近十余年来,明清民间宗教的研究领域公开出版了大量的经卷与官方档案,如早稻田大学的泽田瑞穗藏品与台湾世界宗教博物馆收藏的林汉章藏品的公开,使得学者研究利用民间宗教文献的情况大为改观。但民间宗教经卷的断代、真伪问题,研究难度很大。作者以两种重要的民间宗教经卷《九莲经》、《三煞截鬼经》为例,说明利用民间宗教经卷文献之前,需要格外警惕。

The increasingly available sources of Ming and Qing popular religions dramatically changed the research field in recent years because of the publication of large number of archives and scriptures．Collection of Sawada Mizuho of the Waseda University and part of Lin Hanzhang collection of the Taiwan Museum of World Ｒeligions，for instance，are freely accessible online.But to date and indentify a popular religious text，particularly a sectarian scripture，could be extremely difficult． The author uses the well-known Jiu-lian Sutra and the San-sha Jie-gui Sutra as examples to show the controversial nature of the extant popular religious texts．