Ten Odds in Ancient China

Shan Hai Jing is an important ancient book in the pre-Qin period of China, and it is also a fantastic book.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas records about 40 countries, 550 mountains, 300 waterways, 100 historical figures, and more than 400 kinds of monsters. For example, the second volume of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Chaos: The Classic of Western Hills, says: "In the 350 miles west of Tianshan Mountain, there are rich jade, green realgar and water flowing from the southwest." There is a divine bird, which looks like a yellow sac, is as red as fire, and has six feet and four wings. It doesn't know how to sing and dance, but it's just Di Jiang. "

Chaos is chaos, and the image of chaos is a god bird that can sing and dance; For example, Qiong Qi: According to Shan Hai Jing, Qiong Qi looks like a tiger, has wings and likes to eat people, even heads. He is a fierce animal.

Second, "looking for God"

Searching for the Gods is a wonderful book, which has collected more than 400 ancient miraculous stories, creating a precedent for ancient myths in China. The writer is Gan Bao, a historian in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

The book Searching for the Gods is very rich in content, including the changes of fairy magicians, the supernatural phenomena of fairy monsters, the induction of demons and dreams, the flow of love between gods and ghosts, and so on.

Among them, a considerable number of historical myths and legends handed down from the Western Han Dynasty and folk stories in the Wei and Jin Dynasties have been preserved, which are beautiful and touching and deeply loved by people. Myths, such as "Pan Hu Myth" in volume 14, are speculations about the origin of ancient barbarian ancestors; "Silkworm horse myth" is a myth about silk production. Historical legends, such as the revenge story told in Volume 11 "Ganjiang Mo Xie"; The Biography of Sixteen Purple Jade tells the story of the life and death of the youngest daughter of the Prince of Wu.

Folk stories, such as volume 11 "The Filial Wife in the East China Sea", tell the story of filial piety to his wife Zhou Qing. The legend of Han Ping and his wife praised faithful love. So is the story of the fairy marrying Yong Dong. These stories are the essence of Su Ji Shen, handed down from generation to generation.

Third, "you know the way"

You Ming Road, also known as You Ming Road and You Ming Ji, is a collection of strange stories written by Liu Yiqing, the imperial clan of the Southern Song Dynasty, with a total of 30 volumes.

The impermanence of ghosts and gods recorded in the book is in line with this idea, hence the name. The story types in Youming Road mainly include: geographical objects, biographies of miscellaneous history, and talks about Buddhism and Taoism.

Most of these works are short and pithy, lacking details, but their descriptions are elegant and delicate. Some chapters also quoted poems, such as Underwater Chord, Picking Ling Girl, Beaver Story, Guo Changsheng, Flying Sound, Chen Arden, Fish Belly and Fangshan Pavilion Rhyme.

Youming Road inherits the traditional theme of immortals and ghosts, but it is also innovative, especially in the humanization of ghosts, which makes the work more realistic.

Fourth, "miracle story"

Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio contains Han myths and strange stories. Written by Jin Wang Fu. The original work has been lost, and only in Lu Xun's ancient novel "Hook and Sink" can he find the "Anecdotes" quoted in his book about 19 10 years ago. It has more than 400 words and is divided into eight articles. The first three articles are short stories, and the last five articles each have only one sentence.

Lu Yu, a Cha Sheng, quoted the story of Yuyao people who met Dan Qiu Zi in Hongpu Mountain and became famous in Miraculous Tales in The Book of Tea.

Five, "the biography of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty"

Biography of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, also known as Biography of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty and Biography of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, is a mythical novel. * * * A volume. There are clouds in the Ming and Qing dynasties, which were written by Han or Jin, and there is no evidence. It is actually a mistake for future generations.

The General Catalogue of Sikuquanshu was written by scholars in Wei and Jin Dynasties, and Qian Xizuo, editor of Shoushange Series, speculated that it was created by scholars after the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and the two theories were not bad.

This book was written from the birth of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to the funeral after his death. Among them, it is slightly heavier than military and political affairs, but more detailed than seeking immortality. In particular, it describes in detail the decline of the Queen Mother of the West to Emperor Wu.

Six, "Youyang Miscellaneous"

As a collection of note stories, Youyang Zayu, a novel of the Tang Dynasty, has 20 volumes in the first volume and 10 in the second volume.

The nature of this book, according to the author's order, is that "those who are not ashamed to ask questions will suppress the novel."

There are immortals, buddhas, ghosts, people, animals, plants, food, wine, temples and so on. , and classified and catalogued. Some content belongs to the legend category, while others record exotic things in different places, similar to Jin Zhanghua's natural history. What he described, or picking up old news, or writing his own stories, "there are many bizarre and absurd things, and the secrets of posthumous documents are often wrong, so although the critics are sick of their exaggeration, they have to quote each other" (Catalogue of Siku Quanshu).

Many of these titles are quite obscure and bizarre, such as "History of Daohu", "Notes on Buddhist Books and Monuments", "Burying Bodies", "Strange Purposes and Nogory Records" and so on. The sequel, The Story of the Temple Pagoda, consists of two volumes, detailing the buildings and murals of the Buddhist temples in Chang 'an, and preserving many precious historical materials for future generations to compile the chronicle of Chang 'an.

Seven, "Tai Ping Guang Ji"

There are about 400 kinds of books cited in Taiping Guangji, and the source is generally indicated at the end of each article, but occasionally there are some mistakes, which cause the same book to have different names or different books to have the same name, so it is impossible to make accurate statistics.

There are 343 kinds of bibliography in front of the book, but it doesn't match the actual number in the book. It was probably added by people after the Song Dynasty.

According to the theme, Taiping Guangji is divided into 92 categories, and the following categories are divided into 150 small categories, such as cattle, horses, camels, donkeys, dogs, sheep, tapirs and so on. , which is more convenient to check.

From the content point of view, the story is the most collected, in fact, it can be said that it is a collection of stories before the Song Dynasty. Many of these books have been lost. Only their remains can be seen in this book.

Taiping Guangji preserved many stories before and after the Tang Dynasty.

Eight, "Romance of Gods"

The Romance of the Gods, commonly known as the List of Gods, is also known as The Complete Biography of Shang and Zhou States, The History of King Wu Attacking Zhou, and The Biography of Gods. It is also a ghost story novel in ancient China.

Written by Xu (Chen) in the Ming Dynasty, it was written in and Wanli. The book has been read a hundred times.

The prototype of the Romance of the Gods can be traced back to Wu Wang's attack on Pinghua in the Southern Song Dynasty, or it may refer to Deduction of Shang and Zhou Dynasties and Journey to the East of the Eight Immortals in Kunlun. Based on the history of Jiang Ziya's assistance to Zhou Shi (Zhou Wenwang and Zhou Wuwang) in the crusade against Shang and Zhou Dynasties, this paper describes the story of Buddhism, intercepting various immortals' wits and fighting bravely, and breaking the array and beheading the gods.

Contains a lot of folklore and myths. There are Jiang Ziya, Nezha, Yang Jian and other vivid figures, which ended with Jiang Ziya as the deity and Zhou Wuwang as the king.

Nine, Journey to the West

The Journey to the West, one of the classical Four Great Classical Novels in China, is the first romance novel written by Wu Cheng'en in China in ancient Ming Dynasty.

This article mainly tells the story of the Monkey King, Pig Bajie and Friar Sand protecting the Tang Priest's Buddhist scriptures. From the reincarnation of the scriptures to his return home, the Tang Priest turned evil and saved the day. After eighty-one difficulties, he finally reached the Western Heaven and obtained the true scriptures. Based on Tang Sanzang's Buddhist scriptures, folk customs and Yuan Zaju.

X. Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio

Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, commonly known as Ghost Fox, is a collection of short stories in classical Chinese by Pu Songling, a famous novelist in China in the Qing Dynasty.

There are 49 1 short stories in the book (494 in total: Notes on the School Meeting of Strange Stories from a Lonely Studio and Zhu's Notes on Strange Stories from a Lonely Studio).

Wide range of subjects, rich content and high artistic achievements. His works have successfully created many artistic models, with vivid characters, bizarre and tortuous story, rigorous and ingenious structural layout, concise writing and delicate description, which can be called the pinnacle of classical Chinese short stories.