The Five Pains is a Chinese variation invented during the Qin dynasty. During the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), truncation of the body at the waist by means of a fodder knife was a death penalty reserved for those who were seen to have done something particularly treacherous or repugnant. That practice of cutting in two did not originate in the Tang dynasty; in sources concerning the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), no less than 33 cases of execution by cutting at the waist are mentioned, but occurs very rarely in earlier material.