The Case of a Slave Committing the Ten Abominations in Zhu'e County, Qi Prefecture

During the Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty, in Zhu'e County of Qi Prefecture, a household slave violently assaulted his mistress, Wang Clan, following a dispute. The master’s son immediately reported the crime to the county authorities. Under the Tang Code, a slave assaulting a master or the master's close relatives fell under "Evil Unfiliality" (one of the "Ten Abominations"), the most heinous category of crime against the Confucian social and familial order. Given the severity, the county magistrate escalated the case to the prefecture level. The trial confirmed the slave’s violent intent and his subordinate status in the master-slave hierarchy. The strict application of the law bypassed standard procedural restrictions, ensuring the harshest possible punishment to uphold the absolute authority of the household head and the moral fabric of the patriarchal system.

The unnamed slave was convicted of the capital offense of "Evil Unfiliality" under the Ten Abominations. Due to the unpardonable nature of the crime, the sentence was immediate execution by decapitation, without the possibility of amnesty through regular imperial pardons.

The central legal debate was the strict application of the "Ten Abominations" to the master-slave relationship. While the physical evidence of the assault was clear, the core judicial question was whether the act fully constituted "Evil Unfiliality" versus a lesser crime of general violence, which hinged on whether the victim, as the master's mother, strictly fit the proximate familial status required for the "Abomination" designation. The ultimate decision emphasized the legal principle that servile status completely collapsed any protective social distance, making any offense against the master equivalent to violating the natural order.

This case reinforced the absolute legal sanctity of the household hierarchy in Tang society, publicly demonstrating that the state would deploy the fullest extent of legal violence to protect the master class. It served as a potent deterrent against servant insubordination, solidifying the interpretation of the "Ten Abominations" as a legal tool to maintain rigid social stratification where a slave's violence against a master was not a mere personal crime but a metaphysical assault on the cosmic and political order itself.