| The Great Ming Code (Da Ming lu) is one of the most important law codes in all of Chinese history. It not only set forth the value system and social norms for the Ming empire for several centuries, but also had a deep impact on the legal cultures of the Chinese Qing dynasty and China's neighboring countries of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.; This study focuses on the nature of the Great Ming Code as an embodiment of the envisioned cosmic order and its intended role in the imperial effort to educate the people and to transform society. The early Ming ruling elite, headed by the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), based the Great Ming Code on what they understood as tianli (Heavenly principle) and renqing (human sentiments) with the function to educate the people and to transform society in line with the cosmic order. This goal is illustrated by three groups of regulations: rituals for communicating with the world of spirits, the cosmic parents of human beings; norms for structuring and purifying the human realm; and rules for rectifying the ruling elite's behavior in mediating between the world of spirits and the realm of human beings.; On the basis of their legal cosmology, the early Ming ruling elite endowed the Great Ming Code with religious meaning. They envisioned the cosmos as an organic unit where the superhuman world possessed the power to intervene in human affairs. What the emperor ought to do was to follow Heavenly principle and preserve harmony both within society and between human beings and superhuman spirits. One way to achieve this was to establish law by following Heavenly principle. Law, in other words, served as a cosmological instrument to transform human beings.; My study challenges the conventional viewpoints that perceive law in imperial China as an oppressive tool which was only concerned with political control and as a secular culture which had little to do with superhuman forces. I suggest that the early Ming ruling elite held a holistic view regarding the cosmos and the human realm; and law, religion, and political authority were not differentiated. |
