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Mythology reflects the ambition of modern civilized peoples to explore the secrets of the universe in primitive times, it shapes the cultural psychology of a nation, and is a source of inspiration for literature and culture.
The richness and beauty of Chinese mythology is no less than that of Greece and Northern Europe, but unfortunately more than half of them are scattered, and only sporadic ones remain. Drawing on the Western anthropological point of view, Mr. Mao Dun conducted a meticulous analysis and examination of Chinese mythology, and in the process of analysis, he compared Chinese mythology with Greek mythology and Norse mythology, and clarified many basic problems of the Chinese mythological system. Try to pick up those mythical fragments scattered in the long river of history, and restore a long picture of the myth of Chinese civilization flowing endlessly.
Many of the views in the book "Mao Dun Talking about Chinese Mythology" have pioneering achievements, such as "Xuan You is actually a giant clan", "The war between the Yellow Emperor and Xuan You is a war between the giant clan and the gods", "The theory of the unity of the father and the kwa'e", etc., which are still used today. Nearly 100 years later, Mr. Mao Dun's research and creativity on mythology still has strong vitality, and is a milestone work that readers and researchers cannot ignore so far.
Text/Contradiction
Although the mind of primitive people is simple, they like to attack those huge questions, such as why the heavens and the earth began, where did human beings come from, and what is outside the heavens and the earth. Their answer to these questions is the myth of the opening up of heaven and earth, their original philosophy, their cosmology. Regardless of the stage of development of the nation, there must be a world-breaking myth that represents their cosmology.
The Bushmans of South Africa did not know how to cultivate or eat fire, but there was also a myth of the opening of heaven and earth, saying that a large grasshopper named Cagn created heaven and earth and all things. Cagn also had a wife, named Coti; how they created all things, Bushman must have had its own myths, but no one has yet taken it. They also say that man is made by a serpent; one day, Cagn hit the snake's head with his staff, and the snake became a man.
Naturally, we have to say that the myth of the Bushmans' world-opening up is too simple and ridiculous. But we also have to admit that this is their "cosmology." As mentioned earlier, our existing myths are a mixture of the myths of the three peoples of the north, central and south, so the opening myths of our fragments are also a mixture. The myth of Pangu, which founded heaven and earth, originally occurred in the south and became a myth of the Chinese nation through the adoption and modification of the central literati; the existing credible material is the record of Xu Zhen's "Three-Five Calendar":
The chaos of heaven and earth is like a chicken, and Pangu is born in it; eighteen thousand years old, the heavens and the earth are opened, the yang is clear for the heavens, and the yin is the earth; pangu is in it, nine changes in one day, God is in heaven, and the saint is on earth. The sky is one foot high, the earth is one foot thick, and the Pangu day is one zhang long. So eighteen thousand years old, the number of days is extremely high, the number of earth is extremely deep, and pangu is extremely long. There are three emperors.
(Cited in Taiping Imperial Records 78)
The same "Five Luck Calendar Years" written by Xu Zhen said:
The firstborn Pangu, dying incarnation, qi into the wind, sound as thunder. The left eye is the sun, the right eye is the moon, the limbs and five bodies are the four poles and five mountains, the blood is the river, the veins are the earth, the muscles are the soil, the hair is the stars, the fur is grass and trees, the tooth bones are golden stones, the essence is pearl jade, and the sweat is rain; the insects of the body, felt by the wind, turn into Li Hao.
(Quoted in Ma's "History of The Silk")
Of the two articles quoted above, there is one point to note, that is, the first cloud, which is probably closer to the original face of the pioneering myth of the southern peoples; however, the last sentence, "There are three emperors after the queen", is probably added by Xu Zhen.
As for the second article, it is generally based on the mythology of the southern peoples, but there must be more modifications and additions; not only does the phrase "four poles and five mountains" already reveal the cosmology of the central and northern peoples, but also explains that the process of creating heaven and earth is also contradictory to the first. In the first article, Pangu is a god born with heaven and earth, but it is similar to the Indian mythology that "in the beginning, there was only water in this world, and there was nothing other than water, and the water produced a golden egg, and the egg became a person, which was for Brahma, and was actually the ancestor of the gods".
The second, the record of the Five Luck Calendar Years, is that Pangu is intended to be a thing when there was no heaven and earth, and after Pangu died, there was earth, which is similar to the Iroquois of North America who said that there were limbs, bones, and blood of the giant Xukanipuk, resulting in everything in the universe. However, it is more similar to Norse mythology. Norse mythology says that in the beginning, the universe was a chaotic mess, no heaven, no land, no sea, only the god Bouli and the ice giant Imir; Bouli had three sons, Odin (spirit), Willie (will), Fei (sacred); Odin and others killed the ice giant Imir, his flesh into the land, blood into the sea, bones into mountains, teeth to cause cliffs, hair to cause trees, flowers and all vegetables, bones to the sky, brain to the clouds. I thought this coincidence wasn't completely meaningless. The records of the Five Fortunes Chronicle are similar to Norse mythology, and the Description of the Three-Five Calendars is similar to Indian mythology, which also implies that the former has infiltrated the cosmology of a number of northern peoples.
After the creation of heaven and earth, there was a period of destruction, and there is this story in Norse mythology. Norse mythology says that on the day of Ragarok (dusk of the gods), the evil wolves of hell escaped and devoured the sun and the moon, and the vicious dog Gam who guarded the gates of hell also rebelled, the poisonous dragon Nedhogg had cut off the roots of the tree of life, and the great serpent that swept around the earth stirred up the most terrible waves, so Heimdall blew the horn of the alarm. The battle between God and the devil began. On the side of the demon are The Grim Reaper, Loki the Evil God, Surtel the Flame Giant and All The Overlord Giants, Sirius, Hellhounds, etc. Finally, all the gods are dead. Surtel's demons burned the Sky Land and the Nine Nether Realms. All the evil gods were burned to death, and the ground became scorched black. Heaven and earth are destroyed again. Then, after an infinite number of years, the daughter of Sur (the sun god) steppmother Zhi drove the sun to the sky, so that there was a business on the ground, and the only remaining man and woman (Lifthrasir and Lif) at the time of the fire passed on to the second generation of human beings, and the gods were also reborn from the second generation to the whole palace. This is the destruction and re-creation of heaven and earth in Norse mythology. The Chinese myth of Nüwa patching up the heavens is also comparable to it. The Huainanzi Meditations says:
In ancient times, the four poles were abandoned, the nine states were split, the sky was not overturned, and the earth was not carried around; the fire was not extinguished, and the water was vast and endless; the beasts ate the people, and the birds grabbed the old and weak, so nuwa refined five-colored stones to supplement the heavens, and the broken jaws were enough to build the four poles, kill the black dragon to save Jizhou, accumulate reed ash to stop the obscene water; the heavens made up, the four poles were positive, the obscene water dried up, the Jizhou ping, the cunning worms died, and the people's livelihood was destroyed.
In this passage, it is very obvious that the meaning of the heavens and the earth that was once destroyed and recreated by Nuwa is very similar to the "dusk of the gods" in Norse mythology. Human beings have suffered from the disaster of floods, so all ethnic myths have stories of floods, and The Northern European Ragnarok also belongs to this category. The myth of the Chinese Nüwa Supplementing Heaven also says that "killing the black dragon to save Jizhou, accumulating reed ashes to stop the water", it can be seen that the fragment of this myth is actually part of the myth of the Great Flood. And because "the broken jaw is enough to erect the four poles", imagine that the sky is a bluestone slab, with four pillars to support it, so the myth that the head of the Gonggong clan cannot touch the Zhou Mountain has occurred. The Huainanzi Astronomical Training says:
In the past, the people worked together and fought for the emperor, angry and untouchable mountains, the pillar of heaven was broken, and the earth was destroyed; the sky fell to the northwest, so the sun, moon, and stars were in the northwest, and the earth was dissatisfied with the southeast, so the water and dust returned.
This is again an answer to the fact that the people of the north are not very happy with the terrain and the present world. In the pioneering myth, this is the end. From the above sections, it is obvious that Pangu's myth of creating heaven and earth and Nüwa's myth of recreating heaven and earth are off the mortise in the middle, which shows that the "Five Luck Calendar Years" Yunyun was probably created privately by Xu Zhen because of the myth of Nüwa's heaven supplementation, perhaps not xu quan's creation, but also the branches and leaves added by the folk after the Pangu myth spread to the central region. But it can also be asserted that China has opened up the myth of wearing the hat of the south and wearing the clothes of the north.
About the story of Nuwa, there is also a passage from "Customs":
It is said that when the heavens and the earth were first opened, there were no people, and Nuwa swept the loess soil for people; the drama was not time to give, but it was in the mud of the rope, and it was held up as a person. Therefore, the rich and the wise know, the loess people also, the poor and the ordinary, lead people also.
(Taiping Imperial Records 78 cites "Customs and Customs")
This is to say that the person who is made of "rope mud" seems to be some rough product, so he has become a poor and ordinary person. This is not the original idea that primitive people should have. From this myth of "creating man", we can also think that the people of northern China must also have their own myth of creating heaven and earth, and perhaps it is the Nüwa clan that is the most active backbone. As long as you think that the important work of recreating the heavens and the earth, such as "repairing the heavens, establishing the four poles, and stopping the water of adultery", is undertaken by the Nüwa clan alone, we feel that Nüwa should also be the protagonist of the pioneering myth of the northern peoples. Unfortunately, it has completely escaped.
(This article is excerpted from the book "Mao Dun Speaks chinese mythology" by Contradiction, and is authorized by the Tianjin People's Publishing House of Reading Culture)
Non-fiction | Chinese original | literature
"Mao Dun Speaks Chinese Mythology"
Mao shielded
Reading Culture Tianjin People's Publishing House
January 2022
Mao Dun (1896-1981), formerly known as Shen Dehong, the character Yan Bing, pen names Mao Dun, Xuan Zhu and so on. A native of Tongxiang City, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. He is a modern Chinese writer, literary critic, founder of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, and explorer and pioneer in the field of Chinese mythology research. Representative works include the novel "Midnight", "Lin Jia Puzi", "Spring Silkworm" and the literary review "Night Reading Doll".
Many of the ideas in the book have pioneering achievements, such as "Xuan You is actually a giant clan", "The war between the Yellow Emperor and Xuan You is a war between the giant clan and the gods", "The theory of the unity of the father and the kwa'e", etc., which are still used today. Nearly 100 years later, Mr. Mao Dun's research and creativity on mythology still has strong vitality, and is a milestone work that readers and researchers cannot ignore so far.
Duty Editor | Little Fairy
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