異類如何成為親人──從《聊齋誌異．夜叉國》出發的思考

How Do Alien Kinds Become Family? Reading “The Yaksha Kingdom” in Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange

蒲松齡《聊齋誌異》中〈夜叉國〉一則，過去學者多從「奇邦異國」、「涉海小說」的角度視之，或納入漢傳佛典、《太平廣記》中的夜叉敘事，討論其形象演變，然而所得結論往往不出中原強勢文明妖魔化海外番邦之見。透過吸納英語學界對於從印度教到佛教「夜叉」故事、造像變化的研究，重審〈夜叉國〉對於前代涉海通婚記述與夜叉故事的改作關係，本文將分析論證，蒲松齡的處理不僅止於繼承了一個已有的敘事主題，而是更巧妙地運用「夜叉」這個宗教文學象徵符號原已豐富，時而甚至有所衝突的內涵（自然、豐美、富饒、母性、守護、強悍、食人、奪子、醜陋），細膩委婉想像，刻劃異文化遭遇時，複雜的心理樣態以及文化流動互滲的過程；同時藉文學改寫的遊戲筆墨，反思人與異類的界線，探索化恐懼驚疑為包容理解的可能。

“The Yaksha Kingdom” (Yecha guo 夜叉國) in Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling recounts the story of a shipwrecked Chinese merchant who drifts to an island, and lacking better options, establishes a family with a female islander whom he identifies as a yakshini (mu yecha 母夜叉). Placing this narrative in the context of maritime commerce in the South China Sea during the early modern period, this paper investigates how Pu recasts the Buddhist yaksha narratives and the Tang-Song classical tales deriving from them to re-imagine cross-cultural encounters. While earlier texts focus on the dangers of the sea and always end with the Chinese merchants abandoning their makeshift families in order to return “home,” Pu features cooking, language acquisition, and communal festivity as means to facilitate cross-cultural understanding. At the same time, he incorporates multiple perspectives to delineate the conflicts and dilemmas this family faces, being caught between two different cultures. By analyzing how Pu transforms the originally hideous and cannibalistic yakshini into an “extraordinary” wife and mother, this paper demonstrates that this text is a sensitive deliberation on the pleasure and pain involved in the process of acculturation, and a pioneering literary exercise that entertains the possibilities of making seemingly fearsome alien kinds one of us.