Though the content of T’ang stories typically concerns the marvelous, they are not fiction, in the sense of a product of the imagination that is a representation of life written to entertain or instruct. The stories are in fact legends (stories alleged to be true as part of an unselfconscious tradition). The misconception that narratives in classical Chinese were fictive was begun by Lu Hsün, who misinterpreted the Ming critic Hu Ying-lin’s remarks on the subject. Rather than relying on scholars who wrote so long after the fact, consultation of many sources from the T’ang and Sung dynasties demonstrates that in general, the medieval audience believes the legends to be factual rather than creative products of the imagination. Historical writings from the T’ang and Sung not only include the same type of marvelous content as the legends, but also refer to identical incidents. Moreover, T’ang compilers of anthologies append notes to individual legends, making it clear that they accept the events in the stories as literal truth. These remarks also often describe the origins of many stories. Indeed, comparison of many legends demonstrates that the many similar stories are in fact differing versions of legends that have evolved through a process of being retold and rewritten. Sometimes history, and sometimes hearsay, the legends demonstrate a sense of wondering belief in the marvelous that persisted in Chinese narratives—fictional and otherwise—of later times.

Nirvana is perhap best taken as an Indo-European phenomenon. According to his Pali hagiography, Siddhartha Gautama attained this ultimate goal after ingesting something called “pig-softness”, an incident which has proven a crux in Buddhist studies, to say the least. My research indicates, however, that the Śākyamuni was not only clearly following an entheogenic tradition traceable to the Vedic muni, but that he was even reénacting a vatic ritual reconstructible to proto-Indo-European times. From a comparison of texts dealing with the activities of the Rigvedic muni, the Pali Śākyamuni, and the Irish fili, an Indo-European shaman can be deduced within the Dumézilean structuralist model of comparative mythology; i.e., a non-sacerdotal first-function figure closely tied to the martial second function, at the remotest level of proto-Indo-European society.

The project of comparative philosophy is an essential part of the project of philosophy itself. Therefore, its purpose is not primarily to show similarities and differences between various traditions, although this may be part of its work. Its major function within the project of philosophy is to enrich the historical horizon philosophers are drawing from in their discussion of philosophical problems. The term “comparative,” which J must use in the absence of an alternative, may be misleading. It suggests a third perspective that allows us to look at the traditions we compare from the outside. Our comparative perspective, however, is essentially asymmetric: we always look at the traditions we compare either from within one of them or from a point of view created by the overlapping of two or more, and this second case is far from being an outside perspective. On the methodological side this means that we always start with the understanding of the problematic of philosophy provided by our particular place within the spectrum of traditions. The comparative perspective is opened up by the premise that other traditions respond to the same problematic, although they may conceive, articulate and phrase it in very different ways. Reading texts from these traditions requires that we constantly rephrase our understanding of this problematic in such a way that not only the texts we are already familiar with, but these other texts too can be understood as a response to it.

LA LITERATURA DESDE EL PUNTO DE VISTA DEL RECEPTOR. By Franco Meregalli. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. 1989. 178pp. / COMPARATIVE LITERATURE FROM CHINESE PERSPECTIVE. By John J. Deeney. Shenyang: Liaoning University Press, 1990.