strangulation. A man who, regarding a tomb as lucky, secretly buries the dead body of his father in it, is liable to be punished with one hundred blows and exiled for life to a place distant three thousand li from his native place. A man secretly burying a member of his family in a plot of ground set apart as the private cemetery of another family, but in which no body has yet been laid, is punished with ninety blows and transported for two and a half years. People who, in consequence of poverty, are unable to purchase ground for their dead, and who bury them in the private cemeteries of others, incur a punishment of eighty blows, and are to remove their dead. If a purchaser of a plot of ground for a burial-place discovers that corpses have already been interred there, he is required to report the circumstance at once to the district ruler, who examines into the matter, and gives the necessary orders for the removal of the dead. Should he remove the dead on his own responsibility, he would be punished with eighty blows and sent into exile for one year. When the Chinese suffer from drought or any other epidemic, they often attribute the visitation to devils or evil spirits coming from a certain tomb or tombs. Persons, therefore, occasionally conspire to destroy a tomb. Such an offence is dealt with very severely. The law directs that the leader of the gang shall be strangled, that the second and third of his accomplices shall be transported for life, and that each of the other offenders shall receive one hundred blows and be transported for three years. A son or grandson, nephew or grandnephew, who is caught in the act of opening the graves of his ancestors for the purpose of despoiling the corpses of valuable ornaments, is punished with one hundred blows and banished for life three thousand li from his native place. Should he have succeeded in opening the coffin, the sentence is decapitation. To conclude, should a son or grandson, a nephew or grandnephew, exhume the remains of his ancestors for the purpose of selling the ground in which they have been interred, he would be decapitated, and the purchaser of the ground would be punished with eighty blows and mulcted in a sum of money equal to that which he had given for the ground. EXHUMATION. 327 It is customary for descendants to exhume the bodies of their ancestors, if they have reason to think that they are resting in unlucky tombs. Should the good fortune or the good health of a family suddenly change, it is not unusual for them to apply to a geomancer with the view of ascertaining the cause. That worthy sometimes discovers that the ancestors are resting in unlucky tombs, and their remains are at once exhumed for re-interment in more propitious spots Should the grave-diggers succeed in finding all the bones of the skeleton, they are rewarded with a liberal fee. The bones are arranged in order on a board, and washed with warm water, in which, to render it aromatic, the leaves of a cypress, cedar, or pomeloe tree have been boiled. They are then marked with a vermilion pencil, and placed in a cinerary urn, which is deposited in the tomb selected as lucky. Sometimes the urn is taken home by the relatives, and either placed in a private chamber, or lodged in the grounds round the dwelling-house. Sometimes it is left for a time in the cemetery. Passing once through a large cemetery beyond the north gate of Canton, I saw several persons standing by the side of a grave. They were descendants of one Laong Chun-ping, who had died many years ago, and were removing the remains of their ancestor, it being supposed that the tomb which contained them was unlucky. A short distance from the grave, a fire was burning in a portable grate, on which was a pan containing water in which leaves of the cypress-tree were being boiled. Anxious to witness the usual ceremonies upno the exhumation of a body, I remained by the side of the grave, and was not a little surprised at the accuracy with which the grave-diggers arranged the bones belonging to the skeleton. These men acquire in this way a most perfect knowledge of the anatomy of the human frame. After each of the descendants of Laong Chun-ping had done obeisance to them, the bones were carefully washed by the grave-digger, separately marked with a vermilion pencil, placed in a cinerary uin, and conveyed away for interment. The descendants of the deceased were in dark dresses, and, as they moved with the ashes of the dead towards the new tomb which had been prepared for them, the nearest of kin carried in his hand a streamer-the call cloth-to induce the spirit which had remained with the corpse to accompany the exhumed bones to their new resting-place. During the three months after the exhumation of the body, it is customary for the family to wear mourning. Exhumation generally takes place in the third month of the year, and it is not necessary to obtain the permission either of the central or local government. During the Ming dynasty, however, it was imperatively necessary to obtain the sanction of the ruler of their county. Although the exhumation of human remains, supposed to be resting in an unlucky grave, is universally practiced throughout China at the present day, I have reason to believe that the act is unlawful. If I mistake not there is a law that any geomancer who persuades people to exhume their dead upon the ground that they are resting in unlucky tombs, shall be severely punished, as well as all who assist him. This law was, I believe, framed in the twelfth year of the Emperor Yung-ching, in the year of our Lord 1735. CHAPTER XIII. SUICIDES. THE Chinese are perhaps more prone to commit suicide than the people of any other country in the world. This cannot be said to be the result of a deliberate opinion that man is at liberty to end his mortal existence when he pleases, for the cases in which suicide is considered praiseworthy are exceptional, and it is generally condemned in their literature. Dire miseries also await the self-murderer in the Hades of the Buddhist, and the people look upon him as one who must have sinned deeply in a former state of existence. A Chinese would find nothing repugnant to his notions in Virgil's lines :— "Proxima deinde tenent mosti loca, qui sibi letum Projicere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto Notwithstanding this, suicides are, as I have stated, a more numerous class amongst the Chinese than amongst any other race; and this opinion is confirmed in the account given by Captain Bedford Pim in his Gate of the Pacific of the suicidal mania displayed by the Chinese coolies engaged in the construction of the Panama railway. Tempted by the very high rate of wages, "men were brought," he writes, "to the locality in great numbers from China, India, Africa, and almost every nation in Europe." "There is no question," he continues, "of the unhealthiness of that portion of the Isthmus over which the railway runs, but of the labourers the Chinese lost the greatest number; for besides those carried off by disease, a strong suicidal tendency developed amongst this singular people, and it was not uncommon in the morning to find halfa-dozen bodies suspended from the trees in close proximity to the road." The Chinese commit suicide chiefly by taking opium,1 hanging, or drowning; and the wretched creatures who are guilty of this act are generally, as amongst ourselves, driven to it by immorality or destitution; or overmastered by jealousy, anger, or disappointment. Suicide by cutting the throat is seldom or never resorted to, as the Chinese believe that to destroy the integrity of the body is to add to the misery, or detract from the happiness, of the soul. As they also believe that in the world beyond the grave the shades are clad in garments similar to those which the deceased wore at his death, it is usual for those who have resolved upon self-destruction to put on their best clothes. Thus attired they frequently resort to the summits of hills, or other retired spots; and on several occasions I have found the bodies of men who had taken poison lying on the White Cloud mountains. Very often the deed is committed in some well-frequented thoroughfare when night has made it a solitude. On one occasion I saw the body of a suicide hanging from the balustrade of a bridge in the western suburb of Canton. At Macao I found a body suspended from the bough of a tree which stretched across the street. Several persons were passing at the same time, but the melancholy spectacle seemed to excite no emotion, scarcely to attract attention. No one seemed to consider it a matter of consequence whether the body was to remain hanging or to be taken down. Females generally commit suicide in their homes. This, however, is not always the case, and I remember an instance 1 According to Dr. Henderson of Shanghai, in his pamphlet on The Medicine and Medical Practice of the Chinese, native orpiment or yellow sulphuret of arsenic is occasionally taken; but he adds that opium is in much greater favour amongst the Chinese as "the irritating poison produces too much suffering and trouble." |