乾隆辛巳,虎丘有乞者,養一狗熊,大如川馬,箭毛森立,能作字吟詩,而不能言。往觀者,一錢許一看。以素紙求書,則大書唐詩一首,酬以百錢。一日,乞丐外出,狗熊獨居。人又往,與一紙求寫。熊寫云:「我長沙鄉訓蒙人,姓金名汝利。少時被此丐與其伙伴捉我去。先以啞藥灌我,遂不能言。先畜一狗熊在家,將我剝衣捆住,渾身用針刺之,熱血淋漓。趁血熱時,即殺狗熊剝其皮包在我身上,人血狗血交粘生牢,永不脫落,用鐵鏈鎖我以騙人,今賺錢幾數萬貫矣。」書畢指其口,淚下如雨。眾人大駭,將丐者擒送有司,照采生折割律,立杖殺之。押解狗熊至長沙,交付本家。
余按:己未年京師某官奸僕婦,被婦咬去舌尖,蒙古醫來,命殺狗取舌,帶熱血鑲上,戒百日不出門,後引見奏對如初。元某將軍入陣,受刀箭傷無算,血涌氣絕。太醫某命殺馬剖其腹,抱將軍卧馬腹中,而令數十人摇動之,如食頃,將軍浴血而立,皆一理也。
In the year xinsi of Qianlong’s reign (1753), in Huqiu (in Jiangsu province) there was a beggar who kept a black bear which was as big as a Sichuan pony, had fur thick like a forest, and could write words and recite poetry, but was unable to speak. Onlookers could pay a coin and be allowed a glimpse, or bring plain paper and have a Tang dynasty poem written out elaborately for a hundred cash.
One day the beggar went out, and the bear was left on its own. Someone came along with a sheet of paper wanting it to write. The bear wrote, “I’m a schoolteacher from Changsha, my surname is Jin and my given name is Ruli. When I was a young man I was kidnapped and taken away by this beggar and his accomplice. First they gave me a muting drug, so I couldn’t talk. They had been keeping a black bear in the house, and they stripped my clothes and tied me up, pricking me all over with a needle so I was soaked in warm blood. Before it cooled, they killed the bear, peeled off its skin and wrapped it around me, and the bear blood and human blood made it stick fast so I could never take it off. They shackle me and make me deceive people, and I have earned them several tens of thousands strings of cash in profit.” After he finished writing he pointed to his mouth, and his tears fell like rain. The assembled crowd were astonished, and they took hold of the beggar and dragged him before the local officials; in accordance with the laws on witchcraft he was executed by flogging. The bear was escorted back to Changsha and handed over to his family.
Author’s note: In the year jiwei a certain official in the capital who had an evil servant woman, and she bit off the tip of his tongue. A Mongolian doctor came and directed him to kill a dog, take its tongue, and use hot blood to attach it. He warned the patient not to step outside his door for a hundred days. Afterwards the official could present memorials just as before.
During the Yuan, a certain general received a great many wounds in battle; blood spurted and he was about to breath his last. A doctor ordered the killing of a horse, had its stomach opened, laid the general within it, and had several dozen people shake it. After a moment the general stood up, bathed in blood but otherwise quite recovered.
Yuan Mei 袁枚, Wang Yingzhi 王英志 (ed.), Yuan Mei Quanji 袁枚全集 [The Collected Works of Yuan Mei] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1993), Volume 4: Zi Bu Yu 子不語, juan 9, pp. 164-65.
Translator’s note: Such medicinal practices are not unheard of in early modern Inner Asia – for discussion of a range of textual references, some perhaps more alarming than the above tales, see Francis Woodman Cleaves, ‘A Medical Practice of The Mongols in The Thirteenth Century’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17 (1954), 428-444.
(This article is available, to those of us with institutional affiliations, via JSTOR at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2718323)
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