Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/160

140 head or exposing the head, constituted the penalty. Two fearful punishments were reserved for treason, adultery, or other black offences: tearing the body to pieces by attaching head, arms, and legs to five separate horses and lashing them to make them pull in different directions, and lighting the "Celestial lamp." In the last-named punishment the hapless victim was soaked or wrapped in inflammable materials, such as oil, and burned to death. This was not, perhaps, more cruel than the ling chih process of slicing a person to pieces, which the imperialists used in extreme cases, but it made the shudders run down the spine of those who told of them. Death was the punishment for crimes ranging from treason to the singing of wanton songs and absence from divine worship."