Study On The Eight Great Prose Writers And Buddhism In Tang And Song Dynasty

The essential writing principle of Chinese writers is to write literary works for the service of the society. The essence and feature of the works by the Eight Great Prose Writers in Tang and Song dynasty, the advocates and leading characters of ancient prose writing movement, who are the great masters of scholars, serve for the main trend of ideology and the ruling class. Their works share such literary ideas and comrron features as supporting the reign of the ruling government and upholding the Confucians' ideology. Therefore the works by the Eight Great Prose Writers in Tang and Song dynasty are advocated and held in esteem by later generations.With the development of Buddhism till Tang and Song dynasty, it has already integrated with the local culture. Though the Eight Great Prose Writers in Tang and Song dynasty take the spreading of Confucianism as their responsibility, they never completely negate Buddhism but accept the part that is useful and make good use of it. There is evidence that many traces left in the works suggest that Buddhism has exerted great influence on them. By classifying the collection of works handed down from the Eight Great Tang and Song Prose Writers according to the writing styles, discriminating them and surveying the classification of writing styles related to Buddhism, the parts with distinctive features are classified into chapters according to the writers on the basis of the common features of the works. The first part of my dissertation comprises such points as Hanyu's poetry with prose writing elements Vs the rhymed composition in the Buddhist scripture; Liu zongyuan's fables on animals Vs the Buddhists' stories; Ou yangxiu's writings on offering sacrifice to God or ancestors Vs inscriptions on tablets; Zenggong's prayers in the Buddhist temple Vs writings on architecture in the temples; Wang anshi and Su zhe's praise to Buddhist doctrine; and Su shi's deliberately designed Buddhist language, etc.In the course of collecting and discriminating the works related to Buddhism by the Eight Great Tang and Song Prose writers, I come to notice their reception from theBuddhist culture and get some materials with regard to their acquaintance and friendship with Buddhist monks. In the process of sorting out these materials, I come to realize that virtually the Buddhism has great influence on the Eight Great Writers by way of such common affairs that every scholar has. Because of the innumerable complicated materials, I select only several aspects for my research so as to see the whole picture of it.Buddhists regard copying the Buddhist scripture as their merits and virtues, so Buddhist scripture is duplicated and accumulated in order to be widely spread in public. Because of this, the book that is the easiest to get is Buddhist scripture and not only is there almost no scholar who hasn't read Buddhist scripture, but there are many who copy the Buddhist sutra as well. In addition, copying books can have such practical values as conforming the Chinese characters to standard and practicing handwriting. A poor handwriting may cause some difficulties in social intercourse and may even be laughed at by scholars. As to the significance of copying the Buddhist sutra, this paper intends to do the research on it as well.The Eight Great Tang and Song Prose Writers are two scholastic communities in the middle of Tang dynasty and early Song dynasty. There are two distinctive features in their acquaintances and friendship with Buddhists monks. First, their acquaintance with the Buddhist monks overlaps---one's friend outside the world is another's friend at the same time. In the second place, there are many similarities between Hanyu, the leading character of the mid-Tang dynasty and Ou yangxiu, the leading character of the Song dynasty, even their stories about being converting into Buddhists (proclaiming themselves Buddhists) are very similar. These two features are also what this paper focuses on.Positively speaking, the imperial examination system provides a great number of intelle...