The Idea of Victimness in Tang Law
The article offers a new and rather nontrivial view on some specifi c norms of the traditional Chinese law. At fi rst glance they seem not more then small-sized illogicalities and incongruities. But it is possible, that actually they reveal a distinct concept of traditional Chinese legal thought. Strange, inexplicable indulgence to some crimes and to some offenders, quite probably, had the same cause: a certain inaccuracy of a victim behavior. Such inaccuracy could be regarded as provoking the crime. It facilitated to the offender selection of a victim and realization of a criminal act. So, the offender merited certain indulgence. We can suppose that general Chinese ideas about the people and their life in society made it impossible for the Tang legislators to consider the criminal and his crime in a full separation from a victim of the given crime and his preceding behavior. As a result, the severity of punishment in some cases varied according to particular qualities of object of a crime.