''You Ming Lu'' (幽明录, yōu míng lù), also known as 幽冥录 and 幽冥记 is a collection of tales of the supernatural from early medieval China traditionally attributed to Liu Yiqing (刘义庆, 403–442). Known as zhiguai ("accounts of anomalies"),Zhang (2014), p. 1 these tales deal with such topics as immortals, ghosts, the afterlife, as well as Buddhist themes such as karmic retribution. The text, originally in either 20 or 30 juan (卷) according to ancient bibliographies, was lost at some point before the

Northern Song The Song dynasty ( ) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, endin ...

dynasty of 960 to 1127,Campany (1996), pp. 75–76 but reconstructed from citations from later works. A

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

recompilation included 158 stories, which was expanded by

Lu Xun Lu Xun ( zh, c=魯迅, p=Lǔ Xùn, ; 25 September 188119 October 1936), pen name of Zhou Shuren, born Zhou Zhangshou, was a Chinese writer. A leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in both vernacular and literary Chinese as a no ...

to bring the total to 265 stories. ''You Ming Lu'' is noteworthy for being one of the earliest known works to display

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

influences, and as such had a strong influence on subsequent literature. Like most zhiguai collections, it includes works that had appeared in previous collections, taking 11 stories from '' Soushen Ji'' (搜神记), 4 from '' Lieyi Zhuan'' (列异传), and one or two stories from a variety of other works. A total of about 35 stories have been traced to previous works, leaving the majority of the stories in this collection as either original or of unknown provenance. Liu Yiqing was born in Pengcheng, today's

Xuzhou Xuzhou ( zh, s=徐州), also known as Pengcheng () in ancient times, is a major city in northwestern Jiangsu province, China. The city, with a recorded population of 9,083,790 at the 2020 Chinese census, 2020 census (3,135,660 of which lived in ...

, during the Jin dynasty, the son of Liu Daolian (刘道憐, 368–422), Prince Jing of

Changsha Changsha is the capital of Hunan, China. It is the 15th most populous city in China with a population of 10,513,100, the Central China#Cities with urban area over one million in population, third-most populous city in Central China, and the ...

. He is better known as the compiler of the collection Shi Shuo Xin Yu (世说新语, A New Account of Tales of the World), which is a quintessential work of the 志人 genre ("accounts of men"). His uncle was Liu Yu, the founding emperor of the

Liu Song dynasty Song, known as Liu Song (), Former Song (前宋) or Song of (the) Southern dynasties (南朝宋) in historiography, was an imperial dynasty of China and the first of the four Southern dynasties during the Northern and Southern dynasties peri ...

who reigned from 420 to 422.Zhang (2014), p. 20

References

Sources

* * * {{Cite book , last=Zhang , first=Zhenjun , title=Buddhism and tales of the supernatural in early medieval China : a study of Liu Yiqing's (403-444) Youming lu , date=2014 , isbn=978-90-04-27784-7 , location=Leiden , publisher=Brill , oclc=892340447

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Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...

Early medieval literature Chinese short story collections Supernatural fiction Books by Liu Yiqing 5th-century books