中古佛教護生思想容受與動物觀轉變 - 以《冥報記》為核心的考察=The Adaptation of Ahimsa and the Transformation of Perception of Animal During Early Medieval China: Exemplified by the Ming Bao Ji
The spread and signification of Buddhism in early medieval China has drawn great attention of researchers in relevant fields. This paper is based on Tang Lin’ s Ming Bao Ji (Retribution after Death), which is written in the Early Tang period, to examine the transformation of the perception of animal since the Six Dynasties, and to describe how people adapted foreign concepts by incorporating them with existing Chinese notions. The first part will discuss the stories about retribution of killing, arguing that by merging with the traditional Chinese motif “ the revenge of ghosts,” Ming Bao Ji turned the animals’ role from victims to subjects that have wills and can debate, make tradeoffs, negotiate－just like humans. The second part will describe how Ming Bao Ji integrated the Chinese concept of soul into samsara and broke the boundary between animal and human. This paper will try to demonstrate that compared to earlier efficacious stories which focus on the necessity of retribution, Ming Bao Ji tends to put emphasis on the subjectivity of animals, emphasizes the similarity between animal and human, and thus bestows moral standings on them. This new conception of animal frees them from being “the other,” and pushes human to face the pain and horror of animals seriously as well as to feel the hardness of killing. Combined with the traditional concept of “Ren”(benevolence), the concept of ahimsa (refraining from killing and the protection of life) has been widely accepted by Chinese believers.
