In this extraordinary work of scholarship, Victor Mair traces the global development over a thousand years of a genre of popular Buddhist folk literature from China known as pien-wen, pointing out its origins in India as a form of oral storytelling using painting as an aid, and showing how that form has influenced performance and literary traditions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Central Asia, the near East, Italy, France, and Germany. Professor Mair's research has important implications for students and scholars of literature, folklore, painting, religion, history, art, and theater and the performing arts, not to mention Chinese popular culture and Indian civilization.