Research On The Folk People's Thoughts And Grass-root Society Of Nan Song By The Retributive Stories In Yi Jian Zhi

The research on folk faiths has been developing fast in recent years, which has changed the phenomenon paying attention to the developments and changes of the upper elites' thoughts but neglecting those of the folk people. Most of the society is people coming from folk. They are the main believers of various religions and faiths. Many inofficial and informal faiths spreading in folks are close connected with official, upper level and formal religions. In addition, they have their own special features. It takes Hong Mai sixty years to edit the book named Yi Jian Zhi. Yi Jian Zhi is the biggest collected novel works of mysterious stories during Song Dynasty. Its content is complicated which includes the stories of ghosts and gods, strange news, customs, anecdote, magic, dreams, augury, literature, medicine, fight in officialdom, and so on. It is invaluable in research on the society of Song Dynasty, especially Nan Song. It is more valuable in research on classical novels, civilian religions and faiths. Although many articles studying it have been published in recent years, the majority is single article in magazine. As far as I know, the only works which researches on the religions and faiths is A Cultural Analysis of the Ghosts and Gods in Yi Jian Zhi edited by Guan Bing. But it is not enough, so this book should be had further research. Owing to the great value of the book in civil faiths, I choose 654 retributive stories as the object, try to find the features of the good retributions and evil retributions, the reality and thoughts of grass-roots.This article is composed of three parts:Part one: Introduction. In the part, a simple review of studies on folk religions, faiths and Yi Jian Zhi is made, and then the necessity to special study on the book is pointed out. At the same time, conflict and fusion between the Buddhist comeuppance theory and the traditional retributive view in China are analyzed when Buddhism was prosperous in Tang and Song. They existed in the same retributive stories after Buddhism spread into China. It is due to the influence of the Buddhism and the result of the Chinese traditional culture.Part two: Analysis of retributive stories. It includes the problems of loyalty and filial piety, love and woman's status, malfeasants, money-mad people and development of business, killing lives and eating meat, retribution of luxury and Lue Sheng, two results,...