In Tang Dynasty,with the sutras diffused and translated into Chinese,a large number of sutra stories spread among Chinese people,of which there were some tales about the journey of the hell.In order to show the existence of the hell,a large number of sermon stories were produced,which were concerned with a person who entered the nether world when he or she was dead or even when alive and who finally came back after traveling through the hell.This paper argues that the production of a great many stories about journeys of the hell in Tang Dynasty was directly related to the transmission of Buddhism, which provided a great number of themes or subject matters and many techniques of depiction for the creation of this kind of stories about journeys of the netherworld.
