History of myths: the key to understanding China’s ethnic diversity
Wu Chengen's Journey to the West in Ming Dynasty is filled with allusions to ancient Chinese myths and folk religions.
Recently, the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science announced that the National Social Science Fund (NSSF) sponsored project Development History of Chinese Myth earned a series of achievements. A cornerstone of the project is its conception of a myth as “sacred narratives based on constructionism and cognitivism”. It is founded on the idea that the history of myths uses and is largely built from existing concepts from research on mythology, and that the practice of a historian of mythology is to observe the process by which ethnic cultures use myths to construct identity. The project team believes that the scope and aims of Development History of Chinese Myth bridges the gap between academic research and the humanistic sphere in Chinese society.
The history of a dedicated and specialized study of mythology in China dates from the beginning of the 20th century, when scholars brought the concept and some of the conceptual tools from Japan. These early pioneers established the interpretative framework for the study of Chinese myths, identifying objects within the myths, recognizing characteristics of recurrent subjects, and analyzing the connotations of and within myths. By the 1930s, the relationship between mythology and parallel and related fields of study—folklore, anthropology, and folk literature—had gradually deepened, leaving the discipline poised to continue playing a significant role in Chinese academia.
“For nearly 20 years, research on myths has been growing at a fairly rapid rate,” said Cai Fengming, a researcher from the Institute of Literature at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.” Compared with before, research has gone from being primarily literary studies to more expansive studies of culture. That being said, research on the history of Chinese mythology is lagging behind.”
Cai noted that mythology studies in China has not benefited from the same sort of systematized study found in the West, likely stunting the growth of a subfield focused more exclusively on myths’ histories. “Another thing is that the academic community still hasn’t formed a consensus around the definitions for some of the concepts—there are still differences of opinion. This also might have limited the development of research on the history of myths,” he added.
In fact, Liang Qichao, a Chinese scholar and reformist during the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican China, is the first person known to have proposed the idea of a book combining the history of Chinese myths with the history of Chinese customs. Liang also advocated regarding the study of the history of myths as a unique category of history. Because early research on the history of Chinese myths relied heavily on the Western theoretical framework and was mostly confined to assessing more primitive myths, only one book on the topic has been published to date—Yuan Ke’s History of Chinese Mythology, published in the 1980s.
At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the domestic research scene for Chinese mythology really came into its own, achieving more than a few results, said Tian Zhaoyuan, the lead researcher for the project and a professor from the Institute of Folklore at East China Normal University. Nevertheless, Tian also indicated that few studies have touched the history of mythology. A lot of researchers very rigidly adhere to the outmoded view that “myths are the products of primitive societies” and the analog that there are only a few myths in China, he explained. He sees this as hindering the progress of the whole field.
“Defining myths as ‘sacred narratives based on constructionism and cognitivism’ really highlighted the aim of our project,” Tian said. He elaborated that writing a history of Chinese mythology requires a dual awareness—the historian has to be both cognizant that he is writing a work not only enriching the discipline of mythology but also enhancing the humanistic construction for Chinese society. In such a project, Tian noted that ”choosing the topic for one’s writing can not only reshape the myths themselves, but also provide a humanistic approach for ethnic cultural construction. The Chinese myths related in the project both tell us something about the construction of the essential character and consciousness of the ethnic groups that have passed them down, and moreover help to construct a humanistic essence along these lines in present-day Chinese society.” He added that “combining the development of Chinese ethnicities with Chinese mythology is a distinctive feature of the project.”
“Another significant feature of the project is its attempt to seek ancient mythological references in present-day folk beliefs and folk culture,” Tian noted. In so doing, the project could have further ramifications for folkloristics, in that it introduces the idea of a mythical basis for many folk festivals and traces connections between myths that have been passed down for thousands of years and present-day folk customs and social life. Overall, it could really broaden the range of topics that folklorists might pursue.
The project also investigates the differences between mainstream myths that are more widespread throughout Chinese society, and myths that are found exclusively within a specific ethnic group. Tian believes that delving deeply into this division could lead to some groundbreaking conclusions on Chinese society, given the country’s multi-ethnic social make-up.
Wang Xianzhao, a researcher from the Institute of Ethnic Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stipulated that Chinese mythology should be regarded as a broader cultural phenomenon for which individual permutations carry the stamp of the particular ethnic group to which a myth belongs. Wang believes that the academic and cultural history of Chinese myths should be reorganized based on historical records.
Tian reemphasized that studying the history of Chinese mythology is a breaking fresh ground for Chinese mythology research as a whole. “This project is a summary of the research on Chinese mythology for the past hundred years. It will provide the theoretical resources and methodologies for the continued development of the field and also promote the development of further research on Chinese mythology and related fields in the humanities during the 21st century,” he concluded.
The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 444, Apr. 26, 2013
Translated by Zhang Mengying