There are more than 2,400 kinds of Naxi people, including more than 220 kinds of great gods, more than 60 kinds of good gods, more than 60 kinds of evil gods, more than 90 kinds of generals, more than 20 kinds of goddesses, and more than 0/20 kinds of victory gods. In addition, there are Raytheon, Mountain God, protector Mocha demigod, deified wizard Dongba and so on. Where there is God, there is God's story. It can be seen that the East has preserved the richness of myths. Some Naxi scholars say that the main body of Dongba literature is myth. Dongba myth and Dongba ceremony are interdependent. Illusory colors, the charm of imagination, the loyalty of faith and the confused atmosphere constitute a mysterious world in which man and God are interdependent, indivisible and humanized. It is through this colorful sacred world that future generations peep at the long-lost ancient society.
The Ewenki people who live in the northeastern border of China call themselves "people who live in the mountains" and are good at hunting and reindeer, and there are still remnants of bear totem worship. After they hunted bears, there were a series of worship ceremonies and taboos. First, the bear's head, bones and five internal organs were wrapped in birch sticks or hay, hung on a tree and buried in the wind. Then, they offered cigarettes and bowed down to mourn, meaning to mourn their ancestors and seek forgiveness from the bear totem.
Why do Ewenki people regard bears as ancestors? Their myths and legends explain that a hunter was suddenly caught by a mother bear while hunting in the mountains. The mother bear took him into the cave and forced the hunter to marry her. Forced to Yuannai, the hunter and the mother bear lived in the cave for several years until they gave birth to a bear. Later the hunter took the opportunity to escape from the cave. The mother bear found the hunter escaped. He chased the bear with his arm, tore it in half on the spot, threw it to the hunter and kept it for himself. What remained was the later bear, and what was thrown to the hunter was the later Ewenki. This is of course absurd. No bear can become a man. This is a reflection of the totem concept of their ancient ancestors. Oroqen and Ewenki are of the same origin, "originally two close branches of an ancient tribe" (2). Therefore, the two ethnic groups share the same myth about bear ancestors. The Oroqen people also have a series of complicated bear hunting and sacrifice ceremonies, one of which is that they are afraid that the spirit bear will retaliate against hunters and people who share the bear meat. When you are buried in the wind, you should also sing a wind burial song. The lyrics imply the following meaning: We didn't kill you, but your life is over and you are dead. They call the male bear grandpa and uncle, and the female bear grandma. The bear ancestor myths of Ewenki and Oroqen belong to simple animal totem myths, which are not mixed with other legends and stories of later generations. Such myths of southwest ethnic minorities are even more rare. According to the legend of Nu people, their ancestors were born by the mating of snakes and bees. Tibetans say that monkeys mated with rock monsters and became human beings. The animals worshipped by Yi people are tigers, deer, monkeys, buffaloes, sheep, rock sheep, pigs, bears, rats, eagles, chickens and turtledoves. Until the early 1980s, the diligent Kemu people in Xishuangbanna still kept a complete totem system, which was quite primitive in form. Kemu people don't catch or eat totem animals they believe in, and even touching them is considered disrespectful.
The totem myth of the little sparrow clan says: there is a man guarding the dry valley. When the millet is ripe, all kinds of birds fly to eat. He knocked on the bamboo tube all day and shouted to drive away the birds. One noon, it was sultry, and he peeled the cucumber with a knife and ate it. When the cucumber was being delivered to the mouth with a knife, suddenly a group of millet finches came to eat millet. He screamed in a hurry to get rid of the bird, and the knife cut his mouth open, and the man died. Since then, Xiaomi Sparrow has become the surname of the descendants of this family.
The myths and legends of the Dai Water-splashing Festival are not only related to their religious beliefs, but also related to the special geographical climate of the Dai people. People choose local dry season and online season to celebrate festivals, which means people will enter the busy farming season. At the same time, there are several different legends circulating among the people. One of the oldest legends is preserved in a long epic "Badama Jiapeng Shangluo". The Chinese translation of this epic is about 13000 lines.
The epic has preserved the Dai people's ancient and huge spiritual world. Among them, the calendar god praised Ma Yuanran for being arrogant and rude, and the heavenly king Maha praised him for sleeping with his eyes closed for 65,438+ten thousand years. I didn't expect the seven daughters of this god to collude with the third-level god Pai Yaying. In order to send Yaying's queen, seven daughters cut off their father's head with a bow made of Seven Sisters's hair, which caused great disaster. In order to save Ma Yuanran, the gods had to go to the forest to cut off the elephant's head and install it for him. Since then, this god has become an elephant god.
Seven daughters fell from the sky for the crime of killing the priest, and they took turns holding God's head to atone. Seven women took turns hugging each other, one holding her head, and the other six kept splashing water to avoid a fire. The sins of the seven women can only be redeemed when the gods stop breathing fire. This is the early content of the Dai people's famous Water-splashing Festival. With the introduction of Hinayana Buddhism from India to Dai areas, the content of the legend of Water-splashing Festival has changed. This day is called Buddha's Birthday, also known as "Buddha Bath Festival". It is said that Sakyamuni bathed in the river before becoming a Buddha, feeling refreshed and feeling good, and he had to be completely awakened to become a Buddha. In order to imitate the Buddha, Buddhists also hope to become a Buddha after bathing, so a grand bathing ceremony will be held in the Buddhist temple on this day, and water will be thrown at each other. Actually, it's very late. Modern people celebrate the Songkran Festival, mostly playing with each other and blessing each other, with little religious color. Since mankind entered the patriarchal society, male ancestors have replaced female ancestors. In the fields of production, economy, life and even religion, men have occupied their position. There is only one thing that men can never replace, and that is having children. However, reproduction is related to the survival and rise and fall of a nation, which is great and sacred. In order to win this last piece of land, men think that men can have children without the opposite sex, just like women. Therefore, there are legends of men having children in Chinese and foreign myths, and corresponding customs have emerged. Kyle Polo, an Italian traveler from 13 to 14, once wrote about his experience in Yunnan: "People in this place have a strange habit. As soon as the pregnant woman gives birth, she gets up, washes the baby, wraps it up and gives it to her husband. The husband immediately sat on the bed and took her place. As soon as she takes on the responsibility of nursing the baby, she must take care of it for 40 days. After the baby was born, the relatives and friends of this family came to congratulate later. And her wife does housework as usual, sends the meal to the bed for her husband to eat, and feeds her next to her. " This is a customary expression of men's psychology of trying to compete for reproductive rights. It can be seen that there was a dispute over reproductive rights between the two sexes.
This interesting social phenomenon is vividly reflected in China's myths and legends. The Gaoshan people explained the birth of human beings in this way: a huge stone cracked and a person came out of it. The waves were rough, and the waves rushed to the bamboo forest. A big bamboo suddenly cracked and a man jumped out of the L. The two were inseparable. In their sleep, their knees rub against each other. One has a boy on his right knee and the other a girl on his left knee. This man and a woman are the ancestors of Yamei. Tooth beauty, located in Lan Yu Island, 70km southeast of Taiwan Province Province, has a population of about 2,500. The content of their myth is very old. The so-called male god who gives birth to children by rubbing his knees is actually a symbol of two different clans. That is to say, the descendants of a clan whose totem is mainly Stonehenge and another clan whose totem is Dazhu intermarry. According to physiological characteristics, a man and a woman should combine to give birth to offspring, and then their offspring will be matched again. Because after the patriarchal society, the goddess became a male god, so the combination of two male gods to have children became a strange theory.
Abu Kahehe went through a lot of hardships. Although she temporarily defeated her opponent, the evil god Yale, she still could not change the fate of history. I don't know how many years have passed, but the goddess herself has gradually transformed into a male god and changed her name to Abu Kahn Li Du. From then on, he was the master of the universe and enjoyed human sacrifice. This god is arbitrary and looks like a tribal leader in the heroic period.
It seems that the gods are indeed the refraction of the world, and it is not easy for the male gods to seize the power of the goddess, reaching the level of disowning the six relatives. The battle was soul-stirring, and the sanctions against the defeated were severe and ruthless. Compared with the Babylonian myth of killing mother and the Greek myth of killing father, it has the same effect. When people explain astronomical phenomena, they personify them and create various images. Among them, the sun myth and the moon myth are the most colorful.
Many nationalities in the world worship the sun and have their own sun gods. Generally speaking, the positive factors of sun worship and sun myth are the main ones. However, the sun gods left in China's ancient books are not primitive, but mostly personified male gods. Whether they are handsome or dignified, they are radiant, and they are the source of warmth, enthusiasm and light. Please see how magnificent the sun god of the Chu people is: I will go east and shine on my threshold. Caress the rest of the horse, drive safely, and the night is bright and clear. Riding a dragon, riding a boat, riding a thunder, holding a cloud flag and carrying a snake ... Qingyun is dressed in white, aiming at the sky and shooting at Sirius! Hold the arc and retreat, help Beidou drink cinnamon pulp! How strange it is to write! Go east again! ("Songs of the South, Nine Songs, Dong Jun")
The sun god rose from the hibiscus tree in the east and rode slowly forward to illuminate the bright night. The sun god, driving a dragon cart, riding a storm and holding a cloud flag, is like a snake. The sun god, dressed in Yun Lan and white clouds, shot at Sirius (star) like a sharp arrow. The sun god claimed that he raised his bow to drive away the disaster Sirius, and then descended to attract Beidou (Star) so that he could drink cinnamon syrup. At that time, we will pull up the reins, fly high, cross the mysterious land and return to the East. As a natural god, people think that the sun god crosses the sky from east to west, and then crosses the ground from west to east and returns to the east, just as we feel that the sun always seems to rise from the water and sink into it. As a personified sun god, he controls the wind and thunder nebula and exorcises evil spirits for the world. He is a good god with extraordinary appearance. Chu people worship the sun god and have no objection. They are all sons of the goddess. He is taking a bath for Sun's sons, and is in charge of their coming and going. When the sun rides the six-dragon car, xi also drives the sun. These basic plots are scattered in Shan Hai Jing. Mother Sun loves and obviously attempts to master the deification of the witch of the sun by imitating witchcraft.
According to ancient myths in China, Chang 'e is the mother of the moon and Wang Shu is the driver of the moon. The ancients also used the resurrection of the moon to explain the moon's circle. Because of the close relationship between the moon and the sun, some people call the moon and the sun a pair and regard them as together, or brother and sister, or husband and wife.
Although the stars have less direct influence on people than the sun, there are only two stars in the sky, but there are countless stars. Because of the change of astrology, it sometimes coincides with the change of personnel, so that the ancients reached many unscientific understandings of the stars and gave various mysterious explanations, saying that some stars are gods, or some stars themselves are gods. The astral world is also a celestial world, and this is how the concept of astral god appeared. The three gods of Fu Lushou in folk customs originated from the worship of stars, and they are called Siming God, Shen God and Sishou God. The inscription of Priestess of Death and Shaoshi in Nine Songs of Chu was re-created by Qu Yuan according to the folk prayers of offering sacrifices to the four famous gods. To control your life is to control your life. Siming is also the name of the star, the name of God. This kind of god is not very high in God's position, but only plays an auxiliary role to the Lord God. But it occupies a prominent position among the house gods and often deals with the world. If there is any fault in the world, it will be reported to the Emperor of Heaven, and according to the seriousness of the case, the life will be shortened by three or three hundred days.
Hundreds of ethnic epic poems, some of which systematize the myths and legends of a nation. The Dai epic "Badama Garuo" (that is, "The Training of the Creator") began in the vast space. Only the billowing smoke and rising air billow, together with the roaring wind and swaying flood, gave birth to the space giant Yingba (that is, the God of air billow or quilt) from air billow. The mother of this god is the air churning, and his father is the gale. Then a water god fish appeared in the water. The giant Shen Yingba made a big fruit (that is, the earth) and an elephant from the mud on his body. Talent 16 floor, the gods created by Yingba lived on 16 floor respectively, forming a huge god system. God created man to marry and have children. More and more people ate the fruit of the divine world under the drainage of the green snake, and then people died, while the snake just shed its skin. However, because it was not easy to be born in Leuven, people also had some bizarre fantasies. For example, according to Yao's myth, ancient grains used to be as big as gourds, and a grain of rice weighed several times, so there was no need to sow. They grow by themselves, and when they mature, they roll into the granaries of every household along the avenue. So everyone is not worried about eating, and they are all lazy. In a rage, I turned my back on God. People tried their best to invite the god of the valley back to the ground, and as a result, all the big millet became small millet.
In addition to the worship of the Valley God, in the period when the matriarchal clan totem system was dominant, due to some great fortune or some unexpected misfortune, it happened to come into contact with a certain plant, which might become a totem. For example, A Brief History of Uygur once told the story of a tree ancestor: at the intersection of Shila Amzah and Selenger River, there are two connected trees with a small mound in the middle. The mound is getting bigger and bigger. There are five rooms, and each room has a baby. The local people think this is a godsend child. When they grow up, everyone will choose the youngest and brightest as the leader. The son of the tree manages the tribe well.
hope this helps