The Narrators of Buddhist Scriptures and Religious Tales in the Sung Period

Abstract

Research by Chinese and Japanese scholars has revealed how important was the influence of the story-tellers of the Sung period on the whole development of the Chinese novel. These narrators created certain types of the novel and the story which remained popular in Chinese literature for a very long time. They invented or adapted various literary forms, created new themes and improved certain methods of composition which became standard for all later novelists. In the short story they composed works hardly surpassed by anything written later and the majority of famous long novels of the Ming period also developed from their narrations, as for example the San-kuo-chih yen-i, Shui-hu-chuan, Hsi-yu-chi, etc.

Ar Or 10 (1938) pp. 375–389.