II

Beside the social backgrounds,I also argue that there are crucial comparable features within the witch-hunts in China and the West.First,we should pay attention to the popular mind,which had profound influence on expanding the scale of the witch-hunt.In the late nineteenth century,the French scholar Gustave Le Bon had made systematic research on the popular mind.He points out that the making of the‘crowd’assumes such a circumstance that the sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gatherings take one and the same direction,and individual conscious personality vanishes.A collective mind is formed,which is further subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.^[17]The mental unity,consisting of characteristics such as impulsiveness,mobility,irritability,the absence of judgment and critical spirit,the exaggeration of sentiments,stubbornness,imperiousness and the intention of violence,tortures the popular mind to be irrational.^[18]Some witch-hunt activities presented such characteristics fairly obviously.To some extent,it was these emotional and psychological features that stimulated the prevalence of the witch-hunt.In his research on the 1768 Sorcery Scare,Kuhn also underlines the significance of the popular mind in understanding the nature of the widespread event.In the initial‘Hsiao-shan affair’,agitated villagers quickly crowded around.The mob,angrier than ever,tied two strangers(taken as witches)up and searched them roughly.Finding nothing,they began to beat them.As the hubbub drew a larger crowd,some shouted‘burn them!’and others,‘drown them!’^[19]In the same day at another site in Xiao-shan,people had beaten an itinerant tinker to death because they believed that two charms found on him were soulstealing spells,although officials later discovered that they were only conventional formulae for propitiating the Earth Deity.^[20]

Witch-hunts in early modern Europe were also severely entwined with illegal violence and punishment driven by the crowd's absence of judgement,which on many occasions gave rise to further hunting of and prosecution toward witches.^[21]The fear of sorcery spread wildly.As a contemporary bishop commented:now several hundreds of witches can be found in one county;if the news is true,then in a northern village consisting of 14 households,there are 14 bad eggs(witches)who should be cursed.^[22]Feardriven violence met its climax in the witch-hunts by Matthew Hopkins in England between 1645 and 1647.People were desperate to imitate,follow and invite the‘renowned’professional witch-hunter to their own towns and communities,enquiring him to help find and prosecute those hateful sorcerers and witches.^[23]The invited witch-hunts had circulated among most regions of England within only two years,resulting in prosecutions towards at least 250 people and death penalties upon about 100 so-called witches.This was the greatest witch-hunt in British history.^[24]As Robin Briggs suggests,like all witch-hunts,this witch-hunt was supported by the local public,yet what Hopkins's witch-hunt Crusades did was only taking advantage of existing suspect rather than producing new one.^[25]Therefore,to a large extent,it was the popular mind that essentially led to the breakout and expansion of a“real”witch-hunt.^[26]

Another major similar feature of the witch-hunts bath in China and the west lies in the persecuted subjects,namely the selection of so-called sorcerers and witches.The principal target of the persecutions were marginal social groups.In the 1768 Sorcery Scare,people who were tortured were mostly lower-status Buddhist monks,Taoist priests,beggars and other marginal social groups;^[27]in the west,the persecuted were the elderly and the poor,a considerable amount of whom were female.To figure out the potential reason,we should first look at the wildly-accepted stereotype of the marginal groups,which was overwhelmingly negative.In Qing society,Buddhists and Taoists were of relevantly low status,and most of the clergies won little respect.A general Confucian disdain diffused for them since they were regarded as a group of people who were‘willingly shaved their heads to become monks and even failed to care for their parents,wives,and children,and whose activities are accordingly suspicious’.^[28]Besides,since most of the lower-status Buddhist monks and Taoist priests made their livings by begging,it was not rare that they left the others the impression of‘lazy bones’.More crucially,for Buddhist clergies,there were some men in limbo,neither in the orthodox family system nor ranked as the certified monk,having no explicit identity.The vagueness of the identity increased suspect and fear from around.Taoist priests aroused probably more unreserved suspect because they were usually related to various witchcraft and rituals.^[29]Another suspicious group were the lay beggars.Growing poverty out of great social changes were accompanied by the increase of the population of beggars,which further deepened the public's prejudice and discrimination toward them.Beggars were believed to be‘dirty’,a sort of‘contamination’ to the entire society,and an intrusion on of the original community life.Like monks,they were thought rootless and shiftless,yet their begging,comparing with monastic begging,was more despised and hated.^[30]In early modern Europe,the elderly was attached with negative fame as well.They were said to be trouble-makers,having contact with the Devil and being filled with special appeals.^[31]The poor,in order to survive and improve their own economic capacity,might take advantage of witchcraft and even make alliance with the Devil at times.Nevertheless,they were more likely to generate resentment when it was difficult for them to access to certain‘living aids’,which led them to practise witchcraft.^[32]Women were often discriminated by the mainstream because of their‘gender weakness’:they were easier to be tempted by the Devil,more jealous,therefore more likely to use witchcraft.^[33]What the stereotypes brought was many‘prophetic’and‘verified’imagination and correlation.Such phenomena became more popular in the period of great social changes,and those whose behaviours were uncanny became less bearable for local communities.^[34]Another probable reason might be that the marginal social groups were often equipped with far less ability to fight back and protect themselves.Thus accordingly,they were more likely persecuted as the subjects who were suspected to have practised witchcraft.As Kuhn argues,monks and beggars were the poorest and most defenseless groups in Chinese society.They were supported by no influential kinsmen,they had little or no economic reserves.^[35]Similar in early modern European society,the poor,especially those poor women,were the most weak and vulnerable groups among all types of members.They were old and incapable,and were most frequently chosen as the scapegoat of any misfortune.^[36]