killed and this led him to the spiritual life and to the study of all the Buddha Dharma. This eventually led him to the discovery of the prajñaparamita sutras with the aid of the Naga king These stories and figures also further evolved in East Asian Buddhism, for example, in time the male figure of Avalokiteshvara transformed into the female motherly figure of Guanyin which has her own East Asian mythic corpus. East Asian Buddhism (all of which is Mahāyāna) also developed further regional and school specific mythologies as Buddhism continued to evolve and adapt. Stories and legends about founding figures and patriarchs of East Asian Buddhist schools are one such development. One example are the numerous stories which developed around the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma which serve to explain how Zen Buddhism is supposed to have arrived in China. Another widely recognized figure which developed in China is the fat and jolly figure named Budai, which developed in Zen texts such as the Transmission of the Lamp. Another very popular example of East Asian Buddhist myth is contained in one of China's classical novels, Journey to the West, which developed around stories of the Chinese monk Xuanzang and his travels to India. These stories merge Buddhist myth with ideas from Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, as well as Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Forms of myth Literature The primary source for Buddhist myth is the vast Buddhist literature. The corpus is extensive; over 500 Jātakas exist in Pali alone and there are various complete Buddhist canons in different languages. The Jātakas remain closely linked to the oral tradition of the early Buddhist texts. The core of the story is a set of verses, which in the Pali tradition are the only part considered canonical. The story, and the framing narrative that tells the events of the Buddha's day, are commentary. However, as shown by Thomas Rhys Davids, verse and prose must have been passed down together in many cases. This is typical of Pali oral literature, where a fixed canonically portion was accompanied by a much larger and more fluid commentary, which itself would gradually become canon. When taught, the verses would typically be recited verbatim, while the story would be elaborated and adapted by each storyteller. By way of contrast, a developed literary work such as the Sanskrit epic poems of the great Indian poet Aśvaghoṣa such as the Buddhacarita