The Influence Of Jataka On Middle-earth Novels

The Jataka is one of the most important and typical sutras in the Jataka literature.It is divided into 22 chapters by the number of Jataka stories' gatha,which has collected 547 Jataka stories.Some of the long Jataka stories are embedded with multiple independent short stories,which greatly expand the story style and textual capacity of the Jataka.These stories are important materials for understanding the local culture and customs of India,which also provide a lot of writing materials for Chinese narrative literature.This book has always attracted great attention from the researchers in Buddhist and literary study both in China and India,which is also an important reference for the study of Buddhism literature,research on Chinese native novels and folk stories.Although the Jataka Book is a sutra,most of the stories in this book are folk tales from India and its surrounding areas.Buddhists used storytelling to circulate obscure academic thoughts in Buddhist scriptures through popular,interesting but sensuous forms,which are full of images and were incorporated into folk literature and art.The Jataka story as a carrier of the Buddha's past experience is a direct expression of Buddhism's causal thoughts and it is also an important tool for Buddhism.The early Jataka stories were mostly the feasts of the ancient Indian sages.Later,they gradually incorporated more folk stories.These stories flowed into China because of the Sino-Indian merchant exchanges and the Chinese translation of Buddhist scriptures,which affected the development of the Chinese native novels.The introduction of this thesis reviewed the main research of the Jataka in the past hundred years,to clarify the important role and research value of Jataka sutra in the research of Buddhism literature.This chapter also described the research significance,methods,ranges,and versions.The generation and collection of the Jataka and Jataka sutra were recited from the general point of view of the Buddhism development and history in Chapter One and Two.The original characteristic of Jataka and the frames of Jataka sutra were described by examples.According to the general literature performance,the gorgeous rhetoric features of Jataka sutra were firstly shown.Secondly,from the point of view on literary characters,Jataka sutra set up a literary character of the typical bodhisattva,by describing its tolerance,wisdom,and spirit.Furthermore,the literature features of Jataka sutra were discussed in combination of Indian folk literature.Finally,the relationship between the Jataka and Chinese native fables were found after their comparisons.The third,fourth,and fifth chapters use the typology of story classification to combine whole research with case analysis in an attempt to clarify the overall appearance of the story,development,and evolution.The dissertation focuses on the three themes of the Adventures of the Sea,the animal retribution,and the test-type stories in the Jataka Sutra.Through the tracing of the origin of different types of stories and the analogy between the story of the story and the plot elements of the Chinese native novels,so as to explore the influence of Jataka stories on Chinese native novels.There is a story in the Chinese native novels that focuses on the adventures of merchants to the sea.This type of story often explains the record of the 'Businessmen are drifting into a ghost country'.However,different from the Buddhist scriptures,Chinese native novels often supplement the plots of merchants and women on the island by drifting into desert islands.Although the stories of alien marriages fit into the pattern of Chinese native traditions,the story-grafting phenomenon in these stories is deeply influenced by the story of the Yasukuni period and Yaksha's love story.The legends of the classic Yaksha series come from the ancient history of Sri Lanka,and the story of the Yakatsu marriage is actually the country's folklore.China and Sri Lanka had already had exchanges since the Eastern Jin Dynasty.However,this type of story was inherited and developed under the background of the era of the Great Navigation in the Song Dynasty.The story of animal gratitude in China native novels is a very complex system.There are both Chinese native traditional animals' gratitude stories and Indian folk stories.The story of the animals' gratitude in the Jataka Scriptures affects the novels of China mainly in the aspects of 'gratitude for thorn-unplugging' and 'grateful animals and ungrateful people'.The story of'gratitude for thorn-unplugging' in China was first seen in the Yi Yuan of the Song Dynasty by Jingshu Liu in the Southern Dynasties,and gradually spread in China after Xi Yu Ji.However,the story of 'The bird cure the tiger' in the Buddhist scriptures is a transformation of the story of"gratitude for thorn-unplugging",which made new developments in this type.'Grateful animals and ungrateful people' were linked to the legend of ' The trapping of Liyang Lake'.In the story,the plot of‘painting of blood on the city-gate' is turned into‘blood in the stone turtle's eyes',which should be influenced by the Buddhist stories.This thesis compares three different types of test stories:First are the swear test stories,such as‘Dou E',which promote women's virility.This kind of story begins with women's swearing behavior when facing with censure.On one hand,it discusses the irrationality of the test methods.On the other hand,it emphasizes the function of the God referee.Secondly,the test story based on the religious beliefs is discussed,according to the legend of 'Lie Shi Chi' in the book 'Xi Yu Ji'.Through the analysis of the core plots of the ' Lie Shi Chi',it is confirmed that the origin of its scriptures is Jataka.Thirdly,the legend of 'Wencheng Princess into Tibet' is a typical test of love and marriage.It comes from the problem-solving story in the Jataka Sutra,and most of the puzzles are from the 'The Maha-Ummagga Jataka'.