Myth originated from the ancient ignorance period with extremely low productivity. At that time, human consciousness began to develop, but the thinking ability was extremely simple. Faced with all kinds of things and natural phenomena in the world, people feel mysterious and incomprehensible. Problems and phenomena, such as the creation of heaven and earth, the origin of mankind, the movement of the sun and the moon, lightning and so on. , are confusing and surprising. The infinite power of nature is even frightening. So the worship of natural forces appeared, and the vague concept of dominant natural forces appeared. People rely on their own narrow life experience, through imagination and fantasy, to create a personalized image of God; According to people's naive thinking, make up a fascinating story to explain natural phenomena and conquer and dominate natural forces. These stories were passed down orally from generation to generation by ancient people, and later people called them myths.
Myth not only reflects the life and historical development process of ancient people to a certain extent in a special way, but also shows the spiritual world of ancient people, revealing a lot of valuable information for exploring the mysteries of ancient history, and also providing a lot of vivid information for understanding the consciousness, emotion, spirit, will and character of ancient people, which has immortal cognitive value. Moreover, ancient myths give people wonderful artistic enjoyment with their own magnificence, which has high aesthetic value. At the same time, ancient mythology is the source of romanticism in the history of literature, which provides inexhaustible nutrition for the development of later literature and is undoubtedly a fertile ground for literature and art.
Second, the main myths in ancient China
Although China's myth has existed for a long time, it was later recorded in writing, and there was no special book to systematically record the myth. Only some fragments of myths are preserved in ancient books such as Shan Hai Jing, Zhuangzi, Songs of the South, Huai Nan Zi and Liezi. Although it is not systematic and complete, the content is very distinctive.
The existing ancient myths in China mainly include creation myths, natural myths, heroic myths and legendary myths.
The exploration and explanation of the origin of the universe and human beings constitute the basic content of the creation myth. How did heaven and earth open? How did everything come into being? Where did humans come from? In short, how did the universe come into being? This most primitive, basic and important question is the first thing that primitive humans in the early stage of human consciousness should think about. No wonder it has become the most common theme in all myths. Although it is impossible for the creator of the creation myth to give scientific answers to these questions, those absurd descriptions are extremely attractive. For example, "Huainanzi Spiritual Practice" records the myth that heaven and earth are confused with Er Shen, and there is a battalion that reaches the sky; Ivan Lei Ju quoted the myth that the universe was born with the mixture of heaven and earth, Mr. Pangu, which was recorded by Xú Zhēng. Although it seems absurd and unreasonable, it shows the creative spirit of our ancestors' earnest exploration and bold imagination.
Nature is full of change, infinite power and mystery, which makes primitive humans fear from confusion and worship from fear. In their view, nature is so full of vigor and vitality, as if it were an entity with personality and will; Storms, mountains and rivers, birds and animals are often regarded as gods by them. Inspired by this animism concept, they express invisible natural forces with tangible things through imagination and fantasy, and then create images and stories of natural gods. This is a natural myth. Among the ancient myths in China, the natural myth is an outstanding myth. There are many records about natural myths in Shan Hai Jing, among which there are many absurd and magical images of natural gods. For example, Raytheon, Poseidon, Yin Candle, a Zhongshan God who rules day and night and is hot and cold in winter and summer, and Fusang, a sacred tree that bathes for ten days and eight days, are all filled with wood and stones. What is more noteworthy is that Kuafu's myth is getting worse every day:
Kuafu and Japan are leaving and people are dying. Thirst, desire to drink, drink in the river, Wei; He, Wei and Bei drink Ozawa. Before he arrived, he died of thirst. Abandoned his staff and became Deng Lin. (Shan Hai Jing Overseas North Jing)
According to the "Huainanzi Terrain Training", Gao Youzhu: "Kuafu, a god beast." "Shan Hai Jing ·Xi· Shan Jing" says that "it is shaped like, but has arms, and the leopard and tiger (suspected to be the mistake of" tail ") are good at casting". It can be seen that "Kuafu" is actually the image of a natural god. Natural myths mostly take mountains, rivers, storms, birds, animals and plants and other natural objects as description objects and story protagonists, which reflects primitive humans' reverence and worship, confusion and explanation of nature, and also shows their desire to conquer and dominate nature.
The emergence of hero myth means the awakening of human self-consciousness, which indicates that myth has entered a new stage. Creation myth and natural myth reflect primitive man's exploration, understanding, conquest and domination of natural forces with imagination, while heroic myth reflects primitive man's understanding and reflection on himself, which means that man himself has become the object of consciousness, the center of the world and the master of the universe, marking that myth has entered a new stage. The protagonists in heroic myths are mostly demigods or "heroes" supported by divine power; Their heroic deeds in the struggle to conquer nature or society constitute the theme of heroic mythology. In the ancient myths of China, there are countless heroic myths with infinite charm. For example, fairy tales such as Shan Hai Jing Water Control, Houyi Shooting at the Sun, and Huainanzi Ben Jing Xun praised heroes who fought against nature and worked for the interests of the people. Myths such as the Yellow Emperor's killing of Chiyou (The Classic of Mountains and Seas, The Classic of Wild North) and the fact that * * * workers are angry and can't touch Zhoushan (The Astronomical Training of Huainanzi) are all reflections of social struggles and describe the heroes of tribal wars in clan society. The myth of "Fighting God with the Emperor" in Shan Hai Jing Overseas Western Classics is even more touching:
Xingtian contended with the emperor, and the emperor broke his head and was buried in yangshan. It takes the breast as the eye and the navel as the mouth, which is a kind of dance.
Xing Tian in the story is undoubtedly a hero who dares to struggle and is not afraid of failure.
This series of magical and supernatural heroes shine brightly in the treasure house of ancient myths in China.
In addition, there are many legendary myths about exotic and strange foreign bodies in ancient China. Most of them are recorded in Shan Hai Jing, which comes from the so-called four generations of Shan Hai Ye. For example, "the country of people with feathers" and "people with faces, mouths and wings eat fish in the sea" The fantastic and interesting pictures of Head, One Arm with Three Eyes, Man with Strange Arms (see Zhang Hua's Natural History), Tired Ofthe Fire Kingdom, Fishing in the Water, Three Song Kingdoms and Three Song Kingdoms reflect the wishes and ideals of ancient people trying to break through the restrictions of various natural conditions and transform their living environment, showing amazing surreal and supernatural imagination. Obviously, it also contains traces of describing the barbaric life of four generations of clan society in ancient China. There are countless myths in the legend, covering a wide range, with strange images and interesting meanings. They are an important part of ancient myths in China.
Third, the characteristics and evolution of ancient myths in China
Due to historical, geographical and ethnic reasons, the ancient myths in China are scattered, and only chapters or fragments exist.
However, despite such limitations, its characteristics are undeniable. Whether it is the exploration of the "truth" of the birth of the universe and the origin of mankind, or the praise of the "goodness" of diligence, courage, integrity and kindness, or the eulogy of the "beauty" of the sublime, rugged, magical and tragic, all reflect the thoughts, feelings and character of our ancestors to a certain extent.
Like the myths of all mankind, the ancient myths of China have gone through the historical process of their own development and evolution. From the development history of myth, it has gone through different stages from spiritual myth to god myth and then to human myth. As the ancient myths of China have been transformed and processed by later generations in the process of spreading, they have lost their true colors, so it is difficult to clearly distinguish and define the above development stages. In particular, the spiritual myth marked by anthropomorphic animal and plant gods has lost its original appearance; However, the myth of god marked by animal form or half human and half animal form is often mixed with the myth of man marked by humanoid god. But if we distinguish them carefully, we can generally see that they belong to different development periods.
Generally speaking, the most remarkable evolution results of ancient myths in China are historicization, fable and religionization.
Historization is the most prominent manifestation of the evolution of ancient myths in China. This is not only because the ruling voices of past dynasties have consciously tampered with myths in order to safeguard the interests of their own classes; This is not only because China's ancient historiography developed earlier; The main reason is that Confucianism, represented by Confucius, disdains the myth, denounces it and tries to reform it. "Zi does not talk about strangeness, strength, chaos and spirit" (The Analects of Confucius Shuer). Therefore, we despise the absurdity of myth, humanize the "God", and make some seemingly reasonable interpretations of some widely circulated fairy stories, turn them into history and put them in simplified books. For example, explaining that "the Yellow Emperor's 300 years" means "people benefit from life for a hundred years, people fear his God for a hundred years, and people teach him for a hundred years when they die". Saying "a foot" is "a foot is not a foot, but a foot is also a foot" (Han Feizi said "lower left") and so on are typical examples of the transformation of myth and history. As the spiritual core of myth is removed, it will inevitably die out.
Myth originally contained some philosophies. In order to publicize their own theories, some thinkers of later generations selected the parts they needed from the arsenal of myths, processed them consciously, and then turned them into fables that entrusted their thoughts, and the stories of images contained some philosophies, so myths were allegorized. The allegorization of China's ancient myths is mainly reflected in the works of pre-Qin philosophers. Zhuangzi, in particular, is an expert in turning myths into fables.
Myth and primitive religion are the products of primitive thinking. The mythical "God" was originally the object of ancestors' belief and worship, while the myth conquered and dominated the power of nature through imagination, which is also in line with the primitive religion's control of nature by witchcraft. Myth contains religious factors, so it is easy to be used by religion. Myth turns into fairy tales, which is the main manifestation of myth religiousization. In the ancient myths of China, the myth of the Queen Mother of the West and the myth of the Moon gradually evolved into fairy tales, which is the most typical example. Its * * * characteristics are: the protagonist changed from a goddess to a fairy, the image changed from rough to beautiful, and the plot changed from absurd to "reasonable". In short, it has been consciously modified and polished, and the concept of immortality of the alchemist has been mixed in. This is undoubtedly another reason why myths deteriorate and tend to die out.