Axu was the wife of a farmer, Wang the Third, of Fengxian village in Jiaxing. In early summer of the first year of Qiandao she died, and after a night she came back to life.
This is what she told.
“While I lay sick and failing, I saw two runners with a written warrant come to arrest me. They said: you are summoned to answer a charge. I said: the ordinary affairs of the house are managed by my husband and my sons; I have no part in them; why are you fetching me? The runners said: we need you to go. Before I knew it I was out of the door with them, along a road dim and cold with no sight of the sky, for some ten li and more, until we came to a government office where people came and went in crowds and clamour.
“The two halted me outside and went in first to write the arrival statement; then they drove me up to the foot of the court. Screens hung on all four sides. A clerk stood before me and asked: why did you forcibly seize the property of a junior kinsman?
“I answered him: I have never concerned myself with the affairs of the house. I have eaten vegetarian and invoked the Buddha for some thirty years. I remember only this — that my husband’s elder brother, Wang Da, divided the ancestral estate equally with my husband, Wang the Third. The elder brother afterwards went to Dasheng monastery and became a lay brother. His share of fields and gardens was pawned by his son, Wang Ba, to the Sun family of Weitang market town, and the money was gambled away and squandered improperly, until only the house plot was left — and that was the plot I leased out to a tenant.
“Some years later the elder brother died. Wang Ba was away from home and had not returned, so my husband Wang the Third cremated him and disposed of the bones. And when Wang Ba came back, we returned the house plot to him. Apart from that, there has been no seizing of anything.”
Then a voice was heard from behind the screen, calling for Wang Da to be brought out to confront her. A man in a cangue stood below the steps — it was her husband’s elder brother.
He said to me: “I have been a long time in the courts below, and did not know the particulars of things in the world above, and so I brought this matter twice. Now that it is clear, I will contend no further.”
I asked him what he was suffering for, to be in such a state.
He said: “When I was a lay brother I went about soliciting money from donors to build the bell tower, and I kept back part of it for myself. And I used to carry home the alms rice that came back from the offerings. That is why I am still in punishment and have not been released.”
When the confrontation was over, I begged to be allowed home.
The voice inside the screen said: “Having come here, how can you go back empty?”
So I was sentenced to the bamboo on the back. And at the third stroke, it was like waking out of a dream — and I came to on the instant.
The family looked at her back: the weals were clear to see. It was very painful, and only after several days did she recover.
A man of the county, Sun Han, newly appointed magistrate of Guangde, told the story.
