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Hello, my name is Nelson Landry. I am a DPhil student at the Oriental Institute in Oxford.

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And this is a short introductory lecture to the works of a figure central to my own research.

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The 7th century Buddhist scholar Monk Doctrine and more broadly to fantasy in the mediaeval Chinese context,

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Darshan is best known in East Asia for his works on the monastic code known as Vinaya.

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Given that he commented and promoted a set of regulations still applied today in China and Japan,

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the ties between this monk and the fantasy genre are at first a bit obscure.

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But today I hope to bring some associations to be of interest to us in terms of Chinese fantasy literature.

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A genre I will speak more about later is that translate turn in the sorry,

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his late turn to the compilation of narratives related to the fantastic called Buddhist Miracle Tales.

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I will begin with an introduction to Darshan and his work, which will in turn allow us to better understand miracle pill authors and their audience.

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This will lead, perhaps tangentially, to the question of what we mean here by fantasy,

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ending with examples of leaders so-called Chinese fantasy literature, followed by some concluding remarks.

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To begin for preamble on the scholar Monk Doctrine, his life, as it is recounted in mediaeval Buddhist histories,

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presents the modern reader with the Janus faced figure is on the one hand learnt it abbot and a commentator on the monastic codes.

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Well, on the other hand, is a pious pilgrim who converse with celestial beings,

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as well as an unflinching believer in the religious efficacy of cult objects.

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He is, in a sense, part religious disciplinarian and part wonder worker two categories that,

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according to present day rationalist sensibilities, do not marry well together.

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However, this was not an issue in mediaeval China, where miracles were objects of all not doubt so that the people would most likely have

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taken the miracles associated to doctrine as the fruits of his Buddhist practise and piety.

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Dushman was born in 596 in Chang'an presentation in the north west of China and died in 667.

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This period coincides with the Sui and early Tang dynasties, two periods of great literary innovation and development, amongst other things.

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Dushman came from a wealthy family of Southerners, was educated in the classics and by the age of nine,

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could supposedly compose lyrical verse called Fu at 15 years old.

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So his biography claims he became weary of worldly affairs, took to reading and reciting Buddhist scriptures,

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finally leaving his family to join the monastic order in China.

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The rest of his life would be guided by his drive to promote Buddhism, a creed originally from India in China,

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as he sought to reform monastic codes so as to further the purposes of the Buddhist community.

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He studied under different masters of monastic discipline, travelling the country to learn from them and to visit sacred sites in the mid 7th century.

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He even assisted in the translation of scriptures alongside the renowned Chinese pilgrim.

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Trends are better known as trippy taka in the popular 16th century dramatisation

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of his own travels to the western regions called the Journey to the West Quixote,

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or Monkey, as is the title of Arthur Wheatley's popular 1942 translation.

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He was both a prominent monk serving as abbot in the town capital,

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as well as a hermit figure retreating to the Jong-Nam Mountains south of Chang'an to do much of his thinking and editing later in life.

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He resided in an hermitage in the mountains, where he compiled Buddhist histories and apologia,

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as well as recorded his latter day interviews with celestial beings who revealed to him point of doctrine in history.

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He composed a dozen works later in life related to the miraculous of interest to us today is

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a work of his called the collected record of miracles relating to the three jewels in China,

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the Jewish and your son Beau Cantaloupe, which I will call the record of miracles for short.

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It is a compilation of miracle tales drawn from varied sources recounting stories

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of Buddhism miraculous efficacy in China from the third to the late 7th century.

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The structure of the text is modelled after the three jewels of Buddhism,

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the tri ratna or in Chinese sambo classifying narratives according to how they represent the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

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That is stories that take place on Chinese soil about what does the Buddhist teachings and the monastic community.

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The record of miracles is a collection of one hundred and fifty itemised miracle tales.

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It was written with the purpose of presenting its audience with examples of how normal existence can be turned upside down in an instant.

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In Chinese traditional belief, normal existence,

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what is called the syndrome is only an overlay to an unseen realm or world inhabited by supernormal beings,

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unrestrained by the limitations of the syndrome.

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The record of miracles was therefore a collection of tales recounting how supernormal and extraordinary events were caused by Buddhist agents,

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be they monks, relics, images, pagodas or scriptures.

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These narratives include visits to the Buddhist [INAUDIBLE] realms,

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usually the result of a premature death after which the protagonist returns to his body with renewed religious zeal.

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There are tales of miracles produced by Buddhist images such as moving, walking and sometimes flying.

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Pagodas might omit rainbows that shoot up into the clouds, and monks might receive fortuitous visits from a benevolent spirit,

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as was the case in Dolphin's own biography when he was passed on knowledge from the unseen realm.

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The record of miracles presents a world where holy monasteries appear out of the mist

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and wonder working monks boggles the mind of onlookers with their supernatural powers.

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Just as Moses appeased the pharaoh in Exodus by turning Eren staff into a snake.

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So the sarkeesian monk king song way, please soon Chen, the ruler of Wu by making relics appear in a bowl.

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The story goes that when Chen tested the authenticity of this relic by burning and then by hammering it, the relic could not be destroyed.

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The record of miracle states that he was impressed by this miraculous object,

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and therefore soon trend would have established one of the first monastic communities in southern China at the Jeonju Monastery.

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Story continues with Susan, how the grandson of son Tran and the last tyrannical ruler of Woo,

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who would have tested Kong Louise Relic, which as before was left unaffected.

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Somehow, ever, the irreverent heretic would later have taken a holy image of the Buddha to place it in the in the latrine on the Buddha's birthday,

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instead of offering the image the customary ablutions, he wished the Buddha many happy returns and urinated on it.

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His privates immediately began to swell and burn so that he became very ill.

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Only when one of Swinton's servants recommended that he clean the image and present it with proper offerings, did the swelling stop now in the story?

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We know themes common throughout all miracle tales and the miraculous power of cult objects.

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That is the indestructible relics, the ties between monastics and royalty concerningly,

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and his private interviews with the rulers and karmic retribution somehow suffering after his improper behaviour towards the Buddha image.

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Dushman selection of texts also represent certain tropes that would later translate to other non Buddhist genres,

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such as the prosaic tales of anomalies Draghi and the more elaborate Tang Dynasty tales say the Tang Dynasty Tales of the Strange The Twenty.

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Literary tropes such as visits to Buddhist hells in tandem with return from death stories would

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become common narratives borrowed by Chinese authors in the tongue and beyond karmic retribution.

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For example, is a constant in Chinese literature.

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Another example is how Buddhist monks were nuns and their association to wonder working still appears.

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Wonder workers in Chinese fiction to this day. Just as the records of the Western regions,

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the Datong Shivaji based friendzone that I mentioned before would later become the basis

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for one of the four great classics of Chinese literature turning to the West this year.

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So the tales that downtrend compiled would become the source of inspiration of fantasy authors for centuries to come.

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At this point, it is essential to note the downtrend was not a fantasy author and that miracle tales were not an early form of fantasy fiction.

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They were, if anything, proto fantasy. And that in content only.

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I mentioned Sharon and these tales because his compilations and the tales themselves would greatly influence later fictional works.

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Fantasy did not develop the same in China as it did in the West, in Western literature,

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the supernatural or the supernormal and the fantastic as their association with the term fantasy suggests,

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or conceived mainly from the angle of creative perception, the projection of the author's vision, rather than from that of the reality represented.

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According to certain Todorov, the supernatural in the fantastic may be differentiated according to the reader's perception,

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as well as the author's perception underlying the supernatural is a belief in its reality.

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And if the reader accepts it as real, then it is based on belief and not considered fantasy.

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The miracle tale was not trying to entertain or baffle its readers, as Glenn Duddridge,

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the late Shah professor of Chinese at Oxford, said about these tales.

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It is a literature of record, not a fantasy and create a fiction.

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In fact, during the early Tang, the concept of fiction did not yet exist, and the act of writing was,

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to a certain extent, always done for the purpose of recording perceived fact.

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Unlike other early anomaly accounts where the tongue tails of the strange, which were secular in their outlook,

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miracle tales were genuinely believed by practitioners to be records of confirming evidence,

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proofs, signs or else of responses validating their beliefs.

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Fiction, however, became an acceptable literary practise during the Tang Dynasty as a matter of fact,

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one of the earliest examples of Chinese fiction is the linked verse on the song Tripod by Hand,

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a ninth century high official who famously petitioned against the imperial support of Buddhism.

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The highly traditionalist ancient text or coup and movement of the tongue,

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also contrary to what one might expect from a conservative literary movement

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pushed away from literature of fact and began to touch on fiction and fantasy.

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This continued throughout the tongue, and as many of these Buddhist miracle tales were weaved into longer, more elaborate narratives.

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These were no longer the histories recorded by pious monks, but the whimsical writings of literati and retired officials.

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Jumping ahead over 1000 years, perhaps the best known example of this interweaving of narratives is the strange tales from a Chinese studio,

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the DOJ jury by the 17th century that A-Rod is loosening.

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A collection of about 500 Stories of the Strange, which were first published posthumously in 1766, this large collection,

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written in highly elliptical classical language, recounts the stories of sexual encounters with Fox Spirits possession stories.

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Supernormal encounters with demons are ultimately a development on the aforementioned Tang Dynasty miracle tales,

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anomaly accounts and tales of the strange. However, Pisoni writes in his preface that these were stories that he fabricated.

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Inspired by what he himself had seen or heard, and what tales his friends might have passed on to him.

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To give one example of the many tales related to Buddhism in the laboratory, I will mention the.

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Purple Lotus Buddhist, the story of the initial Thai, who was ill and died.

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He then travelled down to the Buddhist house, only to return from death, claiming that he was enlightened.

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He then called on a monk to debate with him about scriptures correcting the monk on different points of doctrine.

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However, Ding was still ill. So he called for Dongsheng. A scholar of broad learning to come and cure him on his way.

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Trunchbull was chastised by a celestial figure in the form of an old lady who said that she had bad blood between Shoretire,

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whom she addresses as the Purple Lotus Buddhist, and that he should not be cured, went on to recount this to Ding Shorthair.

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Ding accepts that this is his fate, his karma, and he dies on the spot.

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These narratives related to the Buddhist health and to karma so popular in miracle tale collections,

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which historians record of miracles are repeated throughout the literature.

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And we can see how by the 7th 17th century, the miracle tale genre had certainly left its imprint on the Chinese psyche.

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In contemporary literature, the closest and certainly the most popular fantasy subgenre would be the romantic tales of the Knights errant shell.

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These are romance tales of warriors who gain supernatural powers by their mastery of the martial arts.

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These stories have made it to the big screen, with iconic scenes of fighters flying through bamboo groves in King,

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who's a touch of Zen or the gravity defying acrobatics in the year 2000 production of one Lulu's

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future novel Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Miracle tale tropes are diffused throughout these stories,

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so much so that they have simply become part of the fabric that makes up Chinese fantasy literature.

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While the fantasy genre and its many subgenres have developed in China, genuine recounting of fantastic tales have not necessarily gone away.

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For example, the Chinese language press both in the Midland and in Hong Kong regularly recount extraordinary phenomena.

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Sometimes humans, sometimes not to mention only one instance.

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In August 2004, the Hong Kong press provided a description of a man discovered in a remote part of the Chinese countryside,

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whose entire body was densely covered in hair. Today, stories like these abound and reveal to us.

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If anything, with the line between fantasy and the Council of the Supernormal,

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such as Miracle Tales, is perhaps the line drawn between belief and disbelief.

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To conclude, today, I have spoken of the scholar, Monk Dilshan, whose own biography reads more like a legend than a history.

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I've also mentioned the miracle tale genre, as well as the fantasy genre and some of its subgenres.

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We have looked at what constitutes fans fantasy in the Chinese context and how intent is central to the process.

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Finally, today I have shown how Buddhist themes are a constant in Chinese fantasy and that by the influence of doctrines,

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compilations of miracle tales he and others like him have helped shape the ever changing landscape of fantasy literature in China.