Victor Mair presents lecture on Dunhuang Manuscript (Pelliot 4524 "Sariputra defeats the Six Heretics"

 The scroll is briefly described at this site:  idpuk.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-few-of-ourfavourite-things-1-victor.html  This scroll is kept in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.   Auriel Stein has other scrolls in London.

Photo by Janet Roberts at AAM, SAA, SF.

One of his memorable phrases:  "The storytellers made pictures move with their words."

"bianwen" = transformation texts and "bianxiang" = transformation tableau

He reminded us that even in early times, intellectual veiws need to be tested by "sparring".  Teaching needs to be done at appropriate levels with the right devices.


Story telling in the Tan dynasty was in the hands of women storytellers on the street with scrolls they would unwind and tell their tales.  The stories were meant as entertainment, as education, as edification.

Story telling in China was always prosmetric or alternated between the "sung" and "the spoken". ( (Consider the Beijing opera.)  Chapters alternate between classical verse and extemporaneous prose.
Each Chapter is a "session."

A focus was "the Journey to the West" (Ming dynasty) about  the famous monk, Xuanzang"(602-664) a "pilgrim and translator" ....in a Chinese representation he is shown with Chinese scrolls, whereas since he was coming from India, he would have been carrying sutras and palm leaf manuscripts.  

Victor Mair reflects on his time in the Gansu corridor, in the Tarim Basin, the Mummies, and the revelations about Indo European languages.    He makes a point that Buddhism sought to speak in the vernacular of the people, rather than in an Elite or Sacred language as in the Vedic religions or Hinduism.  (He comments that he identifies with this movement, as in his early studies of Chaucer).
The emphasis was not on philosophy, but on "conjuring", on "magic" as the monks told stories to a lay population.. He concentrates on Chadabrrunpta, and Prince Jetta's garden (sp?)

Victor Mair is professor of Chinese Literature and Language at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently teaching a course in Cinema.  Victor Mair's degree was obtained at the University of Washington in Seattle, and at the University of London, where he obtained a Masters in Philosopohy.  His Phd dissertation was based on Dun Huang where he would spend his first twenty years.  The next twenty would be spent mostly in the Tarim Basin and Gansu Corridor. He is featured in 3 documentaries NOVA and Scientific America.   Victor Mair spent two early years of his life in Nepal in the Peace Corps.  He has a son, Thomas Krishna Mair.

For more details, Painting and Performance:  Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis.  Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press, 19888.  Recently published by Floating World.

Also:  Mair, Victor.  Tun-Huang Popular Narratives.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. 1983.  See pp 31-84 for the complete translaiton of the Sariputra transformation text.