The Green Snake and Fahai's Buddhist Destiny

The image of "Fahai" has roughly gone through four different historical stages: The first historical period is the Tang Dynasty. At this time, there was indeed a monk named Fahai, and his Jinshan Temple did indeed have a cave inhabited by a harmful python. Because of Fahai's virtue and spiritual attainment, the python eventually retreated and left.

According to the true folklore, the White Snake was remarried, and Xiaoqing was male. The TV series, based on this, drastically altered the legend, leading us to believe Xiaoqing was female. However, in the original story, Xiaoqing was male.

Fahai was, after all, a monk. If the goal was to create various conflicts to drive the plot, it would have been better to focus on the internal problems of Tang Dynasty Buddhism, much like the monk Xuanzang, as the author mentions. His founding of the Cien School or the scriptures he translated directly influenced the reshuffling of the schools of Mahayana Buddhism in China.

In short, the author's writing skills are evident so far, and as a reader, I hope the author can persevere and write a good novel. I would also like to offer some advice: if you want to write well about Buddhism, read the Buddhist history written by Tang Yongtong and others, and understand the basic Indian Buddhist philosophy.

I hope the plot doesn't follow a predetermined route. If it involves Buddhism, there should at least be some pilgrimages and stories, and ideally, there should be some background information on the rise and fall of Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty. 😁

This is just a case of false advertising; they give the protagonist a background like Fahai, but write about a weak, immature guy who hasn't even become a monk. It has absolutely no class.

In the first dozen or so chapters, if it weren't for the author's protection, this protagonist would have been one of those characters who wouldn't have survived more than an episode.

Actually, Fahai was also wronged, just like Wu Dalang. From the time of its creation until the 1960s and 70s, Fahai was a positive figure. However, that era was influenced by the West and championed free love. Thus, what was originally a story of a great sorcerer subduing demons was intentionally changed to a story of a high-ranking monk breaking up a couple. But think about it, what's wrong with him opposing a relationship between a demon and a human?

Green Snake's Calamity

After reading a dozen or so chapters, the more I read, the more bland it became. The protagonist always had a strange "arrogance" about him, as if he looked down on everything. Apart from his infancy when he couldn't move freely, he wasted more than ten years of his life without achieving anything, even though he knew that demons and monsters existed and that there were powerful people around him.