In China, the comparison between Chinese and Western literature also has a long history. As early as the end of the Qing Dynasty, Liang Qichao compared Huang Zunxian's long poems to western epics in Poetry in the Ice Room. Wang Zhongqi admitted that Water Margin was a "socialist novel" and a "nihilistic party novel", saying that it could be compared with Tolstoy and Dickens. Sue took Li Bai, Li Hebi, Byron and Shelley. Although what they have done is only superficial comparison, it is enough to show that the comparison between Chinese and Western literature has already begun in the fetal period of China's national awakening. China's official comparative literature papers appeared in the early 1930s, and Fan Cunzhong, Chen Shouyi and others began to study the influence of China's classical literature on Western Europe. Later, insightful comparative studies of Chinese and Western literature appeared in Zhu Guangqian's On Poetry, Qian Zhongshu's Notes on Art, Zhu Ziqing's Miscellaneous Poems, Li Guangtian's The Art of Poetry and some of Li Jianwu's essays, while Dai Wangshu and others began to translate and introduce theoretical works of western comparative literature. In 1950s, there appeared many papers by Ge Baoquan on the influence history of Chinese and Russian literature. However, no matter which period, it is impossible to be more extensive than the last two years. 1979, China published some collections of comparative literature with the most concentrated content after liberation, especially the publication of Guan Cone by Mr. Qian Zhongshu, which was regarded by scholars at home and abroad as a major event in the history of Chinese and western comparative literature.

What is comparative literature? In fact, as early as the early days, some people made a comparative study of different documents of different dynasties and generations. Let's start with a "case-solving" that happened in the history of China literature and lasted for thousands of years, and then get closer and know comparative literature step by step.

As early as the Tang Dynasty, some people studied the origin of Wu Yun's Yan Xu Goose Cage. Yan Xu Goose Cage tells the story of a man named Yan Xu in Yangxian (now Yixing, Jiangsu) who met a scholar of seventeen or eighteen on the road. The scholar who fell on the roadside claimed that his feet hurt and asked to sit in the goose cage in Yan Xu. Yan Xu thought it was a joke, but the scholar really got into the cage and sat on the double goose, but Yan Xu didn't feel heavy when he mentioned the goose cage. When he went to rest under the tree, the scholar came out of the goose cage and said that he would hold a banquet to thank Yan Xu. Then he spat out wine and food from his mouth to entertain Yan Xu. After a while, a 16-year-old beauty spit out from her mouth to accompany the banquet. After a while, the scholar fell asleep drunk, and the woman actually spit out a 23-year-old man from her mouth to keep her company. Just as Xu and this man exchanged pleasantries, the scholar seemed to wake up. The beauty threw out a silk screen to cover it and slept with the scholar. But the man also spit out a woman of about twenty years old from his mouth to drink and play together. After a long time, I heard the voice of the scholar rustling, and the man was busy swallowing a twenty-year-old woman into his mouth; After waking up, this beautiful woman of 16 years old is busy swallowing this man and sitting alone with Yan Xu. After the scholar got up, he swallowed the beauty and all kinds of tableware for the first time, and then left a big copper plate for Yan Xu as a souvenir and left.

In the late Tang Dynasty, Duan, a poetess with the same fame as Li Shangyin and Wen, compared it with "Brahma Spitting Pots" in the Indian Buddhist sutra "Bhikkhu Sutra" in his Miscellanies of Youyang, which was written in the middle of the ninth century, and said: "The Buddhist monk sutra says: In the past, Brahma spit pots, women had screens and writers. Brahma longed for less rest, and the woman repeated the operation and spit out a pot with a man lying there. Brahma felt that he had swallowed each other for the second time and walked away on crutches. I took Wu Jun to taste this matter, and he felt strange, and I was also very strange. " Later, many people mentioned this matter until Lu Xun made a thorough judgment on this "case-solving". Lu Xun said in A Brief History of Chinese Fiction: "However, this thought does not belong to China. Duan once said that it originated in Tianzhu (that is, ancient India) ... When it comes to the origin of Brahma. Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the story of Tianzhu has been translated and interpreted gradually, and it has also spread all over the world. Scholars liked it and used it intentionally or unintentionally, so they returned to China. For example, Xun Shi, a native of A Jin, wrote "Ghost Story", and I still remember that the Taoist priest entered the cage. Shang Yun is from a foreign country, and Wu is a scholar in China. Lu Xun is absolutely right. This story originated in India. After it was introduced into China with Buddhist scriptures, it was originally said to be a foreign Taoist. For example, in "Ghost Record" written by Xun in Jin Dynasty, "In the twelfth year of Taiyuan, a Taoist came from abroad." In the hands of Wu Jun in the Southern Dynasties, it was absorbed and digested into people, things and places purely for China. Of course, this process of "degenerating into state ownership" has continued into modern times. Taiwan Province writer Zhang Xiaofeng Yu 198 1 published the novel "Man's Ring", which further evolved Yan Xu's goose cage story into a contemporary novel with psychological activities, environmental background and delicate description. However, the relationship between the theme, the basic story and the main characters remains unchanged.

It is actually a kind of comparative literature research to study the literary works of different nationalities and countries in China and India like Lu Xun and Duan, compare their similarities, trace their roots and explore their relations and reasons. Due to the extensive contact of literature of various nationalities in history, the following literary phenomena have appeared: in the Japanese classical novel Tale of Genji, a large number of poems by Bai Juyi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty in China, were used; In China's classical novel The Journey to the West, the Monkey King can change seventy-two, which absorbs the element that Hanuman, a monkey, can change thirty-six in Indian Buddhist scriptures. the Monkey King made a scene in the Indian Buddhist scriptures "The Classic of Virtue and Foolishness", and developed the story that the King Ding Sheng made a scene in the Emperor's Palace. According to legend, Li Bai first wrote Bodhisattva Man, but according to textual research, Bodhisattva Man is a musical tune in ancient Myanmar, which was introduced to the Central Plains through Yunnan. The earlier "Songs of the South of China Lisao" begins with "Emperor Levin is the Miao nationality of Xi, and the emperor's name is Bo Yong. Photographed in Meng Wei, Wei Geng and I will drop. " Some experts believe that these incomprehensible words, such as "Sheti" and "Mengwei", are translated names of constellations imported from abroad, most likely Greek or Samaritan. This kind of research is called "influence research" in comparative literature, because it mainly traces the relationship between different countries' literature and studies the influence facts of their origin, media, circulation, translation and acceptance. This kind of research rose and prevailed in France and Germany a hundred years ago, and once dominated all fields of comparative literature, so the results of "impact research" can be described as fruitful, and the theory and methods of "impact research" are relatively mature and complete. Any research focusing on this aspect is called "the school of influence research" for scholars who hold this view and their methods, because they advocate studying the influence facts between literary phenomena of various ethnic groups. Because most of the disputants in international comparative literature in 1950s were French scholars, it was also called "French School". This school's recognition of comparative literature can be reflected in the definition of comparative literature given by Van Gogh and Kaya. Van Gogh said in his book Comparative Literature (193 1): "The characteristic of real comparative literature, like that of all historical sciences, is to use facts from different sources as much as possible in order to fully explain each fact; Finding as many reasons as possible for various results is the basis for expanding understanding. " In Comparative Literature published 20 years later, Kea said more clearly: "Comparative literature is the relationship history of international literature. Comparative literature workers stand on the edge of language or nation and watch two or more kinds of literature penetrate each other in themes, ideas, books or feelings. "