目連文化硏究序說

A Brief Introduction of Mulien Culture

This article is regarding research methodology of Chinese popular culture and it attempts to elaborate Mulien culture which was widespread throughout the first half of 20th century. Mulian culture was initiated from Buddhism, more accurately the stories of Buddhism and it had had continuously absorbed various kinds of local religious characteristics through the several stages of transformation such as 變文, 寶卷 and theatrical drama. This phenomenon was carried out through the basic life styles of common people so that if we look these transformations from the perspective of contemporary literature, it is a quite similar to what has become the modern status of ritualistic drama also known as 迎神賽社. Here, 迎神賽社 meaning ousting of bad lucks in order to invite good lucks.　 Thus, in the common thought of Chinese people, the culture of Mulien was not only just experiencing or accepting a piece of literature, this transformation should be better recognized as a part of ritual procedure which was created and digested through the mixtures of Buddhism and local Shamanism. This is the main point of this article, which it concentrates to differentiate the gap of what Mulien culture in the view point from simple literature interpretation against somewhat comprehensive appreciation of Mulien culture as a form of ritual procedure. Therefore, in this article, the big question comes in place as that the different interpretation is it a simple literature or is it a complex product of religious ritual procedure as well as a form of literature is needed to be refuted as the questions of 　what is literature and religion?　 and 　how these factors have influence the development of Chinese popular culture.　 As the first step to explain this transformation of Mulien culture, this article has cautiously separated Mulien culture into two distinctive stagesan elaboration of its origination and subsequently the alteration periods. And, in more detail, this article specifically tries to answer the alteration periods or development of Mulien culture into two distinctive areas often called as ritual opera and literature. Therefore, this article should be regarded as an approach to settle confronted questions of double-faced interpretation for one particular phenomenon which has had revealed two different perspectives to the peoples who have approached this phenomenon into two different points of view known as ritual opera and literature regarding this particular cultural event. For those reasons, this article tries to dwell a bit more into the dangers involved in the lopsided interpretation of certain texts and the hasty conclusions of a phenomenon which could have much wider and deep interpretations in its true nature. Therefore, this article is devoted to carefully sort out some potential discrepancies and lopsided inception of this culture movement known as Mulien culture in order to propose many other valuable interpretations which could bring this argument into an another level.