Distribution consent received, embargoed to August 12, 2028.

Zhou, Wenwen See all items with this value

2026

Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies

Iwamura, Jane

Kuo, Shou-Jen

Hong, De

This dissertation examines the reception and transformation of Buddhist karma in pre-Tang Chinese zhiguai fiction. It argues that Buddhist moral causation was reshaped through its encounter with native Chinese reciprocity frameworks and the native bureaucratic model of cosmic imagination. While scholars have studied reciprocity and miracle tales, existing work has focused primarily on prominent monks and general concepts, leaving the in-depth analysis of Buddhist karma reception across the pre-Tang zhiguai corpus unexamined.

Drawing on relational analysis of over 1500 entries, close reading of individual narratives, and Robert Campany’s “religious repertoire” framework, the dissertation traces how different repertoire elements were utilized to shape the specific form of karma in China. Xiao reconciled individual karma with collective familial obligations, while gan and bao mapped Buddhist causality onto the native resonant cosmos. Ming sets the baseline against which karmic consequence was measured. Buddhist karma extends the causal and effect cycle to three-life time.

Relational analysis reveals that the narrative concerns were historically contingent in specific ways. The concentration of narratives concerning political order and nobility reflects the anxieties of the fourth and fifth centuries respectively. The frequency of fate-alteration narratives increases in tandem with Buddhist institutional growth, suggesting that doctrinal availability shaped narrative imagination. Non-Buddhist and Buddhist collections also exhibit divergent narrative profiles, indicating compilers’ different intentions.

The dissertation further argues that specific socio-political conditions shaped the particular forms these beliefs took. The failure of official selection system made the three-lifetime karmic framework compelling as a theodicy for unrewarded virtue. The chronic warfare and frequent natural disaster of the Southern Dynasties gave the Guanyin cult its appeal, as the bodhisattva offered immediate and unconditional rescue unavailable in the native deity system. The bureaucratic structure of imperial governance supplied the institutional imagination within which karma became a ledger, hell a courtroom, and merit a quantifiable and transferable resource.

This study offers a multi-layer model to understand Chinese reciprocity through xiao, gan, ming, and bao. It offers insight on how Chinese Buddhist karma took its form in the formative stage. It contributes an integration of both quantitative and qualitative analysis on pre-Tang zhiguai collections.

Religion See all items with this value

bureaucratic cosmos See all items with this value

early medieval China See all items with this value

reciprocity See all items with this value

relational analysis See all items with this value

sinification See all items with this value

zhiguai fiction See all items with this value

University of the West

9798186343264