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data about a temple, the researcher finds that the narratives of some informants are composed largely of these miracle stories, some of them transferred nearly intact from other local traditions. We were initially disappointed over the amount of useful information we were able to glean from our interview with the elderly Taoist lady. But on reflection we realized that we had observed in her "errors", as in those of Topley's Cantonese informant, an example of the kind of mixing and mingling of stories and legends which has occurred for millennia in Chinese religion, and must indeed have characterized the early history of many religions prior to the establishment of canonical literature.
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data about a temple, the researcher finds that the narratives of some informants are composed largely of these miracle stories, some of them transferred nearly intact from other local traditions. We were initially disappointed over the amount of useful informa- tion we were able to glean from our interview with the elderly Taoist lady. But on reflection we realized that we had observed in her "errors", as in those of Topley's Cantonese informant, an example of the kind of mixing and mingling of stories and legends which has occurred for millenia in Chinese religion, and must indeed have characterized the early history of many religions prior to the establishment of canonical literature.
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