Twice ToldJi Yun on the two kinds of jiangshi, Yuewei caotang biji, juan 10 (1791)
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
Ji Yun (1724 to 1805) wrote the five parts of Yuewei caotang biji between 1789 and 1798; his pupil Sheng Shiyan printed them together in 1800. This entry is in Rushi wowen (“Thus I have heard”), the part Ji Yun introduced with a note dated the 21st day of the 7th month of the xinhai year, 1791. The text follows the Sheng family’s reprint of 1816, in the copy held by the National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation, Beijing (call number 子875/2767).
道家有太陰煉形法，葬數百年，期滿則復生。此但有是說，未睹斯事。古以水銀斂者，尸不朽，則鑿然有之。董曲江曰：「凡罪應戮尸者，雖葬多年，尸不朽。呂留良焚骨時，開其棺，貌如生，刃之尚有微血。蓋鬼神留使伏誅也。」某人（是曲江之親族，當時舉其字，今忘之矣）時官浙江，奉檄涖其事，親目擊之。
然此類皆不爲祟。其爲祟者曰僵尸。僵尸有二：其一新死未斂者，忽躍起搏人；其一久葬不腐者，變形如魑魅，夜或出遊，逢人即攫。或曰旱魃即此，莫能詳也。
夫人死則形神離矣。謂神不附形，安能有知覺運動？謂神仍附形，是復生矣，何又不爲人而爲妖？且新死尸厥者，並其父母子女，或抱持不釋，十指抉入肌骨。使無知，何以能踴躍？使有知，何以一息纔絕，即不識其所親？是殆別有邪物憑之，戾氣感之，而非遊魂之爲變歟？
袁子才前輩《新齊諧》載南昌士人行尸夜見其友事，始而祈請，繼而感激，繼而悽戀，繼而忽變形搏噬。謂人之魂善而魄惡，人之魂靈而魄愚。其始來也，一靈不泯，魄附魂以行；其既去也，心事既畢，魂一散而魄滯。魂在則爲人也，魂去則非其人也。世之移尸走影，皆魄爲之，惟有道之人爲能制魄。語亦鑿鑿有精理。然管窺之見，終疑其別有故也。
Translation
The Daoists have a method of “refining the body in the Great Yin”: the body is buried for several hundred years and, when the term is up, comes back to life. That is only something people say; no one has seen it happen. That bodies laid out with mercury in ancient times did not rot is certain. Dong Qujiang said: “Anyone whose crime deserves the mutilation of the corpse stays uncorrupted, however many years he has been buried. When Lü Liuliang’s bones were burned, they opened his coffin and he looked alive; when they cut him, a little blood still came. The spirits kept him so that he could be punished.” A certain man (a relative of Qujiang’s; he gave his name at the time, but I have forgotten it) was then an official in Zhejiang, was ordered to oversee it, and saw it with his own eyes.
But none of these do harm. The ones that do harm are called jiangshi. There are two kinds. One is the newly dead who has not yet been put in the coffin, who suddenly leaps up and seizes people. The other is the long-buried corpse that does not rot, changes its shape into something like a mountain demon, sometimes goes out roaming at night, and snatches anyone it meets. Some say the drought demon is this second kind. No one can say for certain.
When a person dies, body and spirit separate. If the spirit no longer lives in the body, how can the body feel and move? If the spirit still lives in it, the person has come back to life, so why does it become a monster and not a human being? And the newly dead corpse that rises sometimes seizes even its own father, mother or children and does not let go, all ten fingers dug into flesh and bone. If it knows nothing, how can it leap about? If it knows something, how can it fail to recognise its own family the moment its breath has stopped? Is it not more likely that some other evil thing possesses it and some foul air stirs it, rather than the wandering soul itself changing?
My senior Yuan Zicai (Yuan Mei), in his Xin Qi Xie, tells of the walking corpse of a Nanchang scholar that came at night to see his friend: first it made requests, then it was grateful, then it was sad to part, then suddenly it changed shape and attacked. He explains that the hun soul is good and the po soul evil, the hun intelligent and the po dull. When the dead man first came, his mind had not yet gone out, and the po moved along with the hun. When he had finished what he had come to say, the hun scattered and the po stayed behind. While the hun is there, it is the man; once the hun has gone, it is no longer he. Every moving corpse and “walking shadow” in the world is the work of the po, and only a man of the Way can master the po. There is sound reasoning in this. Still, in my narrow view, I suspect there is some other cause.
Notes
- Punctuation and paragraphs are ours. Characters follow the 1816 print: 尸 throughout, 爲, 纔, 悽.
- The Wikisource transcription reads 新屍未斂者, 謂神乃附形 and 淒戀; the print has 新死未斂者, 謂神仍附形 and 悽戀.
- 躍起 and 踴躍 are the only movement words for the corpse: it “leaps up” to seize, and it “leaps about”. Nothing here makes it hop along a road.
- 走影, “walking shadow”, comes from the Nanchang scholar story as Ji Yun reports it.
- Ji Yun and Yuan Mei were contemporaries; the passage shows Ji Yun had Xin Qi Xie in hand when he wrote this part in 1791.
- The small-character note after 某人 is Ji Yun’s own, printed in half-size characters.