Informal Storytelling and Social Networks: A Paratextual Reading of the Records of Miraculous Recompense

Abstract In his collection of Buddhist miracle tales, the Records of Miraculous Recompense ( Mingbao ji 冥報記), Tang Lin 唐臨 provided epilogues for most of his entries, documenting the sources and/or transmissions of stories that he had gathered over time. Situating these seemingly disparate, fragmentary paratexts in the context of the medieval “culture of informal storytelling,” this essay analyzes the range and composition of social networks as Tang Lin represents them in his epilogues. I then examine how his social networks, or his networks of informal storytelling, in the collection were embedded in the broader social world of the time. The case provides us with valuable glimpses into the dynamics of the culture of informal storytelling, especially its oral mode, and how it intersected with contemporaneous commemorative culture and lay Buddhist culture. These connections enable us to better understand the crucial roles that the culture of informal storytelling played in the medieval period before the advent of printing and other mass media.