ABSTRACT
Few genres of oral narrative arts are as rich a resource for historians of Chinese popular religion and performance literature as precious scrolls (baojuan), which emerged in the thirteenth century and flourished throughout most of the late imperial period and continue to be performed in contemporary China. In common with Tang transformation texts or bianwen, precious scrolls were composed in prose alternating with verse and in literary Chinese interspersed with vernacular expres sions. Overtly religious, morally didactic and mythological for the most part, they were meant for ritual performance by monks and particularly nuns and later laypeople as well, including professional storytellers.
