Studies On Fiction Materials Cited In Shuijingzhu

Shuijingzhu plays an important role in the history of study on ancientChinese novels. Li Daoyuan did not follow the way that note should notdeviate the original, on the contrary, he was the first one who quoted lots ofshort stories from ancient jottings in his geographic works Shuijingzhu, whichhad quite an effect on later jottings and geography. Since Tang and SongDynasty to the later Qing Dynasty, Li Daoyuan’s advocates kept the torch onburning, while other people disagreed and found fault with him. According tostatistics, there were more than400earlier or contemporary books inShuijingzhu, including geography, history, essays, poems, novels, etc. Itaimed to verify geography and preserve ancient stories down the rivers,without classification as reference books. Stories with a weird theme aboutghosts dominated over others like some plots about daily life. The formerrefers to religion and something about metaphysical frontiers, such asBuddhism, Taoism, prophecy or natural science popular in ancient times.Stories about daily life mainly refer to some people exist or something occursin reality and history, such as some heroic legend of ancient emperors, noblemorality of celebrities, old wars and so on.Li Daoyuan cited so much fiction materials in Shuijingzhu that was resultfrom the social and cultural conditions, his own literacy and hobbies etc. Inthe period of Wei and Jin Dynasties, the political and social turbulence causedspiritual crisis in culture stratum. Seclusion and hedonism boomed religions,both Buddhism and Taoism developed rapidly with authority support, evenbecame the official religion. At the same time, folk religion of sorcery waspopular in the bottom strata, which increased the religious atmosphere further.Some stories about supernatural frontiers rose up with an explosive growth.Li’s backgrounds, wide interest and learning resulted his Contradictory viewof fiction. Shuijingzhu demonstrated fully the real value of fiction materials on amusement and academic research.Stories cited in Shuijingzhu had two sources: inheritance from the ancientsand his own practice and knowledge. The way he cited was special that mostlyhe copied the origin literally, while sometimes he changed more or less justfor fluency of sentences he wrote. Most novels he cited did not exist or wereincomplete nowadays, so we could find the significance to compilation andcollation of novels ahead of Tang dynasty in Shuijingzhu when we were in incomparison. In addition, these novel materials had a great impact on thelegend of the Tang Dynasty and later jottings with a supernatural theme likeStrange tales from Liaozhai. They provided materials for creation and artisticinspiration, even laid a foundation for later fictions.