literature: Asia and the Pacific aggerated nature of many of the characters leading to their easy recognition by the audience While Sanskrit was the language used for Hindu scriptures, Buddhist literary works tended to be written in Pali, and those of the Jains in Ardhamagadhi All three, especially the first two, were to have a major influence on Indian culture and also on the Indian diaspora Tamil, in southern India, gradually established a literature of its own, though it has incorporated some Sanskrit stories Pali would also become important in Buddhist areas of Southeast Asia, such as modern-day Cambodia and Indonesia Indeed, the Buddhist literary tradition also served to explain many problems of the world as experienced through the life of Lord Buddha and his subsequent teachings SOUTHEAST ASIA In Indian-influenced Southeast Asia the Mahabharata and especially the Ramayana became an important part of literature in modern-day Cambodia and Indonesia In the former some early local legends survive from the ancient period, mainly involving the nagas—many-headed snakes—and also the founding of the Funan Empire in about 200 c.e by Kaudinya, an Indian prince who married the daughter of a local naga Early literature in Indonesia also involved the Ramayana, albeit a slightly different version, adapted for Sumatran or Javanese circumstances As in Cambodia, the story was acted rather than written down, and gradually the plot was adapted to allow for local traditions to be incorporated Although it was still acted out as in Cambodia, in Indonesia the central part of the story was often told within the context of a wayang kulit performance, with shadow puppets and necessarily few characters CHINA Unlike the oral literary traditions of Southeast Asia, China has the longest continuous written literary tradition in the world, dating back to at least the 14th century b.c.e Although there have been many changes in the Chinese language, and the characters have changed since the early scripts of the Shang Dynasty (ca 1500–ca 1045 b.c.e.)—and pronunciation has changed dramatically—the tradition is certainly a continuous one Curiously, invaders often adopted the Chinese script rather than compelling the Chinese to use their own, and the Chinese script was also used in Vietnam until the French romanized the script in the 19th century It was also used in Korea in ancient and early medieval times The earliest examples of Chinese script are carved on bones and tortoiseshells from the Shang Dynasty These are often called “oracle bones” because there was a tradition by which questions were carved on the shoulder blades of oxen or on tortoiseshells, which were then heated, with the cracks that appeared determining the answer to a question posed In 1899 a scholar, Wang Yirong, started to transcribe some of the inscriptions, and many of the early surviving ones that 651 have been deciphered describe royal and religious activities In all there are some 20,000 pieces in the Academia Sinica, now in Taiwan Those on late Shang bronze vessels and also brief surviving genealogies are too brief to be regarded as literature by some scholars However, they show the use of 3,400 characters (of which two-thirds have been deciphered), indicating a wide vocabulary It was during the Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 b.c.e.) that many great works of literature were compiled These detailed myths about the creation of the world and the founding of China seek to explain many natural and historical events Unfortunately, the vast majority have not survived in their original form, largely because the first emperor of China, from the Qin Dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.), Qin Shi Huang, ordered the “burning of the books” in 213 b.c.e Although he did allow some exceptions, notably medical works and some works praising him, his order resulted in the destruction of many early works of Chinese literature The great Confucian works, however, survived the burning of the books These works consist of the Lun yü (Conversations), and the Analects, which are collected teachings of Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) Confucius taught extensively about philosophy and morality His request for filial piety and for people to respect the emperor ensured that his works survived when those of many other sages were undoubtedly destroyed In addition to having many works destroyed, Qin Shi Huang also had a large number of scholars executed According to one account, 460 scholars were buried alive According to Wei Hong, a second-century scholar, 1,160 scholars were buried alive The “burial of the scholars,” as the incident came to be known, ensured, at least in the short-term, that Qin Shi Huang’s view of history survived After Qin Shi Huang’s reign there were attempts by scholars to reconstruct the texts that had been lost During the Han Dynasty (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) scholars tried to write down many of the old stories Some were clearly later literary works, but many incorporated pieces of literature that may have survived or may have been remembered by people On occasion Han historians quite clearly added new material or in some cases tried to clarify ambiguities in previous works Apart from the works of Confucius, another survivor from before the reign of Qin Shi Huang was the Dao de jing (Classic of the Way of Power) of Lao-tzu It is the principle work of Daoism, a Chinese philosophy that venerates the “feminine” qualities that promote longevity as well as equanimity and unity with nature There was also the book of Meng-tzu, or Mencius (ca 371–ca.289 b.c.e.), the collected thoughts of the sage put together by his students The other major work to survive is a series of five books from the Zhou Dynasty known as the Wu ching (Five Classics) These consist of the I ching (Classic of Changes), the Shu ching (History Classics), the Shih ching (Poetry Classics), the Li chi (Record of Rites), and the Ch’un-ch’iu (Spring and Autumn Annals) The I ching describes cosmology, and the Shu ching is a collection of official documents The Shih ching is an