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洗冤集錄

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Text ID
KR3et002
Date
1247–1247
Dynasty
宋

Xǐyuān jílù 洗冤集錄

Collected Records of Washing Away Wrongs by 宋慈 (撰)

About the work

The Xǐyuān jílù 洗冤集錄 (“Collected records of washing away wrongs”; also known by the variant title Xǐyuān lù 洗冤錄) is a five-juan handbook of forensic medicine compiled and printed by the Southern-Sòng circuit judicial intendant Sòng Cí 宋慈 (1186–1249, zì Huìfǔ 惠父) on the basis of his own coronial experience and of earlier specialist literature, completed in 淳祐丁未 (1247). It is the earliest known systematic treatise of its kind in East Asia, the operational manual of the late-imperial Chinese coroner, and remained authoritative both in China — through the Qīng Lǜlìguǎn jiàozhèng Xǐyuān lù 律例館校證洗冤錄 of 1694 — and across the wider East-Asian legal world for some six hundred years. Subjects treated, in the order of the present recension, include the relevant statutory regulations on the coronial inquest (條令), general principles of inspection (檢覆總說), procedures for examining hanged, drowned, poisoned, beaten, burned, stabbed and dismembered corpses, the diagnosis of wounds inflicted before vs. after death, distinctions between suicide, homicide and accident, the testing of bones (the famous 滴骨 procedure), the use of vinegar, hot wine and other substances to bring up suppressed bruising, the legal terminology of injuries (保辜), and a final section on antidotes and emergency resuscitation (救死方).

Abstract

Authorship and date are secured by the preface 原序 carried at the head of the work, signed Cháosàn dàfū, xīn chú zhí Mìgé, Húnán tíxíng chōng dàshǐ xíngfǔ cānyìguān Sòng Cí Huìfǔ xù 朝散大夫，新除直秘閣、湖南提刑充大使行府參議官宋慈惠父序 and dated 淳祐丁未嘉平節前十日 (= late 1246 / early 1247). In this preface Sòng Cí states the moral and procedural motivation for the work — that “of legal cases none is graver than capital crimes, of capital cases none is graver than the initial determination of the facts, and of initial determinations none is graver than the inquest” (獄事莫重於大辟，大辟莫重於初情，初情莫重於檢驗) — and explains that he has bó cǎi jìnshì suǒ chuán zhūshū, zì Nèishù lù yǐxià fán shù jiā, huì ér cuì zhī, lí ér zhèng zhī, zēng yǐ jǐjiàn 博採近世所傳諸書，自《內恕錄》以下凡數家，會而粹之，釐而正之，增以己見 — collected several recent specialist works, beginning with the now-lost Nèishù lù 內恕錄, collated and corrected them, and added his own observations — and printed the result at the provincial judicial office of Húnán. The work thus stands at the head of an earlier, partly lost tradition of Sòng coronial manuals (including the Yíyù jí 疑獄集, Nèishù lù 內恕錄 and others) which it both digests and supersedes.

The present recension is in five juan. Juàn 1 opens with an annotated digest of the relevant Sòng statutes (條令), in which prescribed coronial procedures and the criminal liabilities of the inquesting officer for delay, falsification or omission are quoted from the Code, followed by the “General Discussion of Inspection” (檢覆總說) in two parts. Juàn 2–4 work systematically through the cases of “complicated and doubtful corpses” (疑難雜說) — hanging, ligature strangulation, drowning, blows, weapons, burning, poisoning, dismembered bodies, bones — with sub-procedures for bringing up obscured injuries by enveloping the body in heated vinegar-soaked cloth, by exposing the skeleton on a fine day under indirect sunlight, and by the drop-blood (滴骨) and bone-pouring (注骨) tests for the identification of skeletal remains and kinship. The final juan (5) is a section of practical remedies (救死方) for resuscitating the not-yet-dead — hanging, drowning, charcoal-fume, snake-bite, drugs, frost-bite — and a short final entry on antidotes. Throughout, Sòng Cí insists on the personal presence and procedural discipline of the magistrate-coroner, warns repeatedly against reliance on yamen runners (廳子、虞候、家人各目), against accepting hospitality from the families involved, and against the suborning of wǔzuò 仵作 (professional corpse-washers) and xíngrén 行人 (inquest auxiliaries).

The textual history is complicated by the rapid spread of the work in private and official re-editions: from the 元 Wú Zhōngān 吳中安 commentary onward, it circulated together with supplementary collections such as the Píngyuān lù 平冤錄 (元 王與), Wúyuān lù 無冤錄 (元 王與) and Xǐyuān lù bǔ 洗冤錄補, and the Qīng Ministry of Punishments produced the official collated edition Lǜlìguǎn jiàozhèng Xǐyuān lù 律例館校證洗冤錄 in 1694. The Sòng-edition transmitted text underlying the present recension follows the line of the early Yuán prints rather than the Qīng official edition. The work was also transmitted to Korea (as the Sin-ju Mu-wŏn-rok 新註無冤錄), Japan and Vietnam, where it served as the basis of local coronial practice.

Translations and research

  • McKnight, Brian E., tr. 1981. The washing away of wrongs: Forensic medicine in thirteenth-century China. Science, Medicine, and Technology in East Asia 1. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. — the standard scholarly English translation, from the Qīng edition, with full apparatus.
  • Giles, Herbert A., tr. [1874–75] 1924. “The Hsi yüan lu 洗冤錄, or Instructions to coroners.” China Review 3 (1874–75): 30–172; repr. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 17 (1924): 59–107. — the first complete European translation, from the 1843 Chinese edition.
  • Lu, Gwei-djen, and Joseph Needham. 1988. “A history of forensic medicine in China.” Medical History 32: 357–400. Reprinted in Science and Civilisation in China 6.6: 175–200.
  • Gāo Suíjié 高随捷 and Zhù Línsēn 祝林森, tr. and annot. 2008. Xǐyuān jí-lù yì-zhù 洗冤集录译注. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí. — modern Chinese annotated translation with critical text.
  • Will, Pierre-Étienne. 2007. “Developing forensic knowledge through cases in the Qing dynasty.” In Charlotte Furth, Judith Zeitlin and Ping-chen Hsiung, eds., Thinking with cases: Specialist knowledge in Chinese cultural history, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 62–100.
  • Asen, Daniel. 2016. Death in Beijing: Murder and forensic science in Republican China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — traces the modern afterlife of the Xǐyuān tradition into 20th-century forensic practice.

Other points of interest

The Xǐyuān jílù is striking in being a Confucian-administrative compilation that nevertheless transmits, in matter-of-fact prose, a substantial body of empirical observation on decomposition, drowning diatom-like sand-inhalation, identification of cause of death from injury pattern, and the recognition of poisoning by the discoloration of inserted silver probes — observations which Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen rated as the high-point of premodern East-Asian forensic empiricism. Sòng Cí’s recurring methodological maxim — guì zài jīngzhuān, bùkě shīwù 貴在精專，不可失誤 (“the value lies in concentrated thoroughness; one must not err”) — and his repeated insistence on the magistrate’s personal autopsy (“躬親詣屍首地頭”), against the corrupting interface of yamen runners, is the moral core of the work and accounts for much of its later reputation.

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