XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 1

Литература стран Азии и Африки к 150-летию академика В. В. Бартольда (1869–1930). Ч. 1 363 Zhang Du ( 張讀 ), «Records of the Unparalleled Marvels» ( 獨異記 ) by Li Rong ( 李冗 ) and many others. Despite all that, a problem of actual definition of a soul in the traditional Chinese beliefs and in literary works remains unsolved up to these days. In traditional China a person has been believed to have a dozen of souls —3Yang souls, 7Yin Souls and two receptacles of Yin and Yang energies, often described as “spirits” — Shen ( 神 ), receptacle of Yang and Ling ( 靈 ), receptacle of Yin. The intercourse between these parts of a human spirit is utterly complex, and there is no univocal explanation of these ghostly manifestations, even in the issue of what actual combination of souls can evoke this kind of a phantom. Nevertheless, stories of a soul replacing a human for a certain period remain most popular in the traditional Chinese literature; one of the most prominent works of this kind being the story by Chen Xuanyou ( 陳玄祐 , 8–9 cent.) «Record about the Separated Soul» ( 離魂記 ). A beautiful girl Qianniang ( 倩娘 ) and a youth Wang Zhou ( 王宙 ) are in deep love, but the girls’ father promised her to another man, knowing nothing about their feelings. Wang Zhou leaves for the capital when of a sudden Qianniang gains him up and wishes to stay. When after 5 years the young couple returns back, it turns out that Qianniang hasn’t left home, being seriously ill for all that time. Then the two Qianniangs merge together and it becomes clear that the one having run away was just the soul of a real girl. The plot of the story (that may have also been adopted from some earlier stories) has influenced a lot of writers, especially Song and Yuan playwrights, including Zheng Guangzu ( 鄭光祖 , 1264—?), who created a number of famous plays retelling the story of Qianniang’s love. Presumably this plot has brought to life the well-known Pu Songling’s (1640—1715) story «NieXiaoqian» ( 聶小倩 ), telling about a beautiful lady’s ghost who wished to abandon her services for a vicious demon and become an exemplary wife of a young scholar. But speaking of Pu Songling one thing is crystal clear: another story by him, «Student Ye» ( 葉生 ), is obviously developing the same outline—a soul replacing a person as a result of extreme emotional disturbance. But here the main emotion is not conjugal devotion but gratitude and loyalty. The spirit of a deceased student Sheng helps his benefactor Ding Chenghe prepare his son for the government exams while everyone takes him for a living person, and only a while after the truth is discovered. Thus, analysis of the problembrings us to some conclusions to be made.Acomplex concept of a soul in Chinese popular religion has been commonly used by Chinese storywriters starting from the 4–5 centuries, though the concept itself has never been properly interpreted and comprehended in those literary works. It the later works, a soul, being an aggregate of different spiritual components, is usually taken as an integral matter; perhaps here we can observe the traces of Buddhist influence. The famous pre-Tang plots have brought to life quite a number of later inter- pretations, sometimes pretty far from the original but inheriting the same basic principles of comprehension.