The ''Soushen Ji'', variously translated as ''In Search of the Sacred'', ''In Search of the Supernatural'', and ''Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals'', is a
Chinese compilation of legends, short stories, and hearsay concerning
Chinese gods
Chinese traditional religion is polytheistic; many deities are worshipped in a pantheistic view where divinity is inherent in the world. The gods are energies or principles revealing, imitating and propagating the way of Heaven ('' Tian'' ), ...
,
Chinese ghost
Chinese folklore features a rich variety of ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural creatures. According to traditional beliefs a ghost is the spirit form of a person who has died. Ghosts are typically malevolent and will cause harm to the li ...
s, and other supernatural phenomena. Although the authorship of the book is not made explicit in the text, it is believed to have been written and compiled by
Gan Bao, a historian at the court of
Emperor Yuan of
Jin (sometimes wrongly referred to as Yü Pao) around AD350. It was reissued in numerous editions, including in 1593. The book usually consists of 464 stories.
Stories
Notable stories include:
* Gan Jiang Mo Xie〈干將莫邪〉
* Wu Wang Xiao Nü〈吳王小女〉
* Li Ji Zhan She〈李寄斬蛇〉a legend about serpent-slaying: ''
Li Ji Slays the Giant Serpent'' (''Li Chi Slays the Serpent''), similar to the legend of
Chen Jinggu.
* Han Bing Fufu〈韓憑夫婦〉
The collection also contains a variant of the story of a
Swan Maiden
The swan maiden is a mythical creature who shapeshifts from human form to swan form. The key to the transformation is usually a swan skin, or a garment with swan feathers attached. In folktales of this type, the male character spies the maiden, ...
(or Heavenly/Celestial Bride) who marries a mortal man.
[Hsieh, Daniel. ''Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction''. The Chinese University Press. 2008. pp. 123-136. ]
Legacy
Pu Songling cites Gan Bao's work as a far greater work than his own, the now famous ''
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio''.
References
* Gan Bao. ''In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record'', translated into English by Kenneth J. DeWoskin and James Irving Crump. Stanford University Press, 1996.
Further reading
*
External links
搜神記 (Sou Shen Ji)at
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...
(in Chinese)
*
Chinese literature
4th-century documents
4th-century books
Jin dynasty (266–420)
Chinese mythology
Chinese folklore
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