198
**36
foreigners' religion" took on special weight not only because the ancestral rites central to traditional Chinese village life were set aside, but also because the commentaries to the Sacred Edict of the Kāngxī emperor explicitly forbade citizens of the empire from following "strange doctrines." The step from a charge of adhering to foreign teachings (wàijiào) to supporting heretical doctrines (yìduān) was not a large one in the minds of Chinese people or their officials. Having already rejected his lowly position in an imperial institution on the grounds of a "strange" teaching, Ch'ea was particularly susceptible to being charged with political and religious heresy.
The charges of madness and demonic possession are actually linked very closely to the former charge. Reconstructing the traditional justifications, the reasoning must have run something like the following: A person is "mad" who acts in bizarre and unexpected ways; so, one who pursues "strange teachings" which cause them to react in abnormal ways cannot be "sane," "healthy," "rational," or "ritually proper." Furthermore, one who rejects the ritual sacrifices to ancestors for whatever reasons would be seen as committing a kind of cultural and spiritual suicide. Everyone would expect that this kind of a person would degenerate into an animal, cursed by the cosmic spirits who govern the length of life and means of death. Maybe his associations with foreigners had complicated him with their own spiritual powers, so that he was actually possessed by their demons. Since in fact Ch'ea did not suffer this fate in any immediately visible manner, persisting instead in spreading this new teaching and its style of life throughout the region, there may well have been some who considered it their duty to get rid of him because of the cultural chaos his chosen way engendered among the people. Facts known about Ch'ea's subsequent career would appear to warrant this kind of interpretation.
38
37
Yet this does not fully explain the cultural role of demonology and the inherent "discourse of race" which was deeply imbedded in late Qing society. To declare a human person a demon was to catapult them outside of normal human relationships,
198
**36
foreigners' religion" took on special weight not only because the ancestral rites central to traditional Chinese village life were set aside, but also because the commentaries to the Sacred Edict of the Kāngxi emperor explicitly forbade citizens of the empire from following "strange doctrines." The step from a charge of adhering to foreign teachings (wàijïào) to supporting heretical doctrines (viduan) was not a large one in the minds of Chinese people or their officials. Having already rejected his lowly position in an imperial institution on the grounds of a "strange" teaching, Ch'ea was particularly susceptible to being charged with political and religious heresy.
The charges of madness and demonic possession are actually linked very closely to the former charge. Reconstructing the traditional justifications, the reasoning must have run something like the following: A person is "mad" who acts in bizarre and unexpected ways; so, one who pursues "strange teachings" which cause them to react in abnormal ways cannot be "sane," "healthy," "rational," or "ritually proper." Furthermore, one who rejects the ritual sacrifices to ancestors for whatever reasons would be seen as committing a kind of cultural and spiritual suicide. Everyone would expect that this kind of a person would degenerate into an animal, cursed by the cosmic spirits who govern the length of life and means of death. Maybe his associations with foreigners had complicated him with their own spiritual powers, so that he was actually possessed by their demons. Since in fact Ch'ea did not suffer this fate in any immediately visible manner, persisting instead in spreading this new teaching and its style of life throughout the region, there may well have been some who considered it their duty to get rid of him because of the cultural chaos his chosen way engendered among the people. Facts known about Ch'ea's subsequent career would appear to warrant this kind of interpretation.
38
37
Yet this does not fully explain the cultural role of demonology and the inherent "discourse of race" which was deeply imbedded in late Qing society. To declare a human person a demon was to catapult them outside of normal human relationships,
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