Victor H. Mair is professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and an MPhil from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Professor Mair is the general editor of the Cambria World Sinophone Series, as well as the editor of Sino-Platonic Papers and of the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series at the University of Hawaii Press. He is the coauthor of Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia and The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (2000), the author of The Art of War: Sun Zi's Military Methods (2007), and the editor of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (2001).

List of illustrations; Preface; Introduction; 1. ¿¿riputra; 2. Maudgaly¿yana; 3. Wu Tzu-hsü; 4. Chang I-ch'ao; Usages and symbols; Notes on the texts; References; Index.

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents authoritative translations of four vernacular Chinese stories, taken from fragmentary texts usually referred to as pien-wen or 'transformation texts'. Dating from the late T'ang (618–907) and Five Dynasties (907–959) periods, the texts were discovered early last century in a cave at Tun-huang, in Chinese Central Asia. However, written down in an early colloquial language by semi-literate individuals and posing formidable philological problems, the texts have not been studied critically before. Nevertheless they represent the only surviving primary evidence of a widespread and flourishing world of popular entertainment during these centuries. The tales deal with both religious (mostly Buddhist) and secular themes, and make exciting and vivid reading.