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Pingyuanlu 平冤錄

Mar 22, 2021 © Ulrich Theobald

Pingyuanlu 平冤錄 "Records of balancing unfair verdicts" is a collection of law cases compiled by Zhao Yizhai 趙逸齋 (or Zhao Yiqi 趙逸齊, Yuan xxx) and later commented by Wu Zi 吳鼒 (Qing). The short text quotes largely from the Song-period 宋 (960-1279) book Xiyuanlu 洗冤錄 and explains how to examine corpses to find out the real circumstances of death. It includes 43 cases that help discerning between different types of injuries and various manners of death, from methods of suicide to hanging, beating, poisoning, freezing, injuries by scalding, or bodies damaged by animals eating from them. The author of the Pingyuanlu added some new findings to the quotations from older texts.

The oldest print was produced during the Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Wang Shenwu 王慎吾 xxx. It is part of Wu Zi's 吳鼒 (1755-1821) series Song-Yuan jianyan sanlu 宋元檢驗三錄 from 1812.

Sources:
Yang Fengkun 杨奉琨 (1982). "Pingyuanlu 平冤录", Faxue 法学, 1982 (1): 25.
Yu Ying’ao 余瀛鰲, Li Jingwei 李經緯, eds. (2000). Zhongyi wenxian cidian 中醫文獻辭典 (Beijing: Beijing kexue jishu chubanshe), 183.
Zhuang Shufan 莊樹藩, ed. (1990). Zhonghua gu wenxian da cidian 中華古文獻大辭典, Vol. Yiyao 醫藥卷 (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe), 38.