rare and difficult to obtain. For example, in 1655 supervising secretary (jishizhong) Wei Yijie (1616–1686) sent a memorial to the throne in which he complained, “Nowadays each government office only has one copy of the Code, locked up tightly and hidden in the inner room. It is impossible for people to see it.” He then suggested that the court order provincial governors to print more copies of the Code.²⁹ However, it seems that the court did not take his suggestion seriously. Throughout the Shunzhi period, copies of the Code, especially the ones printed by official publishing houses, saw limited circulation.

In the Kangxi reign the court engaged in more book printing and cultural production. In 1680 the court established the Wuyingdian Manufacture Department (Wuyingdian Zaobanchu), which soon replaced the Classics Depot and became the main book printing and publishing institution of the court. The Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722) enthusiastically printed and published books, especially the Confucian classics, dictionaries, and collections of literary works, viewing it as a method to win the support of Han literati and establish the court’s cultural authority. The Kangxi court published at least fifty-six different titles, altogether 5,596 volumes.³⁰ The court-printed books of this period are famous for their high quality. Jin Zhi (1663–1740), a famous early Qing scholar, highly valued the books printed by the Kangxi court, saying that the beautiful calligraphic style in these books “surpassed all the past and current books” and that the quality of these books was even better than the books printed in the Song period.³¹

Compared with the flourishing enterprise of book printing by the Kangxi court, legislation and publication of the updated Code in the Kangxi reign was a struggling process. The Kangxi emperor seemed less interested in equipping his bureaucracy with the updated Code than in providing the literary world with high-quality editions of classics and literature. He did not intend to make use of the developing printing institutions of the court to print the Code. The legislation process in the Kangxi period was painfully slow. Although in the late years of the Shunzhi reign the emperor felt it necessary to revise the Code and ordered officials to prepare for compiling the updated substatutes and regulations into the Code, this process was not formally finished until 1725, when the Yongzheng Code, the second imperial edition of the Qing Code, was published, about seventy years later.³² The major legislative work done during the Kangxi period was the compilation of the Substatutes for the Board of Punishments in Current Use (Xingbu xianxing zeli)—a collection of new substatutes promulgated in the Kangxi reign. Because the Shunzhi Code was compiled in a hurry, many outdated statutes and substatutes directly adopted from the Ming Code were not deleted or revised. Moreover, many precedents and new regulations that originated in legal and administrative practices postdated the Shunzhi Code and their conflict with the outdated statutes and substatutes had already became an obstacle to the proper functioning of the bureaucracy and legal system.

In 1667 the Kangxi emperor began to pay attention to the newly established precedents and regulations. In 1668 the emperor ordered the Board of Punishments to “compile the current substatutes in current use, sort them out, and send them to the throne for imperial review.”³³ Twelve years later, in 1680, the updated substatutes were published under the title Substatutes of the Board of Punishments in Current Use.³⁴ The 1680 edition of the Substatutes in Current Use has been lost, probably due to the limited print run. The Substatutes in Current Use and the Code were separate books throughout the Kangxi period. Both were published by the Board of Punishments for a small number of high-ranking officials who had responsibility for judicial administration, including top officials of the six boards and the Censorate, Manchu generals in frontier regions, governors-general, governors, and judicial commissioners in the provinces.³⁵ It seems that the Board of Punishments did not assume responsibility for providing the Code to subprovincial officials, such as prefects and county magistrates, who also had to deal with the laws and legal cases as a part of their routine work. The board formerly suggested that provincial governments reprint the Code for distribution to these subprovincial officials, but extant editions show little evidence that the provincial governments actually did so in the Kangxi period.

Beside the scarcity of the officially printed copies of the Code in the Kangxi bureaucracy, contemporary officials faced another major problem: the separation, and sometimes incompatibility, of the Code and the Substatutes in Current Use. Even before the Substatutes in Current Use was compiled, some officials began to notice the problems caused by the contradictions between the Code and new laws. In 1664 the Board of Punishments suggested that the current precedents and regulations be incorporated into the Code and that the revised Code be sent to high provincial officials for their reference.³⁶ The throne approved this suggestion, but no evidence shows that it was applied in practice. Again, in 1671, Zhang Weichi (d. 1676), supervising secretary of the Board of Punishments, memorialized that the separation of the Code and newly established substatutes caused problems, urging the court to compile a “complete book” (quanshu) of all the updated statutes and substatutes for all under the heaven to observe. He wrote: “In the early years of the Shunzhi reign, the Board officials compiled the Code.… However, in recent years, every time new substatutes were established, it was said that it was not necessary to incorporate them into the Code. Therefore, nowadays, the Code and the new substatutes are separated from and inconsistent with each other.”³⁷

Then Zhang Weichi narrated two examples of such problems when he reviewed the provincial legal case reports. He identified the cases where different provincial governments issued different punishments for similar crimes based on the Code or new substatutes. He also noticed that although official editions of the Code did not include the new substatutes, several commercial editions did include new substatutes. According to Zhang, this was rather troublesome, because these commercial editions were “not approved by the imperial government” and only contained a portion of the new substatutes. Thus they could easily lead to confusion. Zhang argued that this situation not only harmed the judicial system but also led to corruption among officials and clerks, who could use these inconsistencies in the laws to serve their personal interests.³⁸ The court should order officials to compile the complete book of the laws and publish it as soon as possible. He wrote:

I suggest that Your Majesty order the Board to collate the original Code and the new substatutes immediately. As for the new substatutes that have been approved and are appropriate, incorporate them into their proper categories and make them follow their original statutes in the Code according to the method when the Code was compiled. Make sure that they are in proper arrangement. In this way, both the Code and the new substatutes will be incorporated into a single book. As for the officials who take responsibility of hearing cases, each of them should have one such book. They can refer to the book at any time and get everything at one glance, which would save them time and trouble as well as prevent them from giving wrong sentences.³⁹

Unfortunately, the emperor ignored Zhang’s advice, probably because at that time the court was too preoccupied with other more serious problems, such as consolidating territory and suppressing rebellions.

The troublesome situation caused by the separation of the Code and new substatutes continued. In 1689, when the empire was basically pacified, Sheng Fusheng (1615–1700), investigating censor (yushi) of the Censorate, brought up the issue of incorporating the updated substatutes into the Code again. This time the emperor adopted the suggestion and appointed several high officials of the Board of Punishments as chief editors. The process of revising the Code formally started. The major tasks of the revision were to (1) incorporate the Substatutes in Current Use into the Code, (2) correct the mistakes in the Manchu translations of the Code, (3) delete repetitive and outdated statutes and substatutes, (4) select and incorporate new administrative regulations into the Code, (5) and select and add explanations and commentaries to the Code in order to clarify the meanings of obscure statutes. The revision process, however, went extremely slowly. Only after nineteen years, in 1707, was the manuscript completed and submitted to the emperor.⁴⁰ However, the emperor had lost interest, probably because he was preoccupied with solving his succession disputes among his sons and he was agonizing about the cruelty and punishments of the laws. He never returned or responded to the manuscript. The revision process was then suspended, and the officials’ efforts to produce a definitive edition of a complete book of the Qing Code in the Kangxi period failed.