According to scholars' research, the author's name is Xu. Apart from his name, it is difficult for us to find Xu's life story and even to verify his origin. Indeed, novelists were treated badly at that time, and novelists were usually labeled as unprofessional, so many authors of ancient novels did not leave their real names in their works.
The Romance of the Gods was originally a civilian entertainment literature of China, written in Qin Long. The original work may be traced back to the vernacular Chinese "King Wu" in the Southern Song Dynasty, and "The Romance of the Eight Immortals in Kunlun" in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, which was created with ancient magical fairy tales and reference to ancient books and folklore. The Romance of the Gods is famous all over the world for its huge space and peculiar fantasy. It can be said that it is one of the excellent novels in ancient China.
Judging from the world outlook and opinions in The Immortal, many and a half are Taoist priests, or scholars who devote themselves to studying Taoist legends. Therefore, there is a great possibility that the author of this book is Lu Xixing. Xinghua, Yangzhou Prefecture (Xinghua, Taizhou, Jiangsu Province) was a Taoist priest in the Ming Dynasty and the founder of Oriental Taoism. The purpose of the book is consistent with Lu Xixing's identity, so Lu Xixing is more likely.
This book takes history as the background and shows the true spirit of Taoism to the public. Xu's writing style is very pure. The immortals in the book are insiders. All the lucky teenagers from Sanqing to folklore were included in the book by the author, and in the process, the author endowed these images with flesh and blood, making them more vivid and full.
Xu lived in the middle of Ming Dynasty. At that time, Buddhism and Taoism flourished in the Central Plains, and the believers of the two major religions had different degrees of integration and exclusion. The relationship between them is very delicate.
At that time, the introduction of Indian Buddhism into China had been accepted by the public, and Taoism was a deep-rooted religion in China. The followers of these two religions are all over the country, and the two religions will certainly influence each other.
Because emperors are eager to cultivate their bodies and minds until they live forever, the emperors in Ming Dynasty admired Taoism and made Daomen an "official" religion, while Buddhism enjoyed a high reputation among the people. It is in this religious background that two "masterpieces" have been handed down by the government and the people, one is The Journey to the West, and the other is what we call Shen Feng today.
Westward Journey has a subtle derogatory attitude towards both religions, so let's put it aside for the time being. Shen Feng, on the other hand, is a one-sided work promoting Taoism, and it also uses some techniques to belittle Buddhism.
Xu's most representative way of satirizing Buddhism is to rewrite Buddhist believers into Taoist true immortals, which means embezzlement. The quasi-mentioned and quasi-accepted Taoist in Shen Feng were originally Buddhists, but they became Taoist in the novel, and then went to the West to preach and establish religion. Manjusri Bodhisattva, Pu Xian, etc. , but also Buddha and Bodhisattva. It had nothing to do with Taoism, but it was abruptly pulled into a Taoist immortal. This insult is already obvious.
In Buddhist classics, Manjusri Bodhisattva usually appears together with Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. They are the attendants of the Buddha. They are left and right, a symbolic idea and a symbolic wisdom. The mounts of these two Bodhisattvas are also very strange. They are the green lion and the white elephant, which are both shown in Journey to the West. The prototype of the benevolent channel man is well known. He is the Merciful Guanyin Bodhisattva, which is also called the Four Great Buddhists together with the aforementioned Two Bodhisattvas and the Earth Treasure Bodhisattva.
It is understandable if you just use the names of these Buddhist figures to make up real immortals. However, he not only put these figures in Seo Woo, but also expressed the details of their later education in the West, which directly proved that the origin of Buddhism was Taoism in the Central Plains. It can be said that this concept of "Buddhism is Taoism" is divorced from history. Buddhism was introduced into China from the west in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the origin of Taoism will be pushed back for decades.
In the second half of the novel, when the leader of Tian Tong set up a fairy array, intending to do or die with Buddhism, Manjusri Bodhisattva broke into the Taiji array and brought Qiu Shouxian back to the array in one fell swoop and gave it to the Buddha at the beginning. The Antarctic fairy used magic to change it back to its original shape. When you look at it, it turns out that Qiu Shouxian's body is a very powerful green lion. Later, Yuanshi Tianzun gave this big lion to Manjusri Tianzun as a mount.
At this time, Pu Xian made great efforts in the two instrument arrays, taking away the tooth fairy who brought up the rear. The Antarctic fairy did the same thing again, took out the three treasures and knocked on the tooth fairy's head three times, and returned to its original shape. It turned out to be a huge white elephant. Later, this great white elephant became the crotch mount of Pu Xian. At this time, the golden light appeared in the four elephant arrays, and the people of Cihang went to break the array and caught the golden light in it. Like the above two, this prototype of Jin Guangxian, Golden Hair? Yao, Huai and a group of people went down the corridor to feed Uncle W? /p & gt；
The author clearly described the details of the origin of the three beasts under the Three Bodhisattvas, and also said: Later, these three real people joined Shimen with the three beasts and became the Three Bodhisattvas. Moreover, at the same time that the three real people soothed the three beasts, when the cowboy was at war with the turtle of Notre Dame, Xu specially wrote that the cowboy was predestined friends with the west, and later entered the Buddha, and spread the law to the Central Plains in the Western Han Dynasty.
Moreover, the "Buddhism" and "Interception" in the book do not exist in the history of Taoism, but are invented by the author. The name comes from He Dian, but it is not detailed. Mr. Lu Xun once explained: exposition means understanding, and "exposition of religion" means orthodoxy; Cut, which means cut. In the novel, "hermeneutics" is written as positive and "teaching" as evil.
Judging from these details in the novel, the origin of Buddhism is actually the Jade Hall, and those famous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas belong to the same family. This further promotes the thinking that Taoism is earlier than Buddhism in his works, and it is inevitable that Taoism is superior to Buddhism. In this ingenious way, Xu subtly lowered the status of Buddhism in readers' minds. Although his brushwork is very clever, it is very unkind.
References:
A summary of the research on the origin of the Romance of the Gods, the Education of Interpreting Classics and the Education of Cutting Classics