《搜神記•女化蠶》試析

The Analysis of the “Nü-hua-can” 女化蠶 (The Story of How a Lady Transformed into a Silkworm) in the Sou-shen-ji 《搜神記》(Legends of the Supernatural)

This article centers on the “Nü-hua-can” (The Story of How a Lady Transformed into a Silkworm) in the Sou-shen-ji (Legends of the Supernatural) written by Kan Pao 干寶 (?-336) to analyze the characteristics of the source and the evolution of the story. In Tang dynasty, the story was rewritten as a Taoist legend titled “Can-nü” 蠶女 (the Silkworm Lady), in which the protagonist was given a new moral image. Although the “Nü-hua-can” and the “Can-nü” were oftentimes mixed up in the source materials of the Southern Song dynasty, these two stories have been preserved in two rather different contexts. I argue that the “Can-nü” should be considered the primal tale of the “Ma-tou-niang” 馬頭娘 (the ‘horse-head'-woman) in the Shu 蜀, and the “Nü-hua-can” is usually regarded as a tale about the origin of the silkworms.