trying to write down their stories and sermons more
or less as they had spoken them, adherents of the CHAN
SCHOOLof Buddhism began to use the vernacular when
recording the yulu(dialogues) of their masters. Around
the same time, a few eccentric lay Buddhists who went
by such names as Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and
Wang Fanzhi (Brahmacarin [Devotee] Wang) also lib-
erally sprinkled their verse with vernacularisms.
Once Buddhists had shown the way and it became
obvious that writing more or less the way one spoke
was possible, then secular vernacular writing similarly
became feasible. Imperceptibly, there arose what mod-
ern scholars have come to call the koine,a sort of proto-
Mandarin that served as a lingua franca to bridge the
gap of unintelligibility among the numerous Sinitic
fangyan(topolects or so-called dialects). The conse-
quences of this phenomena for the development of sub-
sequent Chinese popular literature were profound. This
was particularly true of fiction and drama, where many
of the same linguistic and stylistic conventions that had
been employed by Buddhists for their vernacular sto-
ries and lectures persisted in popular literature.
Thus, with the Buddhist sanctioning of the written
vernacular, a sequence of revolutionary developments
occurred that radically transformed Chinese literature
for all time. Moreover, hand in hand with vernacular-
ization came other Buddhist-inspired developments in
Chinese literature. Aside from Buddhist topics, such as
the Tang monk XUANZANG’s (ca. 600–664) pilgrimage
to India that was immortalized in the Ming-dynasty
(1368–1655) novel Xiyou ji(Journey to the West), the
very notion that fiction was something fabricated out
of whole cloth, something created by the mind of the
author, can be traced to Buddhist sources. Prior to the
advent of Buddhism, there was no full-blown fiction
(in the sense that it was something “made up”) in
China. Instead, there were only short anecdotes, tales
based on historical events, and what were known in
the Six Dynasties (222–589) period as zhiguai(ac-
counts of abnormalities). Even the latter were thought
to be based squarely on events that had really hap-
pened. Hence the role of the author was merely to
record some extraordinary incident. During the Tang
dynasty, there arose a genre called chuanqi(chronicles
of the strange). Like zhiguai, chuanqiwere written in
Literary Sinitic and maintained the pretense that they
were relating an incident or series of incidents that had
actually transpired. However, chuanqiare much more
inventive and elaborate than zhiguai. This sort of
fertile fictionalizing was fostered by ontological pre-
suppositions, such as maya (illusion) and S ́UNYATA
(EMPTINESS), brought to China with Buddhism.
Similar developments occurred in drama, where,
along with increasing vernacularization, came Indian
practices that were transmitted via Buddhism. Among
these are the introduction of himself directly to the au-
dience by a character upon entry to the stage, face
painting, fixed puppetlike gestures and postures, and
so forth. Such resemblances to Indian theater are par-
ticularly pronounced in southern Chinese drama.
Another type of Indian fiction and drama that can
be found in China is dramatic narrative or narrational
drama. In India, there was a seamless continuum of
oral and performing arts that ranged from storytelling
to puppet plays and the human theater. The vast ma-
jority of genres in this tradition subscribed to the no-
tion that a succession of narrative moments or loci was
being related by the bard or portrayed by actors. Fur-
thermore, most Indian oral and performance genres
that have dramatic narrative as their organizing prin-
ciple consist of a combination of singing and speak-
ing. All of these attributes, in fact, apply to the Chinese
vernacular tradition of oral performance. Thus ver-
nacularization is by no means an isolated instance of
Buddhism’s impact upon Chinese fiction and drama,
although it may well be the single most distinctive
characteristic.
While the Buddhist tradition of vernacular, prosi-
metric narrative became secularized in fiction and
drama, the religious expression of this literary form
also continued in such genres as baojuan(precious
scrolls). Late Ming and Qing accounts reveal that “pre-
cious scrolls” were very popular as a form of enter-
tainment and instruction.Ultimate impact
Despite the enthusiastic favor the written vernacular
found with the bulk of the populace, who through it
were increasingly empowered with literacy, to the end
of the empire in 1911, the mainstream Confucian
literati never accepted anything other than Literary
Sinitic as a legitimate medium for writing. To them the
vernacular was crude and vulgar, beneath the dignity
of a gentleman to contemplate. But merchants, story-
tellers, craftsmen, physicians, and individuals from
many other walks of life paid no heed to this opinion
and proceeded to forge a fully functional written ver-
nacular on the foundations that had been laid by the
Buddhists of medieval China. In the end, they created
a national language called guoyu,a term that can ulti-CHINESE, BUDDHISTINFLUENCES ONVERNACULARLITERATURE IN