What do we really mean by "Eunuch"?

[Losethem (imported)]

I've

had something physically removed down there.

I was cir'ed as a baby. For me to consider a person a e

unuch the something physical would have to be the balls.

Nit pick much? I clearly wasn't talking about routine infant circumcision. Sheesh.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

I guess the nuts have to go, at least?

-A Qing palace eunuch lost more than that....

I suspect they would not have accepted an infant circ as sufficent...

[Varys2013 (imported)]

Well that's an interesting angle. If it's to prevent procreation, a vasectomy would have counted back in the day, if they'd have known how to do that, and had that goal.

Or, if it was to prevent sexual relations at all, then just taking the balls might not be enough. To do that would require a full nullification including penis removal.

Our medical knowledge seems to make the present use of the term eunuch a very broad spectrum of situations. I don't think there's a simple neat definition anymore.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Qing court eunuchs did indeed lose balls and dick. The bits were kept in a jar for inspection, and eventually rejoin the owner at his funeral.

[Paolo]

There is some doubt as to the frequency of nullification of Chinese eunuchs, given new details that G. Carter Stent, who made this practice famous, may have made some of it up. I am sure that Jesus A. can fill us in when he has time.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I am aware of the dispute concerning Stent's reports. I tend to think that while Stent may have invented some details he was probably depending on statements from locals who were reluctant to give factual accounts to an arrogant, impolite "red barbarian" who was probing too deeply into matters that were none of his concern. --FLO--

[JesusA (imported)]

There is actually some question about the castration status of Chinese court eunuchs. The idea that ALL had both their testicles and penis removed seems to date primarily to the work of G. Carter Stent (1877). More recent work by the young Chinese historian Howard Chiang of Waterloo University in Canada seems to indicate that Stent made up much of his description (or plagiarized it from British anti-slavery tracts about East Africa).

In his article, Stent describes the exact place where the castration of boys for the court took place. Chiang points out that the place described does not and did not exist. The word that Stent states is the proper term for the one performing the castrations appears to have been invented by him. There is NO earlier use of the word that can be found. All uses of it in Chinese can be traced to Stent. A number of claims that Stent makes about the origins of the court eunuchs of his own time are demonstrably false.

I had a brief correspondence with Chiang about Stent’s description. I pointed out to him that Stent insists that there were absolutely NO eunuchs in Europe, conveniently forgetting that castrati were still performing on the London stage while he was an adolescent living there. I pointed out that Stent’s description of the surgery reads surprisingly like the most vehement anti-slavery tracts of his time, decrying castrations in East Africa. (Those descriptions have also been debunked by others.)

Chiang noted that there is ample documentation of court eunuchs who retained their penis, including some 19th century woodblock prints. Rural boys tended to be castrated by the village pig-gelder and were castrated in the same fashion – testicles only removed. There are tomb statues (buried with the deceased to provide servants in the afterlife) that clearly show eunuchs with a penis – prepubertal in size. These can be contrasted to the tomb figures of soldiers, which show testicles and a large penis.

The Eunuch Museum in Beijing follows Stent’s description very closely and makes no reference to actual artifacts that contradict it.

We know that many court eunuchs had their penises removed, but certainly not all of them.

Chiang is currently completing work on a new book, After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformations of Sex in Modern China. I’m looking forward to its publication.

_______

Chiang, Howard (2012). How China became a "Castrated Civilization" and eunuchs a "Third Sex." IN HIS Transgender China. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23-66.

Stent, G. Carter. (1877). Chinese Eunuchs. Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., no. 11.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Well done!

The Stent account is pretty much what my Shanghai gramma and my wife have stated as fact. It is always a shock -and refreshing to know that observed facts do not fit entirely with a "received" account.

BTW, I'm always surprised that we don't have a better account of these folks, as the last Qing eunuch is only recently dead, and gave many interviews in his later years. Something as big as this, and still just in living memory should not be the stuff of such conjecture, but of documented fact?

[JesusA (imported)]

Well that's an interesting angle. If it's to prevent procreation, a vasectomy would have counted back in the day, if they'd have known how to do that, and had that goal.

While a vasectomy would meet some of the original desire for castration, even 4,000 years ago it would not have met all of the reasons for which slave boys were castrated.

Castration clearly predates the origin of humans. It is known that both chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives, (as well as other animals) will try to bite or rip off the testicles of defeated rivals after a fight for dominance. Some of the earliest clear statements of human castration follow the same pattern of castrating the defeated, with no concern over whether they survived the surgery.

Knowledge of castration was important for the domestication of large animals – goats, sheep, donkeys, etc. Castration was performed with the expectation that the animal would survive and become more valuable as a result. The castrated animals were calmer and easier to handle than intact males. Castrated sheep give a better quality of wool than either females or intact males. Castrated donkeys were just as able to perform valuable work without being distracted by female donkeys.

Finally, about 2,100 BCE, in the city of Lagash in ancient Sumer, the idea of castration of slave boys for domestic service began. At least that’s the earliest record of the practice.

Lagash was famous for it’s large weaving establishments, with weaving performed by slave women. The women had many children by various men, probably mostly their supervisors. The girls followed their mothers to become slave weaving women. The question was what to do about the boys. Someone had the idea of castrating them and setting them to work pulling barges on the canals alongside their castrated donkey counterparts. The words in Sumerian for “eunuch” and “castrated donkey” are the same.

All other tasks for eunuchs come after this. One of the very earliest other tasks after the hauling of barges was to serve as praise-singers to the gods. Their powerful, and still treble, voices sometimes came together in choruses of over 100 castrati. They seem to have become attached to temples to serve the gods before they began to serve as attendants for the women of powerful men.

The personality differences of eunuchs from intact men are at least as important as the sterility and relative lack of sexual interest. Most eunuchs in history served in administrative functions, not as guardians of someone else’s women. Because of the important functions that they could perform, it was not long before even important families began to castrate a son or two. We know that some important eunuchs in the palace of the Assyrian kings were close members of the royal family. The eunuch head of the treasury under Artaxerxes I was his brother’s son. The head of the palace guard was sometimes a eunuch cousin of the king, castrated as a boy and growing up with the future king.

Vasectomy would provide the sterility, but not any behavioral or physiological changes. It would also not be clearly visible. Castration removes the testicles completely so that a eunuch is clearly different from an otherwise intact, but vasectomized, male. A quick inspection can determine that a male has been castrated. It’s difficult to tell if he is otherwise sterile if he has intact testicles.

[T van Keel (imported)]

Thanks for the good summary.

The question was what to do about the boys. Someone had the idea of castrating them and setting them to work pulling barges on the canals alongside their castrated donkey counterparts.

Isn't it somehow stupid to castrate someone who has to do heavy physical work? As far as I know castration reduces physical strength in human beings. Even if the donkeys do most of the pulling, the boy needs also good strength.