The Han dynasty ordered the castration of Li Yannian (musician) as punishment for a crime. Zhang He, the older brother of Zhang Anshi was originally sentenced to death but was castrated instead when his brother pleaded for the sentence to be commuted. Loulan asked for his return in 9 after their king died but the Han dynasty refused since they wanted to cover up the fact that they castrated him. The Han dynasty under the reign of Emperor Wu castrated a prince of the kingdom of Loulan from Xinjiang that they were holding hostage at court because he broke a law. Castration as a punishment was known as gōngxíng ( 宮刑 "palace punishment") or fǔxíng ( 腐刑 "rotting punishment"). ĭuring the Han dynasty, the euphemism for castration was "sent to the silkworm house" since castrated men had to be shut in an enclosed room like how silkworms were raised during the castration procedure and when they were recovering in order to prevent death. In another incident multiple people, including a chief scribe and his underlings, were subjected to castration. Sima Qian, the famous Chinese historian, was castrated by order of the Han Emperor of China for dissent. In Han dynasty China, castration continued to be used as a punishment for various offenses. Men punished with castration during the Han dynasty were also used as slave labor. The Qin government confiscated the property and enslaved the families of rapists who received castration as a punishment. Men sentenced to castration were turned into eunuch slaves of the Qin dynasty state to perform forced labor for projects such as the Terracotta Army.
Ray Huang argues that in reality, eunuchs represented the personal will of the Emperor, while the officials represented the alternative political will of the bureaucracy. There were instances of very capable eunuchs who were valuable advisers to their emperor, and the resistance of the "virtuous" officials often stemmed from jealousy on their part. In his History of Government, Samuel Finer points out that reality was not always that clear-cut. The tension between eunuchs in the service of the emperor and virtuous Confucian officials is a familiar theme in Chinese history. As a symbolic assignment of heavenly authority to the palace system, a constellation of stars was designated as the Emperor's, and, to the west of it, four stars were identified as his "eunuchs." In many cases, eunuchs were considered more reliable than the scholar-officials. It is said that the justification for the employment of eunuchs as high-ranking civil servants was that, since they were incapable of having children, they would not be tempted to seize power and start a dynasty. Self-castration was a common practice, although it was not always performed completely, which led to it being made illegal. Certain eunuchs gained immense power that occasionally superseded that of even the Grand Secretaries such as the Ming dynasty official Zheng He. From those ancient times until the Sui dynasty, castration was both a traditional punishment (one of the Five Punishments) and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. Įunuchs have existed in China since about 146 AD during the reign of Emperor Huan of Han, and were common as civil servants by the time of the Qin dynasty. Both organs were cut off with a knife at the same time. In China, castration included removal of the penis as well as the testicles (see emasculation). Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function.
Mural from the tomb of the prince Zhanghuai, 706 AD.Ī eunuch ( / ˈ juː n ə k/ YOO-nək) is a man who has been castrated.