Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Часть 1

Секция 2 • Panel 2 Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Т. 1. 2018 198 and is going to fulfill his duties the next day, herewith to inform the headmasters. After that the peddler wakes up and remembers nothing he spoke of, neither has an idea who that Tang Menglai is. Relatives of the deceased get a scare and start to implore for mercy and beg the mighty one not to come. When Tang Menglai asks the headmasters about their conduct, the answer is: Hail Deity is mostly skilful in doing wonders, often makes living ones speak for him, and nothing of the spoken is blank. If today he is not impetrated to stop, tomorrow the tremendous hailstorm is going to outburst [ 15 , V. 3, p. 1606–1607]. Thus nothing — neither the characters, nor the time or main idea — seems to be common in these two novelettes, but the figure of the protagonist, the Hail God himself. The more curious is the fact that the God of Hail appears quite new for the whole folksy tradition of the Chinese demonology. No sign of it can be traced in the collection of fantastic stories “Records of Searching for Spirits” ġ ( ᩌ⾎䁈 , “Sou shen ji”) By Gan Bao ( ᒢሦ , 286–336) [ 12 ]. In the whole miscellany “Extensive records of the Taiping Era” ( ཚᒣᔓ䁈 , “Taiping guangji”), compiled during Sung period (960–1127)  1 , no Hail Deity is ever mentioned [ 19 ]. Neither this god is ever referenced in such notorious fantastic novels as “Creation of the Gods” ( ሱ⾎╄㗙 , “Fengshen yanyi”) by Xu Zhonglin ( 䁡Ԣ⩣ , ~1560~1630) [ 23 ] or “Journey to the West” by Wu Chengen ( ੣᢯ᚙ , 1506–1582) [ 21 ]. Even the infamous work “Historical Novel of Spirits” ( ↧ԓ⾎ԉ╄㗙 , “Lidai shenxian yanyi” a. k. a. ⾎ԉ䙊䪁 , “Shenxian yanyi” or йᮉ਼৏䤴 ĭġ “Sanjiao tongyuan lu”) by Xu Dao ( ᗀ䚃 , 17–18 c.) seems to stay totally unaware of the Hail God [ 22 ]. And on the top of all one will never find an allusion on such a deity in the mentioned above “What the Master Would not Discuss” by Yuan Mei [ 25 ]. Needless to speak about fiction: the royal encyclopedia “Taiping yulan” ( ཚᒣ⿖㿭 , “Imperial browsings of the Taiping Era”), giving dozens context variants where the word “hail” may occur, never points out anything similar to “Hail God” [ 20 ]. This kind of god stays totally alien to the whole “Chinese Taoist Treasury” ( 䚃㯿 , Dao zang) [ 26 ] as well as minor collections of Taoist texts. Special corpuses of deities of the Three Doctrines, appearing in Ming and Qing, also give no indication of such a character: neither “The Major Compendium of Origin and Development of Gods of the Three Doctrines” ( йᮉⓀ⍱ᩌ⾎བྷ ޘ , San jiao yuanliu soushen daquan) [ 17 ], nor “Collected Explanations of Absolute Truth / with a sequel / with an abstract” ( 哳՟⾯ 䳶䃚䂞ⵏ 㒼㐘 ᨀ㾱 , Jishuo quanzhen / xupian / tiyao) [ 14 ]. The last one, compiled by Huang Bolu ( 哳՟⾯ , 1830~1909), served as a basis to a number of European and Russian researches, such as [ 10 ] or [ 5 ], but even with amendments and additions those studies have produced nothing enlightening the discussed matter. The same goes to the most notable European investigations of Chinese everyday customs and habits, published in the 19-th century, like the 1 This novelette has been translated into Russian by academician V. M. Alexeev and published in 2000 [ 6 , 628–630].