Clergyman's Poetry in Yuan Dynasty and Its Document Research

One of the characteristics of literature in Yuan Dynasty is that four kinds of clergymen, who respectively believed in Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity, all come forth in literary circles. Clergyman's poetry is an important part of poetry in Yuan Dynasty; However, there is few research in this field, and many valuable documents have been lost. The paper sums up the basic status of clergyman's poetry in this period, and makes a specific research on the scattering situation, collection of scattered writings and textual criticism of certain collected works. The ignorance of clergyman's poetry leads to the serious loss of documents; vise versa, the loss of documents directly results in the neglect of clergyman's poetry. The two elements are both the cause and the effect of the other's being. Through a careful document research, the paper attempts to reveal the following three facts: first, clergyman's poetry was in full swing in Yuan Dynasty and second, at the begining of Yuan Dynasty bachelors' entering into religion is closely associated with the abolishing of the imperial civil examinations; third, clergy poets had always been a group deeply influenced by Jiang Hu poetry school in Southern Song Dynasty.