Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s1.t1: Fictional Narratives of the Supernatural World
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s1.t1
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Fictional Narratives of the Supernatural World
v2.c10.s1.t1.1
*Zhiguai Xiaoshuo* refers to fictional narratives of the supernatural world in classical Chinese and in particular, to those of gods and ghosts, heaven and hell, karma and other themes that were written in the Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties. According to Lu Xun, in the Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties, fiction was not a conscious production by Chinese literati. At that time, the so-called “novels” could be divided into two categories; one “Zhiren tales” which narrates real deeds and episodes of literati and officials and may make up the deficiency of official records and the other called “Zhiguai Xiaoshuo”, which mainly includes various weird stories and are not considered literary production. The latter is usually called “Zhi”, “Ji” or “Lu”, since it is a truthful record of what is heard rather than a literary production such as ‘*Linggui Zhi, Yuanhun Zhi, Soushen Ji, Shiyi Ji, Youming Lu, Jinyi Lu* etc.
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Despite a combination of Buddhist and Daoist influence and a purpose to advocate thoughts of these two schools, these tales, in fact, have a greater tint of Buddhism. During this period, a great number of monks left from India and the Western Regions to go to China and Chinese monks also went to India to collect sutras and study Sanskrit and they collaborated and translated many classic Buddhist texts including Buddhist literary works. At that time Buddhism was popular among nobles, officials and literati in China and was widely disseminated among ordinary population. Men of letters, mentally and socially, were ready to write down such supernatural tales. Buddhist texts gave them a new outlook of time and space and aroused a kind of amazing imagination. For instance, *Zhi Guai* and *Youming Lu* all contained a tale about “kalpa-ash” and “*kalpa*” is a Sanskrit expression and a concept of time, borrowed from India. Another example, according to Book 10 of *Shiyi Ji*, Kunlun Mountain could be divided into nine layers and obviously, this three-dimensional portrait of the universe had the influence of Buddhism. Buddhist texts also brought a new outlook of life and morality and people thus became aware of this world, the afterworld and karma. Zhiguai Xiaoshuo call for “no killing” which, clearly, originated from Buddhism and their descriptions of hell, basically, also came from Buddhist texts. For this reason, Lu Xun called them “books of secondary education for Buddhism”.
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'A Record of Spirits and Ghosts' (Ling gui zhi)
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Zhiguai Xiaoshuo in Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties often copied stories from Buddhist scriptures or made a few alterations and then turned them into Chinese tales. “Parrot and Fire”, a tale in *Xuanyan Ji*, was directly taken from the *Old Miscellaneous Avadana*. Linggui Zhi contains a tale of a “foreign preacher” and Xu Qixie Ji has a story about “a scholar of Yangxian”. They are much the same, and all adapted from the tale of “Brahmin and Pot” in the *Old Miscellaneous Avadana*. Similar cases are many and can be used for comparative study of Chinese and Indian literature.
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(*Xue Keqiao*)