Ming Eunuchs, pt. 4
Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2002 1:05 pm
THE DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF MING EUNUCHS: Domestic Supply of Eunuchs
In addition to tributes and prisoners of war from peripheral states and frontier tribes, Ming eunuchs also came from various domestic sources. Several Ming documents indicate that local officials were often required to offer a certain number of castrated men to the imperial palace. In 1449, a regional commander presented 108 men, who had already been castrated, to Emperor Zhengtong. In 1451, a Fujian proctor presented fifty-nine castrati to the Directorate of Ceremonial, and a year later, the commander of Nanjing sent to the capital four emasculated persons. Many officials, however, performed castration without imperial authorization and kept such castrated men for their own use. In 1599, for instance, a high ranking Beijing official, on a mission to purchase steeds in Shaanxi province, ordered castration of several dozen boys without prior approval of the throne. He was later punished for this act.
When the Ming dynasty was first founded, extremely severe forms of punishment were used against the political enemies of the regime. Near the end of the Hongwu reign, however, the emperor abolished the tattooing, severing body organs, and castration as forms of criminal justice. As substitute for such baneful punishment, he introduced corporal punishment and various forms of flogging. A similar proclamation was issued in 1425 by the fourth emperor Hongxi, in which Confucian filial piety was cited as a reason for prohibiting the pernicious castration punishment. According to this rationale, a son who could not produce a male heir to carry on the family name committed a serious transgression against Confucian doctrine. But in spite of repeated imperial proclamations, Ming monarchs in the later period often disregarded such prohibitory decrees and resorted to castration for punishing major political criminals and their young male relatives. [Later in the book there is discussion of a prominent eunuch who had been castrated as a child as punishment for his uncles criminal behavior.]
It is obvious that castration remained a savage weapon readily available for the Ming autocrats when and if they or their surrogates chose to use it against their enemies. Such inconsistent legal practice engendered abuses in the years to come. Although the first Ming emperor deemed castration an ineffective an unnecessary deterrent against criminals, the third emperor condoned it and, in fact, might have actually encouraged his henchmen to do likewise. During the civil war against his nephew, Zhu Di trusted a self-seeking opportunist named Ji Gang and made him a battalion commander. Ji castrated several hundred people and trained them as new recruits to bolster Zhu Di's strength. The Ming penal code, the embodiment of centuries of previous penal codes, was frequently misused and misinterpreted by Ming emperors. But that could also mean life or death for hundreds of common people and fortunes or misfortunes for those who executed the law. In 1566, for instance, a criminal justice official, by the name of Wang Xiang, castrated three suspects before he could prove their culpability. Upon hearing the news, the emperor reportedly went into a rage and ordered Wang Xiang into exile.
The misuse and misinterpretation of the penal code had a pervasive impact on the Ming society as a whole. Many privileged nobles and wealthy landlords also practiced castration on their own hired hands. Owners of large manors, who loved to imitate the lifestyle of the emperor and always maintained concubines in their households, naturally found castrated men the most practical servants and personal retainers. Indeed, throughout most of the Ming period, castration remained a common practice in the southeastern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. Some landlords required their tenants to cut off their penes and scrotums before taking them as household servants. In 1372, upon hearing of such a practice in Fujian province, Emperor Hongwu threatened to castrate those who castrated their servants. But in spite of repeated stern warnings, well-to-do landlords continued to abuse, castrate, and even murder their tenants and hired laborers with little or no fear of being punished by the state.
It is then a canard that only emperors used castrati for servile work in their harems. As a matter of fact, a significant number of the Ming castrated men were hired by nobles and members of the imperial family who were enfeoffed throughout the empire. Ming emperors, as a rule, had many wives and concubines and produced many sons and daughters. But apart from the crown prince, all others were sent away from the capital as soon as they were grown up. They were given territorial titles, manors, and retainers and servants ranging from 3,000 to 19,000 persons. Since the status of imperial princes was hereditary, the oldest sons of the imperial princes and the sons of each new emperor exponentially added to their number. Moreover, the younger sons of every imperial prince became princes of the second degree and successive generations of their sons were granted noble titles in descending ranks. Such hereditary privileges continued until after the eighth generation when the imperial descendants were no longer ranked as nobles. Nevertheless, with polygamy as a general practice, after a period of 250 years, the number of imperial clansmen had grown to an estimated 100,000 and demand for castrated servants appeared to be insatiable.
In addition to the male descendants of the Ming emperors, women of imperial families were also made nobles and given retainers, eunuchs, and lands. The paternal aunts of a reigning emperor, the sisters, and daughters were all named imperial princesses, and their husbands were given privileges of nobility. Although the ranks and salaries accorded to relatives of the empresses and concubines were purely personal and were not inherited by their descendants, they undoubtedly helped create a bigger market for eunuch service. Finally, meritorious officials and victorious generals also added to the noble ranks of duke (gong), marquis (hou), and earl (bo). They were generally granted territorial designations and, in addition to receiving annual stipends of varying amounts, were also allowed to retain varying numbers of eunuchs.
Even though these princes and princesses were nothing more than salaried dignitaries and had no administrative or judiciary functions, they were not only a perpetual drain on state revenues but also eager employers of castrati. Here the simple economic theory of supply and demand came into play, as Ming society became more polarized between landowners and the proletariat. Destitute men castrated themselves or their children so that they could find employment in the princely establishments. And as social and economic conditions deteriorated, castration of one's own volition grew increasingly popular. For a commoner, unable to climb into the gentry class by either passing the difficult civil service examinations or purchasing a degree, the only means of gaining access to privileges and influence was by means of eunuchism. Consequently, voluntary castration became epidemic.
Ironically, the Ming government prohibited such practice. In the previous dynasties self-castration was permitted if closely monitored by the officials, who recorded the day of emasculation, examined the wound, and checked every detail during the healing process. However, since the establishment of the Ming dynasty, self-castration had been forbidden and several emperors had in fact issued decrees to ban such a practice. In 1424, Emperor Hongxi received a report from the city of Changsha that a man had cut off his own genital organ and offered himself to serve in the palace. The emperor considered this person a lazy vagabond who had failed to observe the Confucian principle of filial piety and had him banished to the frontier as a soldier. One month later, an elderly guard from a princely manor cut off his son's genitals before asking for a eunuch position for his son. Emperor Hongxi rebuked the father and made his son a soldier. During the decade after the death of Emperor Hongxi, virtually all persons involved in self-castration were either drafted as soldiers or exiled to the frontier regions or both.
No sooner had Emperor Xuande been enthroned than several low-ranking military and civilian personnel castrated themselves and applied for jobs in the palace. The new monarch reiterated his father's policy and ordered the Minister or Rites to send all such men to the border of Annam. A few months later, the Ministry of Rites again reported a case of self-emasculation in Shandong province. Without hesitation the emperor ordered the man banished and then warned the village heads not to conceal any information of wrongdoing or acts that were clearly in violation of Confucian filial piety. Nevertheless, the practice of self-emasculation continued into the reign of Emperor Xuande's successor. In 1436, a Buddhist monk performed his own emasculation. The new emperor Zhengtong not only annulled the monk's corvee exemption but also exiled him to southern Manchuria.
Even though several emperors had repeatedly prohibited self-castration, members of the imperial clans did not always heed such proclamations, because they regarded themselves superior elements within the state and the emperors often bent the rule when dealing with their relatives. During Emperor Xuande's first year on the throne, nine civilian and military personnel in Shanxi province practiced self-castration and then presented themselves to the princely establishment of Jin. As soon as the news reached Beijing, a censor impeached the Shanxi authorities. The emperor, after a brief deliberation, ordered that all nine persons be punished according to the penal code. The senior administrator of the princely establishment of Jin, who presumably failed to admonish the prince, was arrested and tried in the capital.
Of course, not all hereditary nobles were as arrogant and reckless as Prince Jin of Shanxi province who dared to ignore imperial proclamations. Usually when princes and princesses needed eunuchs they first sought the permission of the emperor. Some asked the emperor to supply their needs directly; others received imperial approval for accepting castrated servants from other sources. Prudent princes who maintained cordial relations with the reigning monarch usually had no problems in securing castrated servants.
The custom of using eunuchs in the princely establishments appears to have started with the third emperor, Yongle, who always had a special political relationship with castrati during his career. After taking the crown away from his nephew in 1402, Yongle wanted to make sure that his triumph, which had sapped the vitality of the country, would not in any way create further perilous resonances. Although answerable only to Heave and his ancestors, he was careful not to alienate further his surviving brothers and relatives. At the same time, he wanted to make sure that there was no effective opposition to his legitimacy and no encroachment of the local magnates; he therefore took measures to strengthen the bond between the emperor and the princely establishments. One such measure was that of giving regular royal presents to the princes and princesses who had demonstrated their loyalty to him during the stormy civil war. The list of royal gifts included silks, fabrics, tapestry, silver and gold bullion, and peculiarly enough, eunuchs who were professionally trained to work as "ears and eyes" of the emperor in the provinces. In the Ming official history, there are numerous records of such gifts. In the winter of 1425 when a prince in Shaanxi got married, Emperor Xuande gave him twenty-five palace women and twenty eunuchs; three years later this same monarch sent as wedding gifts seven women and five eunuchs to a prince enfeoffed in southern Manchuria. In 1445, Emperor Zhengtong bestowed on a prince in Datong four eunuchs, five cooks, and forty guards.
But as the number of nobles multiplied, by the mid-fifteenth century there appeared to be an increasing shortage of eunuchs as more and more requests for castrated servants arrived in the capital. In 1449 alone, Ming records show a total of thirty-four requests by the princes and princesses for the supply of eunuchs. Of the thirty-four requests, Emperor Zhengtong granted fourteen, denied one, but placed the other nineteen requests in limbo. What happened was that at the time the requests were made, the emperor had no more eunuchs to be spared. Consequently, he chose to condone a new practice by allowing his relatives to purchase self-castrated men from private sources. But the fact that the emperor acquiesced to such a practice actually encouraged some of his relatives to methodically stock up on castrated servants.
During the reign of Emperor Jingtai (1449 - 1457), the problem of self-castration had worsened and the new monarch was obviously annoyed by the fact that many of his trusted relatives did not seem to heed the ban on acquiring self-castrated men from private sources. In an attempt to arrest this practice, he adopted two measures, but neither of them brought any immediate tangible results. One measure was to exile the entire family of a self-castrated man to a frontier military colony if such a person was a soldier. If, on the other hand, the self-castrated man was a civilian, we was to be charge with a violation of filial piety and his village heads and neighbors would also be punished if they concealed knowledge of his act. Undoubtedly, the emperor was trying to restore some credibility to an establish policy. But he soon realized that he was running short of carrots as he was constantly under traditional obligation to send eunuchs to his cousins' weddings or his aunts' birthdays or to reward his meritorious ministers. Consequently, later in his reign, whenever he discovered illegal eunuchs who had practiced self-emasculation, he literally confiscated them, took them to the capital and put them under the supervision of the Directorate of Ceremonial. In other words, the emperor was forced to stockpile his own "inventory" of eunuchs so that whenever the occasion was called for, he could easily draw on his "commodities." Eunuchism had by the mid-fifteenth century become a political and social tool of the Ming emperor.
[Unless I hear a request to post the rest of this chapter, this is as far as I plan to go with it. As you can tell, the book is academic in its detail, though well written. It is available directly from the publisher, through Amazon, or by special order at your local bookstore.]
In addition to tributes and prisoners of war from peripheral states and frontier tribes, Ming eunuchs also came from various domestic sources. Several Ming documents indicate that local officials were often required to offer a certain number of castrated men to the imperial palace. In 1449, a regional commander presented 108 men, who had already been castrated, to Emperor Zhengtong. In 1451, a Fujian proctor presented fifty-nine castrati to the Directorate of Ceremonial, and a year later, the commander of Nanjing sent to the capital four emasculated persons. Many officials, however, performed castration without imperial authorization and kept such castrated men for their own use. In 1599, for instance, a high ranking Beijing official, on a mission to purchase steeds in Shaanxi province, ordered castration of several dozen boys without prior approval of the throne. He was later punished for this act.
When the Ming dynasty was first founded, extremely severe forms of punishment were used against the political enemies of the regime. Near the end of the Hongwu reign, however, the emperor abolished the tattooing, severing body organs, and castration as forms of criminal justice. As substitute for such baneful punishment, he introduced corporal punishment and various forms of flogging. A similar proclamation was issued in 1425 by the fourth emperor Hongxi, in which Confucian filial piety was cited as a reason for prohibiting the pernicious castration punishment. According to this rationale, a son who could not produce a male heir to carry on the family name committed a serious transgression against Confucian doctrine. But in spite of repeated imperial proclamations, Ming monarchs in the later period often disregarded such prohibitory decrees and resorted to castration for punishing major political criminals and their young male relatives. [Later in the book there is discussion of a prominent eunuch who had been castrated as a child as punishment for his uncles criminal behavior.]
It is obvious that castration remained a savage weapon readily available for the Ming autocrats when and if they or their surrogates chose to use it against their enemies. Such inconsistent legal practice engendered abuses in the years to come. Although the first Ming emperor deemed castration an ineffective an unnecessary deterrent against criminals, the third emperor condoned it and, in fact, might have actually encouraged his henchmen to do likewise. During the civil war against his nephew, Zhu Di trusted a self-seeking opportunist named Ji Gang and made him a battalion commander. Ji castrated several hundred people and trained them as new recruits to bolster Zhu Di's strength. The Ming penal code, the embodiment of centuries of previous penal codes, was frequently misused and misinterpreted by Ming emperors. But that could also mean life or death for hundreds of common people and fortunes or misfortunes for those who executed the law. In 1566, for instance, a criminal justice official, by the name of Wang Xiang, castrated three suspects before he could prove their culpability. Upon hearing the news, the emperor reportedly went into a rage and ordered Wang Xiang into exile.
The misuse and misinterpretation of the penal code had a pervasive impact on the Ming society as a whole. Many privileged nobles and wealthy landlords also practiced castration on their own hired hands. Owners of large manors, who loved to imitate the lifestyle of the emperor and always maintained concubines in their households, naturally found castrated men the most practical servants and personal retainers. Indeed, throughout most of the Ming period, castration remained a common practice in the southeastern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. Some landlords required their tenants to cut off their penes and scrotums before taking them as household servants. In 1372, upon hearing of such a practice in Fujian province, Emperor Hongwu threatened to castrate those who castrated their servants. But in spite of repeated stern warnings, well-to-do landlords continued to abuse, castrate, and even murder their tenants and hired laborers with little or no fear of being punished by the state.
It is then a canard that only emperors used castrati for servile work in their harems. As a matter of fact, a significant number of the Ming castrated men were hired by nobles and members of the imperial family who were enfeoffed throughout the empire. Ming emperors, as a rule, had many wives and concubines and produced many sons and daughters. But apart from the crown prince, all others were sent away from the capital as soon as they were grown up. They were given territorial titles, manors, and retainers and servants ranging from 3,000 to 19,000 persons. Since the status of imperial princes was hereditary, the oldest sons of the imperial princes and the sons of each new emperor exponentially added to their number. Moreover, the younger sons of every imperial prince became princes of the second degree and successive generations of their sons were granted noble titles in descending ranks. Such hereditary privileges continued until after the eighth generation when the imperial descendants were no longer ranked as nobles. Nevertheless, with polygamy as a general practice, after a period of 250 years, the number of imperial clansmen had grown to an estimated 100,000 and demand for castrated servants appeared to be insatiable.
In addition to the male descendants of the Ming emperors, women of imperial families were also made nobles and given retainers, eunuchs, and lands. The paternal aunts of a reigning emperor, the sisters, and daughters were all named imperial princesses, and their husbands were given privileges of nobility. Although the ranks and salaries accorded to relatives of the empresses and concubines were purely personal and were not inherited by their descendants, they undoubtedly helped create a bigger market for eunuch service. Finally, meritorious officials and victorious generals also added to the noble ranks of duke (gong), marquis (hou), and earl (bo). They were generally granted territorial designations and, in addition to receiving annual stipends of varying amounts, were also allowed to retain varying numbers of eunuchs.
Even though these princes and princesses were nothing more than salaried dignitaries and had no administrative or judiciary functions, they were not only a perpetual drain on state revenues but also eager employers of castrati. Here the simple economic theory of supply and demand came into play, as Ming society became more polarized between landowners and the proletariat. Destitute men castrated themselves or their children so that they could find employment in the princely establishments. And as social and economic conditions deteriorated, castration of one's own volition grew increasingly popular. For a commoner, unable to climb into the gentry class by either passing the difficult civil service examinations or purchasing a degree, the only means of gaining access to privileges and influence was by means of eunuchism. Consequently, voluntary castration became epidemic.
Ironically, the Ming government prohibited such practice. In the previous dynasties self-castration was permitted if closely monitored by the officials, who recorded the day of emasculation, examined the wound, and checked every detail during the healing process. However, since the establishment of the Ming dynasty, self-castration had been forbidden and several emperors had in fact issued decrees to ban such a practice. In 1424, Emperor Hongxi received a report from the city of Changsha that a man had cut off his own genital organ and offered himself to serve in the palace. The emperor considered this person a lazy vagabond who had failed to observe the Confucian principle of filial piety and had him banished to the frontier as a soldier. One month later, an elderly guard from a princely manor cut off his son's genitals before asking for a eunuch position for his son. Emperor Hongxi rebuked the father and made his son a soldier. During the decade after the death of Emperor Hongxi, virtually all persons involved in self-castration were either drafted as soldiers or exiled to the frontier regions or both.
No sooner had Emperor Xuande been enthroned than several low-ranking military and civilian personnel castrated themselves and applied for jobs in the palace. The new monarch reiterated his father's policy and ordered the Minister or Rites to send all such men to the border of Annam. A few months later, the Ministry of Rites again reported a case of self-emasculation in Shandong province. Without hesitation the emperor ordered the man banished and then warned the village heads not to conceal any information of wrongdoing or acts that were clearly in violation of Confucian filial piety. Nevertheless, the practice of self-emasculation continued into the reign of Emperor Xuande's successor. In 1436, a Buddhist monk performed his own emasculation. The new emperor Zhengtong not only annulled the monk's corvee exemption but also exiled him to southern Manchuria.
Even though several emperors had repeatedly prohibited self-castration, members of the imperial clans did not always heed such proclamations, because they regarded themselves superior elements within the state and the emperors often bent the rule when dealing with their relatives. During Emperor Xuande's first year on the throne, nine civilian and military personnel in Shanxi province practiced self-castration and then presented themselves to the princely establishment of Jin. As soon as the news reached Beijing, a censor impeached the Shanxi authorities. The emperor, after a brief deliberation, ordered that all nine persons be punished according to the penal code. The senior administrator of the princely establishment of Jin, who presumably failed to admonish the prince, was arrested and tried in the capital.
Of course, not all hereditary nobles were as arrogant and reckless as Prince Jin of Shanxi province who dared to ignore imperial proclamations. Usually when princes and princesses needed eunuchs they first sought the permission of the emperor. Some asked the emperor to supply their needs directly; others received imperial approval for accepting castrated servants from other sources. Prudent princes who maintained cordial relations with the reigning monarch usually had no problems in securing castrated servants.
The custom of using eunuchs in the princely establishments appears to have started with the third emperor, Yongle, who always had a special political relationship with castrati during his career. After taking the crown away from his nephew in 1402, Yongle wanted to make sure that his triumph, which had sapped the vitality of the country, would not in any way create further perilous resonances. Although answerable only to Heave and his ancestors, he was careful not to alienate further his surviving brothers and relatives. At the same time, he wanted to make sure that there was no effective opposition to his legitimacy and no encroachment of the local magnates; he therefore took measures to strengthen the bond between the emperor and the princely establishments. One such measure was that of giving regular royal presents to the princes and princesses who had demonstrated their loyalty to him during the stormy civil war. The list of royal gifts included silks, fabrics, tapestry, silver and gold bullion, and peculiarly enough, eunuchs who were professionally trained to work as "ears and eyes" of the emperor in the provinces. In the Ming official history, there are numerous records of such gifts. In the winter of 1425 when a prince in Shaanxi got married, Emperor Xuande gave him twenty-five palace women and twenty eunuchs; three years later this same monarch sent as wedding gifts seven women and five eunuchs to a prince enfeoffed in southern Manchuria. In 1445, Emperor Zhengtong bestowed on a prince in Datong four eunuchs, five cooks, and forty guards.
But as the number of nobles multiplied, by the mid-fifteenth century there appeared to be an increasing shortage of eunuchs as more and more requests for castrated servants arrived in the capital. In 1449 alone, Ming records show a total of thirty-four requests by the princes and princesses for the supply of eunuchs. Of the thirty-four requests, Emperor Zhengtong granted fourteen, denied one, but placed the other nineteen requests in limbo. What happened was that at the time the requests were made, the emperor had no more eunuchs to be spared. Consequently, he chose to condone a new practice by allowing his relatives to purchase self-castrated men from private sources. But the fact that the emperor acquiesced to such a practice actually encouraged some of his relatives to methodically stock up on castrated servants.
During the reign of Emperor Jingtai (1449 - 1457), the problem of self-castration had worsened and the new monarch was obviously annoyed by the fact that many of his trusted relatives did not seem to heed the ban on acquiring self-castrated men from private sources. In an attempt to arrest this practice, he adopted two measures, but neither of them brought any immediate tangible results. One measure was to exile the entire family of a self-castrated man to a frontier military colony if such a person was a soldier. If, on the other hand, the self-castrated man was a civilian, we was to be charge with a violation of filial piety and his village heads and neighbors would also be punished if they concealed knowledge of his act. Undoubtedly, the emperor was trying to restore some credibility to an establish policy. But he soon realized that he was running short of carrots as he was constantly under traditional obligation to send eunuchs to his cousins' weddings or his aunts' birthdays or to reward his meritorious ministers. Consequently, later in his reign, whenever he discovered illegal eunuchs who had practiced self-emasculation, he literally confiscated them, took them to the capital and put them under the supervision of the Directorate of Ceremonial. In other words, the emperor was forced to stockpile his own "inventory" of eunuchs so that whenever the occasion was called for, he could easily draw on his "commodities." Eunuchism had by the mid-fifteenth century become a political and social tool of the Ming emperor.
[Unless I hear a request to post the rest of this chapter, this is as far as I plan to go with it. As you can tell, the book is academic in its detail, though well written. It is available directly from the publisher, through Amazon, or by special order at your local bookstore.]