Image Of Monks And Nuns In The Ming Dynasty Novels About Research

It is in the Ming dynasty that the human relationship novels began to emerge. The human relationship novels deserved the townsfolk's favorite because of its secularity on the descriptions about the fickleness of human nature and vicissitudes of life. As a kind of special religious images, the Buddhist monks and nuns enriched the characters in human relationship novels, reflected the religious situation and the local customs in the Ming dynasty. From the perspective of monastic images in human relationship novels of the Ming dynasty, the author analyses the classifications and features of the monastic image in human relationship novels in the Ming dynasty, also interprets the cause of formation of the monastic image by using the research methods of sociology, history, religion, folklore, and so on.There are mainly three categories of monastic images taken shape in human relationship novels of the Ming dynasty. The first one is the eminent monastic image which can be further divided into two kinds:the eminent Buddhists who are always free from vulgarity and the eminent Buddhists who fall down the mortal world then thoroughly transformed. The shape of the eminent monastic images has a unique religious and social significance, and reflects the religious sanctity and mystery. However, in human relationship novels, the number of the eminent monastic images is relatively small. This is related to the specific situation of Buddhism in the Ming dynasty and the stylistic features of the human relationship novels. There is only one nun image in human relationship novels. The lack of the nun image is related to the man-centered social situation, Buddhist culture and the traditional thoughts that man is superior to woman. This phenomenon reflects the women's low social identity and social status in ancient China. The second category is the profane monastic image. Some of them are virtuous, some worldly secular, and some vulgar. They are the most universal and the most diverse character images in the monastic images. The emergence of a large number of profane monastic images derives from the influence of the secular Buddhism policy and the religious needs from the secular society in the Ming dynasty to the secularization of Buddhism. Due to the profane features, they just play as the secondary role to promote the development of the plot. The third category is the vulgar monastic image which can be divided into two kinds:the vulgar monk image and the vulgar nun image. Their vulgar deeds are expressed by their greed and salacity. There are a relative largest number of vulgar monastic images described in the Ming dynasty's human relationship novels, and they appear as the main roles. The vulgar Buddhists proliferated by a lot of reasons, such as the prevalence of the arrogant excessive phenomenon in the Ming dynasty, the degradation of the Buddhism caused by the relaxation of the religious management system, as well as the attitude of the authors to the Buddhist, the creative purpose to maintain the traditional Confucian Confucianism and meet the audience secular aesthetic needs by the authors. In all, the emergence of the three categories of monastic images is closely related to the situations of politics, economy and culture in the Ming dynasty.Through the research of the monastic images in the Ming dynasty's human relationship novels, it is helpful to know the complexity of human nature, the imperceptible influence of the social environment to human nature, and artistic expressive force from literary works which is from of life and higher than life. The eminent Buddhists are the models of the religious spirits. Although they try hard to abide their religious ethics, they sometimes are lured by secularization. However, after struggling in many kinds of desire, they finally obtain "Phoenix Nirvana, ashes reborn". The profane Buddhists are the common herd in the religious circles, and perform a normal humanity, up and down in the sea of desire. The vulgar Buddhists are the tumor in the religious circles, exposing the distorted and abnormal desire of the material and lust, but finally sinking in the sea of desire. The fate of the Buddhist monks and nuns embodies the author's purpose to advise the vicious in the novel.