Hello, my name is Nelson Landry. I am a DPhil student at the Oriental Institute in Oxford. And this is a short introductory lecture to the works of a figure central to my own research. The 7th century Buddhist scholar Monk Doctrine and more broadly to fantasy in the mediaeval Chinese context, Darshan is best known in East Asia for his works on the monastic code known as Vinaya.
Given that he commented and promoted a set of regulations still applied today in China and Japan, the ties between this monk and the fantasy genre are at first a bit obscure. But today I hope to bring some associations to be of interest to us in terms of Chinese fantasy literature. A genre I will speak more about later is that translate turn in the sorry, his late turn to the compilation of narratives related to the fantastic called Buddhist Miracle Tales.
I will begin with an introduction to Darshan and his work, which will in turn allow us to better understand miracle pill authors and their audience. This will lead, perhaps tangentially, to the question of what we mean here by fantasy, ending with examples of leaders so-called Chinese fantasy literature, followed by some concluding remarks.
To begin for preamble on the scholar Monk Doctrine, his life, as it is recounted in mediaeval Buddhist histories, presents the modern reader with the Janus faced figure is on the one hand learnt it abbot and a commentator on the monastic codes. Well, on the other hand, is a pious pilgrim who converse with celestial beings, as well as an unflinching believer in the religious efficacy of cult objects.
He is, in a sense, part religious disciplinarian and part wonder worker two categories that, according to present day rationalist sensibilities, do not marry well together. However, this was not an issue in mediaeval China, where miracles were objects of all not doubt so that the people would most likely have taken the miracles associated to doctrine as the fruits of his Buddhist practise and piety. Dushman was born in 596 in Chang'an presentation in the north west of China and died in 667.
This period coincides with the Sui and early Tang dynasties, two periods of great literary innovation and development, amongst other things. Dushman came from a wealthy family of Southerners, was educated in the classics and by the age of nine, could supposedly compose lyrical verse called Fu at 15 years old. So his biography claims he became weary of worldly affairs, took to reading and reciting Buddhist scriptures, finally leaving his family to join the monastic order in China.
The rest of his life would be guided by his drive to promote Buddhism, a creed originally from India in China, as he sought to reform monastic codes so as to further the purposes of the Buddhist community. He studied under different masters of monastic discipline, travelling the country to learn from them and to visit sacred sites in the mid 7th century. He even assisted in the translation of scriptures alongside the renowned Chinese pilgrim.
Trends are better known as trippy taka in the popular 16th century dramatisation of his own travels to the western regions called the Journey to the West Quixote, or Monkey, as is the title of Arthur Wheatley's popular 1942 translation. He was both a prominent monk serving as abbot in the town capital, as well as a hermit figure retreating to the Jong-Nam Mountains south of Chang'an to do much of his thinking and editing later in life.
He resided in an hermitage in the mountains, where he compiled Buddhist histories and apologia, as well as recorded his latter day interviews with celestial beings who revealed to him point of doctrine in history. He composed a dozen works later in life related to the miraculous of interest to us today is a work of his called the collected record of miracles relating to the three jewels in China, the Jewish and your son Beau Cantaloupe, which I will call the record of miracles for short.
It is a compilation of miracle tales drawn from varied sources recounting stories of Buddhism miraculous efficacy in China from the third to the late 7th century. The structure of the text is modelled after the three jewels of Buddhism, the tri ratna or in Chinese sambo classifying narratives according to how they represent the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. That is stories that take place on Chinese soil about what does the Buddhist teachings and the monastic community.
The record of miracles is a collection of one hundred and fifty itemised miracle tales. It was written with the purpose of presenting its audience with examples of how normal existence can be turned upside down in an instant. In Chinese traditional belief, normal existence, what is called the syndrome is only an overlay to an unseen realm or world inhabited by supernormal beings, unrestrained by the limitations of the syndrome.
The record of miracles was therefore a collection of tales recounting how supernormal and extraordinary events were caused by Buddhist agents, be they monks, relics, images, pagodas or scriptures. These narratives include visits to the Buddhist [INAUDIBLE] realms, usually the result of a premature death after which the protagonist returns to his body with renewed religious zeal. There are tales of miracles produced by Buddhist images such as moving, walking and sometimes flying.
Pagodas might omit rainbows that shoot up into the clouds, and monks might receive fortuitous visits from a benevolent spirit, as was the case in Dolphin's own biography when he was passed on knowledge from the unseen realm. The record of miracles presents a world where holy monasteries appear out of the mist and wonder working monks boggles the mind of onlookers with their supernatural powers. Just as Moses appeased the pharaoh in Exodus by turning Eren staff into a snake.
So the sarkeesian monk king song way, please soon Chen, the ruler of Wu by making relics appear in a bowl. The story goes that when Chen tested the authenticity of this relic by burning and then by hammering it, the relic could not be destroyed. The record of miracle states that he was impressed by this miraculous object, and therefore soon trend would have established one of the first monastic communities in southern China at the Jeonju Monastery.
Story continues with Susan, how the grandson of son Tran and the last tyrannical ruler of Woo, who would have tested Kong Louise Relic, which as before was left unaffected. Somehow, ever, the irreverent heretic would later have taken a holy image of the Buddha to place it in the in the latrine on the Buddha's birthday, instead of offering the image the customary ablutions, he wished the Buddha many happy returns and urinated on it.
His privates immediately began to swell and burn so that he became very ill. Only when one of Swinton's servants recommended that he clean the image and present it with proper offerings, did the swelling stop now in the story? We know themes common throughout all miracle tales and the miraculous power of cult objects.
That is the indestructible relics, the ties between monastics and royalty concerningly, and his private interviews with the rulers and karmic retribution somehow suffering after his improper behaviour towards the Buddha image. Dushman selection of texts also represent certain tropes that would later translate to other non Buddhist genres, such as the prosaic tales of anomalies Draghi and the more elaborate Tang Dynasty tales say the Tang Dynasty Tales of the Strange The Twenty.
Literary tropes such as visits to Buddhist hells in tandem with return from death stories would become common narratives borrowed by Chinese authors in the tongue and beyond karmic retribution. For example, is a constant in Chinese literature. Another example is how Buddhist monks were nuns and their association to wonder working still appears.
Wonder workers in Chinese fiction to this day. Just as the records of the Western regions, the Datong Shivaji based friendzone that I mentioned before would later become the basis for one of the four great classics of Chinese literature turning to the West this year. So the tales that downtrend compiled would become the source of inspiration of fantasy authors for centuries to come.
At this point, it is essential to note the downtrend was not a fantasy author and that miracle tales were not an early form of fantasy fiction. They were, if anything, proto fantasy. And that in content only. I mentioned Sharon and these tales because his compilations and the tales themselves would greatly influence later fictional works.
Fantasy did not develop the same in China as it did in the West, in Western literature, the supernatural or the supernormal and the fantastic as their association with the term fantasy suggests, or conceived mainly from the angle of creative perception, the projection of the author's vision, rather than from that of the reality represented.
According to certain Todorov, the supernatural in the fantastic may be differentiated according to the reader's perception, as well as the author's perception underlying the supernatural is a belief in its reality. And if the reader accepts it as real, then it is based on belief and not considered fantasy. The miracle tale was not trying to entertain or baffle its readers, as Glenn Duddridge, the late Shah professor of Chinese at Oxford, said about these tales.
It is a literature of record, not a fantasy and create a fiction. In fact, during the early Tang, the concept of fiction did not yet exist, and the act of writing was, to a certain extent, always done for the purpose of recording perceived fact.
Unlike other early anomaly accounts where the tongue tails of the strange, which were secular in their outlook, miracle tales were genuinely believed by practitioners to be records of confirming evidence, proofs, signs or else of responses validating their beliefs.
Fiction, however, became an acceptable literary practise during the Tang Dynasty as a matter of fact, one of the earliest examples of Chinese fiction is the linked verse on the song Tripod by Hand, a ninth century high official who famously petitioned against the imperial support of Buddhism.
The highly traditionalist ancient text or coup and movement of the tongue, also contrary to what one might expect from a conservative literary movement pushed away from literature of fact and began to touch on fiction and fantasy. This continued throughout the tongue, and as many of these Buddhist miracle tales were weaved into longer, more elaborate narratives. These were no longer the histories recorded by pious monks, but the whimsical writings of literati and retired officials.
Jumping ahead over 1000 years, perhaps the best known example of this interweaving of narratives is the strange tales from a Chinese studio, the DOJ jury by the 17th century that A-Rod is loosening. A collection of about 500 Stories of the Strange, which were first published posthumously in 1766, this large collection, written in highly elliptical classical language, recounts the stories of sexual encounters with Fox Spirits possession stories.
Supernormal encounters with demons are ultimately a development on the aforementioned Tang Dynasty miracle tales, anomaly accounts and tales of the strange. However, Pisoni writes in his preface that these were stories that he fabricated. Inspired by what he himself had seen or heard, and what tales his friends might have passed on to him. To give one example of the many tales related to Buddhism in the laboratory, I will mention the.
Purple Lotus Buddhist, the story of the initial Thai, who was ill and died. He then travelled down to the Buddhist house, only to return from death, claiming that he was enlightened. He then called on a monk to debate with him about scriptures correcting the monk on different points of doctrine. However, Ding was still ill. So he called for Dongsheng. A scholar of broad learning to come and cure him on his way.
Trunchbull was chastised by a celestial figure in the form of an old lady who said that she had bad blood between Shoretire, whom she addresses as the Purple Lotus Buddhist, and that he should not be cured, went on to recount this to Ding Shorthair. Ding accepts that this is his fate, his karma, and he dies on the spot. These narratives related to the Buddhist health and to karma so popular in miracle tale collections, which historians record of miracles are repeated throughout the literature.
And we can see how by the 7th 17th century, the miracle tale genre had certainly left its imprint on the Chinese psyche. In contemporary literature, the closest and certainly the most popular fantasy subgenre would be the romantic tales of the Knights errant shell. These are romance tales of warriors who gain supernatural powers by their mastery of the martial arts.
These stories have made it to the big screen, with iconic scenes of fighters flying through bamboo groves in King, who's a touch of Zen or the gravity defying acrobatics in the year 2000 production of one Lulu's future novel Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Miracle tale tropes are diffused throughout these stories, so much so that they have simply become part of the fabric that makes up Chinese fantasy literature.
While the fantasy genre and its many subgenres have developed in China, genuine recounting of fantastic tales have not necessarily gone away. For example, the Chinese language press both in the Midland and in Hong Kong regularly recount extraordinary phenomena. Sometimes humans, sometimes not to mention only one instance. In August 2004, the Hong Kong press provided a description of a man discovered in a remote part of the Chinese countryside,
whose entire body was densely covered in hair. Today, stories like these abound and reveal to us. If anything, with the line between fantasy and the Council of the Supernormal, such as Miracle Tales, is perhaps the line drawn between belief and disbelief. To conclude, today, I have spoken of the scholar, Monk Dilshan, whose own biography reads more like a legend than a history. I've also mentioned the miracle tale genre, as well as the fantasy genre and some of its subgenres.
We have looked at what constitutes fans fantasy in the Chinese context and how intent is central to the process. Finally, today I have shown how Buddhist themes are a constant in Chinese fantasy and that by the influence of doctrines, compilations of miracle tales he and others like him have helped shape the ever changing landscape of fantasy literature in China.