Tun-huang Popular Narratives(English, Hardcover, Mair Victor H.)

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Tun-huang Popular Narratives(English, Hardcover, Mair Victor H.) is written by Mair Victor H. and published by Cambridge University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0521247616 (ISBN 10) and 9780521247610 (ISBN 13).

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents authoritative translations of four vernacular Chinese stories, taken from fragmentary texts usually referred to as pien-wen or 'transformation texts'. Dating from the late T'ang (618-907) and Five Dynasties (907-959) periods, the texts were discovered early last century in a cave at Tun-huang, in Chinese Central Asia. However, written down in an early colloquial language by semi-literate individuals and posing formidable philological problems, the texts have not been studied critically before. Nevertheless they represent the only surviving primary evidence of a widespread and flourishing world of popular entertainment during these centuries. The tales deal with both religious (mostly Buddhist) and secular themes, and make exciting and vivid reading.