Immortals In Daoism And Daoist Stories

Daoist stories recorded and reflected the development of Daoist belief in Immortals. By vivid stories about people who worked hard in cultivation to become an immortal, Daoism indicated the existance of immortals, and that, by different channels and ways, all kinds of people can be transformed into immortals.In this dissertation, the author discusses immortals in Daoist stories from two angles: channels and ways of people's transformation into immortals, and the changing nature of immortals in Daoism.In the first chapter, the author outlines the main stories about immortals, which range from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, such as the Biographies of Various Immortals by Liu Xiang, the Biogrphies of Immortals by Ge Hong, and Collection of Deities by Gan Bao, the Collective Record of Immortals in the Three Schools by by unknown author in the Ming dynasty and so on.In the second chapter, in the dissertation, the author discusses the ways leading common people into immortality. In the biographies, common people were recorded to achieve immortaliy either by special food, meditation, special skills in the secret chamber, or, by upholding human virtues and good merits, which became the main channel for common people to become immortals in the later periods.In the third chapter, the author discusses the changing characters of immortals in the biographies and the reasons behind the changes.In the fourth and fifth chapters, the author studies the complex nature of immortals in the Daoist stories, and argues that the compexity lies in the human nature absorbed in the image of immortals in the line with the trend of secularization of Daoism.In conclusion, the dissertation discusses the majoy ways leading to immortality and special charaters as well as complex nature of immortal reflected by the Daoist stories and biographies. In the conclusin, the author argues, all the changes in the immortals was in the line with the Daoist history, in particular, the movement of secularization of Daoism which saw its start even from the Song and Yuan dynasties.