FORMATION, EFFICACY AND WORDLESS SCRIPTURES: THE TALES OF THE 'GREAT CANON' IN THE NOVELS OF LATE IMPERIAL CHINA.

• Author: Lei, Tianyu

1. Introduction

   The 'Great Canon' (Dazang [phrase omitted] is an obscure title referring to the collection of the Chinese Buddhist classics and related literature organized according to certain structures and with some external identification markers. (1) In the context of Chinese Buddhism, it is also called 'Internal Classics' (nei dian [phrase omitted]), 'Myriad of Scriptures' (zhongjing [phrase omitted]), and 'All Scriptures' (yiqie jing--[phrase omitted]), or is referred to by the more standardized name 'The Great Storage of Scriptures' (dazang jing [phrase omitted]) (Wu and Chia 2016: 18-19). In the literary works (especially novels), it usually has similar connotation to that in Buddhist texts, but in some cases, it is mistakenly regarded as a certain scripture. (2)

   Due to the differences between written and oral cultures of ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, when Buddhism arrived in China, despite strong early Buddhist oral tradition, the idea of a canon was impressed upon the Chinese minds through numerous references to the existence of an actual 'Tripitaka' in India (Wu and Chia 2016: 17). At the same time, in the premodern era, the creation and distribution of the Chinese Buddhist canon (manuscript, stone carving, and printing editions) was both a work of faith and a project that was symbolically tied to state power due to the immense human, material, and financial resources involved, (3) both of which endowed the canon with ultimate authority. Thus, the 'exotic origin' and the ultimate authority of the 'Great Canon' stimulate not only Buddhist monks' but also ordinary people's imagination and unique discourse. (4)

   Interest in the cult of the 'Great Canon' began to build in the twentieth century. Yang Wenhui [phrase omitted] (1837-1911) and Zhou Shaoliang [phrase omitted]. (1917-2005) found a mysterious number (five thousand and forty-eight) and an apocryphal text (General Catalog of the Great Canon Spoken by the Buddha [phrase omitted]) associated with the 'Great Canon' (Fang 2000), which prompted the discussion on whether Chinese Buddhist Cannon is open or closed (Wu and Chia 2016: 36-38). Later, Fang Guangchang [phrase omitted] and Jiang Wu expanded upon the work of Yang and Zhou by delving into the number and the text under a broader framework (Wu and Chia 2016: 63-64). Wu (2013) also paid special attention to the 'Imagining Tripitaka' in Buddhist literature, aiming to reveal how this fictional cannon gave rise to fervor among Chinese Buddhists, prompting them to embark on journeys to India.

   While it is meaningful to explore how Chinese Buddhists perceived and imagined the 'Great Canon', studying ordinary people's discourse also helps us acquire a clearer picture of the cult of the 'Great Canon' in ancient China. Among the various ways of gaining insight into commoners' thoughts, reading novels might be the most interesting but challenging one. In general, as E. M. Forster (1955) suggested, the serious writing of history is based on evidence, while the novel is based on evidence "+" or "-"x, the unknown quantity being the invention of the novelist which always modifies the effect of the evidence and sometimes transforms it entirely. However, this invention could not be achieved in the magic land outside the real world. That is why even the greatest writers in the history of literature are simply skillful 'copyists' (Barthes 1977). Therefore, to study the plots, characters, and narratives of novels is not only to reveal the historical facts themselves, but also to teach us about the world, show us how it works, enable us - through the devices of focalization - to see things from other vantage points, and to understand others' motives that in general are opaque to us. In this sense, novels are of great importance both to the material history of particular events or economic trends and the history of mentalities that aimed at describing and analyzing the ways in which people of a given time period thought about, interacted with, and classified the world around them, which is especially valuable in understanding Chinese history or religious phenomena because Chinese historians always find it difficult to do justice to the lives of common people, ordinary men and women whose worldly concerns are generally limited to their own livelihood and happiness - sources are few and data often unreliable (Spencer 1979).

   To be specific, on the one hand, like The Journey to the West (Xiyou ji [phrase omitted]) and The Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi [phrase omitted]), many novels produced in late imperial China are not works of a single author, but an accumulation of tales compiled by editors at different stages of their development (Liang 2008). Thus, to some extent, these compilations could vividly reflect the thoughts and activities of people in the Ming-Qing or even earlier periods. On the other hand, as Xiaofei Kang (2005) pointed out, any form of writing is a process of re-creation; hence, personal tastes, individual writing styles and agendas, and different contexts in which the tales were recounted would all influence the works. In other words, the Ming-Qing novel is never simply a mirror of popular thoughts and activities.

   Therefore, the goal of this study is not to ascertain whether and to what extent stories recounted in the Ming-Qing novels are fictional inventions, and to what degree they convey the original information, but to reveal various ideas related to the 'Great Canon' hidden in those old or new stories and establish why such ideas are shared by these novels. To address this topic, I first examine the literary discourse on the formation of the 'Great Canon' in the Ming-Qing novels. Next, by studying the tales (plots) about the efficacy of the 'Great Canon', I uncover its imagined function. Finally, I narrow down the scope of the investigation to Chapter 98 of The Journey to the West and decipher the plot of the 'wordless scriptures'.

2. Tales of formation

   The formation of the Chinese Buddhist canon is a complex and evolutional process, also considered a phenomenon with religious, social, and textual significance in Buddhist history (Wu and Chia 2016: 15). However, outside the Buddhist communities, due to a scarcity of knowledge about the Chinese Buddhist canon, commoners or non-Buddhists often create their own discourse on the formation of the 'Great Canon' based on imagination and hearsay, which is especially evident in the novels. In the Heartening Stories, a novel of worldly affairs (Shiqing xiaoshuo [phrase omitted]) penned by an anonymous author during the Kangxi [phrase omitted] period (1654-1722) of the Qing Dynasty, (5) the writer fabricated a story about the formation of the 'Great Canon' and created the fictional character...