Because Fu Quan testified about his coconspirators, “tallies,” or warrants, were issued for each of them by the district chief and handed down to lower divisions, both hamlets (li) and cantons (zhou):
A tally to arrest (ji 執) Chang Jia. Hamlet chief (ligong) Fu X (unidentifiable graph)
and Supervisor of Retainers (shiyin 士尹) returned the tally, saying, “Chang Jia had
150 Peng Hao 彭浩, “Baoshan Chu jian fanying de Chuguo falü yu sifa zhidu 包山楚簡反映的法律與司法 制度,” in Baoshan Chu mu, ed. Hubei sheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui. (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe: Xinhua shudian, 1991), 552-53. Li Ling, similar to Peng Hao, said that the shouqi slips are records of cases that never went to court for some reason. Li Ling, Li Ling xixuan ji, 137.
151 The Baoshan slips editors refer to Du Yu’s commentary in the Zuozhuan, Duke Wen (文公) from the
tenth reigning year, where Zi Xi 子西 says to the King Cheng of Chu (楚成王), “I fortunately escaped death yet was falsely incriminated [by someone] who said I was about to flee. I, your servant, return to death by a sibai 司敗.” Du Yu commented, “the state of Chen 陳 and Chu 楚 referred to sikou 司寇 (a legal official) as sibai.” Du Yu 杜預 and Kong Yingda 孔穎達, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正 義, in Shisan jing xhushu (Bejing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008), 19A/1848a.
already fled before [we arrived], so we failed to serve the tally.” A tally to arrest Gu
Nüfan. Canton chief (jiagong) Zang Shen and hamlet chief (ligong) Li Fu returned
the tally, saying, “Gu Nüfan had already fled before [we arrived], so we failed to serve the tally.” A tally to arrest Jing Buke. Hamlet chief Wu Xuan and two other officers returned the tally, saying, “Jing Buke had already fled before [we arrived],
so we failed to serve the tally.” A tally to seize (shou 收) Fu Quan’s wife and
children (nu 孥). Canton chief Fan Rong and hamlet chief Xu Y (unidentifiable
graph) returned the tally, saying, “Fu Quan’s wife and children had already fled, so we failed to serve the tally.” Fu Quan failed to receive a judgment. He fell sick and
died in jail. Gu Nüfan, Chang Jia, and Jing Buke all took an oath (meng 盟).152
孑執場賈, 里公邞X、士尹紬縝返孑, 言謂: 場賈既走於前, 孑不及。孑執雇女
返, 加公臧申、里公利臤返孑, 言謂: 女返既走於前, 孑不及。孑執競不割, 里公
Y扌旬、亞大夫宛乘返孑, 言謂: 不割既走於前, 孑不及。孑收邞亻拳之孥, 加公
范戎、里公余☐返孑, 言謂: 邞亻拳之孥既走於前, 孑不及。邞亻拳未至斷, 有疾,
死於拘。雇女返、場賈、競不割皆既盟。
According to this passage, once the officials had a murder confession implicating three other suspects, the legal process was initiated by first issuing tallies to officials who were in charge of the area where each suspect resided, then receiving reports of the arrest attempt, and finally, taking statements under oath from the murder suspects. Several interesting points emerge: first, Yang Shi, the district director who was in charge of this murder case, issued tallies, which carry the same meaning as “warrant,” and received
152 Baoshan, 357, slips 122-123.
them back along with a report from the officials in charge. Issuing a tally in order to arrest the accused was likely a part of the legal process as there are a few other examples in the Baoshan slips. For example, Baoshan slip 80 indicated that “a tally has been issued”
(發孑) in order to arrest a suspect on the charge of inflicting injury on the plaintiff’s
brother,153 and slip 85 records the issuing of tallies to multiple persons, noting that the
“tallies have already been issued. Investigate at court.”154 (既發孑, 詳以廷) Moreover,
the one who issued the warrant and the one who received it and reported back must have been in a superior-inferior relationship.
Second, there was even a tally for Fu Quan’s wife and children. There was no indication by the plaintiff or by Fu Quan himself that Fu Quan’s immediate family members participated in this crime, yet the fact that a warrant was issued implies that they were held collectively responsible. Unlike the tallies for the other three, for which
the verb zhi 執 was used, the tally for Fu Quan’s immediate family uses the verb shou 收,
which literally means “to collect, to harvest, or to seize.” In the language of the Qin legal
documents, shou means “to confiscate to make an official servant,”155 that is, to
confiscate the family members so that they can held accountable:
When the male bondservants (lichen 隷臣) leads “builders of walls from dawn”
(chengdan 城旦) and let them abscond, he is made an intact “builders of walls from
dawn,” and his wife and children living outside are confiscated (shou收).156
153 Baoshan, 354, slip 80.
154 Baoshan, 354, slip 85.
155 Gao Min 高敏, Yunmeng Qin jian chutan 雲夢秦簡初探 (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1979),
60-61; Sun Yingmin 孫英民, “Cong Yunmeng Qin jian kan Qin lü “lianzuo” fa 從雲夢秦簡看秦律“連 坐”法,” Zhongyuan wenhua 2 (1986): 100-01.
隸臣將城旦, 亡之, 完為城旦, 收其外妻、子。子小未可別，令從母為收。
“A” murdered someone but was not exposed. Now, if “A” has already died of illness and been buried, someone accused “A.” After an investigation evidence shows that “A” committed the murder. Question: does “A” have to be sentenced
and [his family] to be confiscated (shou收), or not?157
甲殺人, 不覺, 今甲病死已葬, 人乃後告甲, 甲殺人審, 問甲當論及收不當?
According to the Qin, a family member could lose one’s social status and become a servant because one of their immediate family members committed a crime. Also,
according to the Shiji, Shang Yang made a law to punish lazy merchants and to make
their wives and children government servants.158 In the case mentioned in the Baoshan
slips, the details are insufficient to say whether the Chu had the same law as the Qin. One
example in the Lüshi chunqiu says, “According to Chu law, displaying armories near a
royal corpse is the most serious crime. [The crime] reaches three generations (逮三
族).”159 Although evidence pointing at collective responsibility in the state of Chu is thin,
the usage of shou in slip 122 above surely indicates some degree of collective
responsibility was assigned to immediate family members, even when the punishment did not reach as far as three generations.