"strange Tales" And Religious Culture

Being one of the greatest works of ancient fairy tales, Strange Tales of Liaochai has reached the top of the classical Chinese. It contains profound and comprehensive connotation of religious culture that touches upon a great deal of aspects such as Buddhism, Taoism, original religions, and folk beliefs. Fargoing, variegated and miscellaneous contents are immingled in it.At present the theses to study the religious ideology of Strange Tales of Liaochai can be counted on our fingers, they are seemed flimsy and neither comprehensive nor profound. These circumstances are not capable to match the actuality of colorful and profound connotation of religious culture in it, as a master- work of the classical Chinese. This article is trying to study completely the connotation of religious culture in Strange Tales of Liaochai from the point of view of religious culture, so as to explore the enchantment of the fairy world of it.This article is divided into five chapters. The introduction is to explain the era and literature background in which Strange Tales of Liaochai was written, scilicet how the evolvement of the trend of thoughts during the last years of the Ming Dynasty and early years of the Qing Dynasty effected the composition of it. As the two dynasties brought tremendous impacts to the whole society, the thinkers at that time recalled a painful experience and turned over to think the historical lessons of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and inveighed the selfhood liberation trend of thoughts that prevailed in the former times. They called for putting up over again the banners of Zhuxi's theory and regressing the tradition and rebuilt the traditional morality. There came forth a trend of thought in the story composition to propagandize civilization, feudalism ethic and morality. Strange Tales of Liaochai just was created in such era and literature background.Chapter one is On the Composition Psychology of Pu Songling. Section one of it discourses upon the Confucian feelings and salvation advice of Pu Songling that goodwill will be awarded while evil will be punished. In order to suit the era demand to rebuild the traditional morality, he took the composition as the tool to propagandize civilization consciously, and to give advice and salvation to the world. No other than this goal, he exposed the darkness of feudal official administrations, attacked the abuse of imperial examination system, the evil ways of the world and human behaviors, expressed his indignation alone, so that made Strange Tales of Liaochai possess more depth and extent in criticizing the actuality than former strange tales and romance stories of the same theme, and has higher mental valueand impressing fascinations.Section two analyzes Pu Songling's self-salvation mentality to cure his wound by himself. As the actuality owed him so much that he was eager to compensate himself much more in his fabricated fancy world, which was just his major idea to create fairy stories in Strange Tales of Liaochai. His demand to balance his mentality was not only individual phenomena, but also cultural mental ones of the times during the last years of the Ming Dynasty and early years of the Qing Dynasty.Chapter two is Pu Songling's Shintoism, which analyzes that his Shitoism gave priority to the Confucianism with Buddhism as its assistant, and made use of the Shitoism to propagandize the ethic and morality of Confucianism.Chapter three is Strange Tales of Liaochai and Buddhism, which analyzes the comeuppance forms of Strange Tales of Liaochai, the positive connotation and art function of comeuppance, and how Zen effected Strange Tales of Liaochai as well.Chapter four is Strange Tales of Liaochai and Taoism, which discourses upon the Taoist influence to Strange Tales of Liaochai regarding several aspects such as the conceptive ways, narrating examples, illusions of space time and ghost descriptions. His yearning towards immortals was for the sake of criticizing the darkness of actuality of the time more effectively and expressing his pursuing of a nice and ideal society. In order to salvage the world, he sneered at the world with his zealous heart, and his purpose was for the real world.Chapter five is Strange Tales of Liaochai and Original Religions, original religions or pan-spirit worships regarded the transformation as the only rule of the universe in the original thinking. This chapter tries to study the fairy stories of Strange Tales of Liaochai from two aspects, viz. the relationship between human and the spirits, and the transformation stories. As the writer intended to compare the wonderland with the actuality, his intention to sneer at the world is obvious.As for conclusion, the fairy stories in Strange Tales of Liaochai reflected the actual society and the ways of the world and human behaviors and had strong world tint. Ghosts and gods were only the writer's tools to express his mental themes, this is just the fascinations connotation of religious culture of Strange Tales of Liaochai. It has enhanced greatly the mental value and expressing fascinations of the fairy stories, this is also the basic reason why it is capable to surpass the books of the fairy tales. From this point of view this is its contribution to the religious literature.