Albert Tan (University of Groningen, Faculty of Law; Interdisciplinary Analysts) has posted Law in a Thousand Characters: Punishment, Adjudication and Commentary in the Qianziwen on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The Qianziwen (千字文) places praise of restrained law beside the apprehension and execution of wrongdoers, while recalling an exemplary official through the sweet-pear tree associated with his adjudication. This article examines the legal reasoning made available by these passages and their explanation in an annotated edition preserved at Waseda University Library. Reading that witness alongside the Hanshu, Shiji and recorded Liang legislation reveals several distinctions obscured by a simple opposition between moral government and punishment. Legal simplicity can accompany severe sanctions; a commentator’s account of penal excess can depart from the biography of its named exemplar; and the description of persons as offenders can presuppose the identification that legal procedure must establish. Comparison with the Tanglü shuyi, the Jijiupian and the Youxue qionglin shows that moral explanation and procedural knowledge occupy overlapping textual forms. An Old Uighur translation further illustrates how legal meaning can emerge outside an expected Chinese vocabulary. The article argues that the primer offers resources for evaluating coercion whose legal implications depend on the explanatory text brought to bear. Its evidence concerns particular representations and interpretations of authority, with consequences for how elementary texts should be used in legal history.
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