Compatibility Of Buddhism And Taoism In<Journey To The West> In Sinology

As one of the four masterworks of the Ming Novel, <Journey to the West> is always the emphasis of the study in literary circles. In the past of 400 years, researchers never stopped studying development of its theme, the ideology the author wanted to show us and the artistic characteristics as well. Regarded as a magical novel,<Journey to the West> created a wonderful world that owns various characters like ghosts, monks and Taoist priests. The description of Buddhism and Taoism in the novel is one of the subjects that are underneath the attention of those researchers.Domestic study of the relationship between Buddhism and Taoism in <Journey to the West> holds different views and no final conclusion has yet been reached on this matter. At the same time, foreign scholars established many books with their unique and particular thoughts about <Journey to the West>, such as American sinologist Andrew H. Plaks and Anthony C. Yu, Japanese sinologist Naganomeyoko, Chinese-American sinologist Zhiqing Xia and Chinese-Australian sinologist Cunren Liu.With different cultural background, sinologists and domestic scholars have their own typical characteristics to study the relationship between Buddhism and Taoism. The research findings which sinologists accomplished are the extension about the study of the relationship between Buddhism and Taoism in <Journey to the West>, and these findings also provide new ideas, reference and enlightenment.In China, we didn’t find any papers which have classified, concluded, evaluated and commented on this research field. Based on collecting and reading the sinologists’ research literature about Buddhism and Taoism in <Journey to the West>, this paper classifies those sinologists’findings and comment on the compatibility of Buddhism and Taoism, and collected their valuable opinions. At the same time, this paper makes a comparison of their opinions with domestic research findings, analyzes their new perspective and methodology and queries the misunderstanding as well. At the end of this paper, based on sinologists’findings and conclusions about the relationship of Buddhism and Taoism in<Journey to the West>, it tries to draw a conclusion of mutual assistance in the compatibility of them.Based on the sinologists’research about<Journey to the West>, this paper has two parts, which starts at the description of Ming dynasty’s social and cultural background, and promotes from the specific personal discussion to the theory- analysis. At the end, according to the Chinese concept of "Neutralization", this paper points out the meaning and the value in researching Chinese classics like <Journey to the West>.