「搜神記」の文體

Abstract

As is well known, pure fiction developed in China rather late. In prose, the earliest real works of pure fiction are the ch'uan-ch'i 傳奇 "tales of the marvelous" of the T'ang period. These T'ang tales were preceded by various collections of pseudo-historical or miraculous tales and anecdotes dating from Six Dynasties times, of which the most important is the Sou-shen-chi by Kan Pao 干寶 (4th cen. A. D.). In his work, the title of which may be translated as Record of the Search for the Supernatural, Kan Pao attempted to collect various examples of supernatural happenings which had appeared in history or which he himself had seen or heard of, to arrange them systematically, and to provide explantions for their occurrence. In other words, Kan Pao looked upon his collection not as a work of fiction, but as a record of actual happenings which, as he says in his introduction, may be used to supplement the accounts of the historians. The fact that the bibliographic treatise of the Sui History classifies so many of these collections of wonder tales under the history section indicates that, in the eyes of the men of the time, they were looked upon as belonging in some sense to the category of historical writings. But Kan Pao was also a historian in his own right, the author of a work called the Chin-chi 晉紀 or Chin Chronicle. A comparison of Kan Pao's style in the two works reveals important differences. While the Chin-chi is written in a uniformly simple and economical style, the style of the Sou-shen-chi is sometimes rambling and diffuse, sometimes drastically elliptical. It would appear that Kan Pao did not approach the writing of the latter work with the same seriousness that marked his attitude toward the writing of more orthodox history. Pure fiction in China seems to have developed mainly through a process of increasing fictionalization of actual historical events or personages. In the case of Kan Pao, we may observe in the works of a single man the separation between sober history and pseudohistorical wonder tales, and the effect which this separation had upon the style of the writing.