Early references to collective punishment in an excavated Chinese text: analysis and discussion of an imprecation from the Wenxian covenant texts

Abstract

Susan Roosevelt Weld has observed that the Houma and Wenxian covenant texts, excavated texts dating to the fifth century BC, can be considered “examples of collective responsibility”. New materials from the Wenxian covenant texts provide further evidence relevant to this issue. In this article I present my analysis of a previously unseen imprecation, “Cause [you] to have no descendants” 俾毋有胄後. I suggest the excavated covenants provide the earliest references found in a legal context to collective punishment, a practice that, while archaic in origin, is generally better known from Qin and later penal codes. I also discuss the scope of the term shì 氏, as it is used in the imprecation, in the context of Mark Lewis’s work defining basic social units in the Zhou period. Keywords: Houma 侯馬and Wenxian 溫縣covenant texts 盟書, 俾毋有 胄後, Imprecation, Collective punishment, shì 氏, Lineage, Palaeography