English-language Studies of Precious Scrolls: a Bibliographical Survey

Before trying to summarize the history of English language scholarship on precious scrolls (baojuan 寶卷), it is first necessary to introduce the early developments of the field in China and Japan. The modern study of precious scrolls can be said to begin with the publication by Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸 of his “Foqu xulu” 佛曲敘錄 (A catalogue of Buddhist songs; 1927) in Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu 中國文學研究 (Studies on Chinese Literature). This article presented brief descriptions of a few bianwen 變文 (transformation texts), followed by more detailed descriptions of 36 precious scrolls. In his Zhongguo su wenxue shi 中國俗文學史 (A History of popular literature in China; 1938), Zheng devoted a separate chapter to the discussion of precious scrolls, in which he provided lists of the titles he had seen and illustrated his argument by extensive quotations from selected precious scrolls. Precious scrolls were