The Appearance Of Three Demons-a Style Of Chinese Vernacular Novel

In the history of Chinese literature, novels of gods and demons that have the longest history and the largest quantity of works which describe the unreal worlds and the non-human existences, such as the ghosts, monsters, demons,the foxtrel and the immortals. But for a long time,due to the influence of traditional orthodox ideas——not to talk about unreal things——scholars had a prejudice to the novels of gods and demons,which were believed to be the products of superstition and fallacies of the subjective idealism. In his works of Ri Zhi Lu, Gu Yanwu said that those weird, uncanny or supernatural things were quite without foundation and plagiaristic.Articles like those were so worthless that we'd better abandon all of them."This statement could represent traditional literati's opinions.In the May Fourth Period, the famous writer Zhou Zuoren published an article,which named Human Literature, in which he listed ten classes of so-called"inhuman literature",which include Journey to the West and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.Zhou also claimed that these books would hinder the growth of man's nature and destroy human's placidity, thus all should be rejected. Those novels'real value and the role they played in the development of Chinese culture tradition were not treated fairly. Nowadays, after we experienced the revolution in our way of thinking, studies about the relationship between religion and novels have been developing and prospering and many scholars have reached a consensus on Taoism's profound influence on the genie novels. There are lots of relevant academic papers or works.Such as the Religious Attribute of the Novels of Gods and Demons in the Middle Ancient Times by Liu Min, the Immortals and the Taoism in the Novels of Gods and Demons by Gou Bo,the Taoism and the Novels of Gods and Demons in the Ming and Qing Dynasties by Mo Qixun, the Taoism's Influence On the Novels of Gods and Demons in the Ming Dynasty by Xu Zhengui.Ou Yangjian also has a series of papers about this topic.Among those works, Gou Bo's articles are really worth to mention, which have made a detailed statement of the genie novels'motif, character, structure,etc.Although there are so many works,there are still a lot of open questions waiting to be settled.This thesis is on the "three demons" in Chinese ancient novels, and in it the religious factors will be put emphasis on, such as the key role of Taoism in the formation folk beliefs, the folk beliefs'counteraction on the setting up of Taoism.Therefore, this study is actually a branch of the research on the relationship between religion and Chinese ancient novels.The academic articles sometimes use the term "three demons",which refers to The Three Demons in Ding Zhou,The Three Tower in West Lake, The Three demons in Luoyang. The reason for using this term is all of above stories have three demons.In the Appreciation Dictionary of Chinese Ancient Novels published by Shanghai Lexigraphical Press,there is a comparative analysis to the three stories mentioned above.The result of this comparison is that there is anlehnong between them---the plots, the figures and the surroundings of the stories are similar. But the analysis and descriptions are very brief, lacking a overall study. The research works of other academic works are even simpler.This thesis is just from the angle above, in the process of writing this paper, the key issues on the three demons has been solved, for example,why the demons always come in three? What's the role of the religious culture in those stories?Making the relationship clear between Taoism and the Chinese culture is the key point in the course of solving the questions.Taoism is one of the three sources of the Chinese culture. It has a long history and rich content. In Chinese society, the role of Taoism is incomparable.Lu Xun once said,"the root of china lies all in Taoism." In the history of Chinese Taoism, Xu Dishan also had said "(To some extent) we can say, it is the thought of Taoism that dominants the Chinese ideal life,Confucianism only takes up a fraction of the Ethics." And Zhou Zuoren also said"The things which influence the Chinese society are neither Confucius nor Pure literature, but Taoism and Popular literature." Although these statements are too exaggerated to be totally believable, it reflects the preliminary exploration of some scholars on the close relationship between Taoism and Chinese culture.The first correlation theory that should be concerned is the "number worship" of three. It is said that "Three gives birth to everything", three elements are considered to be the most fast combination. So many important concepts of Taoism are derived from the number three, such as the three treasured objects which refers to Heaven, Earth and Man; the three palaces named Daluo in the Heaven; the three fairy mountains on earth which refers to Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou. Also, the classical works of Taoism were fond of the "three-words" pattern, such as the Philosophical Discourse by Tao Hongjing.Taoism attaches importance to vegetarian diet for religious reasons in three particular days every month.Is there any chance that just because of the number worship, people choose the three pattern when they describe the demons to suggest that they are hard to prevail? There is a custom in Taoism that all of the Taoist priests should keep awake in the whole night of the Gengchen days.They do this to resistant the "three body bugs" which live in the bodies of the human beings.Actually, this is a very funny phenomenon. People take the "three body bugs" as a representation of the demons by degrees.People are so scared of the "three body bugs" that they are all willing to keep the custom in the Gengchen days even they are not Taoist priests.This influence can be proved in many novels in which the demons often wear black, red or cyan clothes.The choice of colors were obvious affected by the folk legend of the "three body bugs", because in that legend, the demons were named "Ms.White","Ms. Cyan" and "Ms. Red"; besides,the three colors themselves are telepathized colors of Taoism. There is a story in the the Philosophical Discourse that one person called Fan Youchong became immortal by reforming the Red Qi, the White Qi and the Cyan Qi.Therefore, above all, the topic selection is the important innovation of this thesis. Although there is such a term as "three demons" in the academic circles now, a comprehensive analysis and study on the texts of contents is still scarce.The other "three demons" in different works or different dynasties have also been ignored. All those are the study objects of the thesis.Secondly, this article has made use of other disciplines' study methodologies in order to create different perspectives.The study of Chinese ancient novels is the main content: meanwhile, theories of religions and folklores are also applied. The sorting out of the historical data has played a key role in the writing process, and the problems have been analyzed from a microcosmic perspective.