Biji(miscellaneous notes),produced in the Tang Dynasty,recorded many supernatural ca-ses involving crimes prohibited by the Tanglv(Tang Code)and zhaochi(edicts),such as violating pri-vate property,personal safety and kinship,disrupting social order,and endangering political stability.Both perpetrators and victims of such crimes came from all fields and classes in society.The victims might choose to swallow insult and humiliation silently,implement self-remedy,seek mediation,or ap-peal for a trial by law,and access to justice was never the only way to solve the problem.Once entering into the justice process,although the officials dealing with such cases were also affected by an atmos-phere of firm belief in the supernatural,many of them could nevertheless judge the case by law.They would search for evidence to verify whether the parties'statements about the supernatural were credible.Since it was hard for objective evidence to prove the subjective attitude of behavior,they would not re-gard misunderstandings of the supernatural as grounds of sentence reduction.More importantly,since the boundary between the supernatural and evil was fuzzy,officials would often actively and severely punish the creators of the supernatural who might delude the masses and harm the ruling power.They believed that good would always triumph over evil,which might help them overcome fears.However,it's frustrating that the original purpose of the creation of some supernatural phenomena and the relevant legislation and judicial system was to encourage virtue and punish evil,but the results were often coun-terproductive.They either led to miscarriages of justice and false accusations,provided crime methods that could be imitated,or became the means of committing crimes directly.
Biji of Tang Dynastylegal culturethe supernaturalthe belief that good will always tri-umph over evil
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