Bianwen, a Popular Form of Literature in the Tang Dynasty

Abstract

Among the many vital Chinese classics found in Dunhuang, Bianwen may be the most important. Before Bianwen was found, we did not know how Pinghua suddenly appeared in the Song dynasty at all. What was the origin of Zhugongdiao? Whether Baojuan, Tanci, and Guci, which were popular in the Song and Qing dynasties, were the productions of the recent years or “had existed from ancient times”? Most of the important problems in the history of Chinese literature became disputed cases for which it was difficult to obtain definite answers. However, since Marc Aurel Stein opened the treasure house of Dunhuang and the style of Bianwen was found, all the doubts were gradually solved by us. We could get a connection between the ancient Chinese literature and the recent Chinese literature, know there weren’t any relationships among the Huaben in the Song and Yuan dynasties, the novels in the Six dynasties and the Romance in the Tang dynasty, and understand the reading materials such as Baojuan, Guci, Tanci that governed the folk thoughts for thousands of years originally came here. This discovery made us have a fresh look toward the exploration of the history of Chinese literature. It was really quite important. If we only found such kinds of things as Wei Zhuang’s Qinfu Yin, Wang Fanzhi’s poetry, manuscripts of many ancient books, lots of Buddhist and Daoist scriptures, numerous folk ditties and narrative songs, a large amount of burlesques and articles like Yanzi Fu and On Tea and Liquor, they were nothing more than adding some new materials to our literary history. However, with the discovery of Bianwen, we not only found many great masterpieces but also solved many difficult problems for recent literary history. This was the very reason why we valued the discovery of Bianwen. That is why our book used a separate chapter to research Bianwen. If we didn’t understand the already lost important style of Bianwen, we would have the feeling that we didn’t know where to start toward the later folk literary works.