Analysis On The Buddhist Causality And The Middle Ancient Times’ Retribution Novels

Buddhism was introduced into China from the Eastern Han Dynasty,which deeply influenced the creation of novels in the middle ancient times.As the fundamental idea of Buddhism,causality had profound and comprehensive influence on all kinds of novels in this period.On the one hand,the novelists can’t help taking many Buddhist thoughts and Buddhist scriptures content to their compositions.On the other hand,many Buddhists in order to promote the propagation of the faith and doctrine,created a large number of "Buddhist notes".These are all the best evidence for the spread of Buddhist causation thought.This paper will study all kinds of retribution novels in the middle ancient times as the research object and study its ideological connotation and narrative features from the perspective of causality.In addition,some problems involving the complicated and deep doctrines related to Buddhism will be discussed,and some possibilities will be put forward.This paper is divided into three chapters:The first chapter is a thorough analysis of the origin of the theory of causation.The idea of cause and effect rotation originated from the theory of India Buddhism,which is a combination of Shakya Mani’s ideas of karma and reincarnation in India at that time.In the process of eastward spreading,the theory of causality was influenced by Chinese traditional ideology of heaven’s Retribution and Taoist belief.It was reformed by Chinese monks,and finally formed Hui yuan’s "three world retribution theory".In addition,this chapter also makes an in-depth discussion on the receptor of the retribution and the transfer of karma.The second chapter mainly discusses the influence of causality on the middle ancient times retribution novels and divides the Chinese retribution novels into four categories according to the different kinds of influence.They are Telepathy Novels,Retribution for Good and Evil novels,Reincarnation novels and Visit-Hell Novels.It focuses on the analysis of the different objects to be fulfilled,the specific standards of good karma and evil karma,the different ways of reincarnation,and the specific features of the Visit-Hell Novels.The third chapter mainly discusses the influence of causality on the ancient Retribution Novels from the narrative point of view.On the structure,the ancient Retribution Novels follow the eternal and constant narrative structure of cause and effect,but their forms are varied.The flexible application of the two elements,enlightenment and causal chain,has spawned a variety of novel plots.In addition,it also discusses the effect of causality on the narrative time and space of novels.There is space to expand,and the time of fantasy world accelerating or slowing down.