中国文化英语教程教材内容Unit1

Reading A A General Introduction to Chinese Mythology Yang Lihui, An Deming 1By Chinese mythology, we mean the body of myths historically recorded and currently transmitted within the present geographic boundaries of China. It should include not only myths transmitted by people of the Han ethnic group but also those by the other fifty-five ethnic groups living in this broad area. Since almost every ethnic group has its own mythical gods and stories about their creative actions, there is not a systematic, integrated, and homogeneous “Chinese mythology” held and transmitted by all the Chinese people. Even among Han people, there is not an integrated system of myths. 2The earliest written records of ancient myths can be traced back to about 3,000 years ago, though other s of designs and paintings on shells ，bones, and bronzes probably relating to myth appeared earlier than this. Recently, researchers found a bronze vessel named “Suigongxu” Suigong was a duke of the Sui State, now belonging to modern Shandong Province; “Xu” is an ancient bronze vessel that has a cover and two ears; it functions as a food container, which can date back to the 9th or 8th century BC, the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The inscription on the inside bottom of the vessel consists of 98 Chinese characters, praising the achievements of the mythic hero Yu. It tells the story that heaven ordered Yu to scatter earth, so Yu went around all the mountains, cutting down the trees in the forests and deepening the seas and rivers to drain all the water on earth into the sea. This inscription shows that the technique of recording myth in Chinese characters had become relatively mature nearly 3,000 years ago. Additionally, it illustrates that at least as late as the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the myth about Yu controlling the flood had already been spread, and it had been historicized into a legend about a great hero or a great king in the upper class of society. 3But these inscriptions recorded myths very simply. Sometimes the mythological stories they illustrate are hard to understand. Therefore, Chinese scholars rely primarily on accounts of myths recorded in later ancient writings after the Western Zhou Dynasty to study these myths. 4In China, there is no sacred canon recording myths, beliefs, or sacred history likethe Bible or the Koran, nor were there any literati, troubadours, or shamans sorcerer or sorceress who collected myths from oral tradition and compiled them into a systematic and integrated mythology, like the Greek collections attributed to Homer and Hesiod. Rather, myths in ancient China were usually spread in scattered and fragmented s in various written material. These sources contain ination about archaeology, literature, philosophy, geography, history, witchcraft, ethnography, religion, folklore, and so on. Many of them preserve only a few myths, but some of them hold a comparatively large number of myths and thus become treasures of a