The Blessing Of Ancestors

Ritual has its symbols, and the explanation of ritual's symbolic meaning is the academical issue in focus for both domestic and foreign scholars. Anthropology and Ethnography has their peculiar research viewpoint on ritual symbols. With the efforts made by lots of western scholars together,the research on ritual symbols has gotten fruitful achievements, forming up with several vital academic theories, such as leading symbol,ritual process,symbol structure,symbols and cultural explanation. Ge people is one of the minority nationalities who is waiting for be distinguished in our country. They mainly inhabit a region along the Chongan River in south-east Qian State in Guizhou Province. Harong Ritual is the large-scale ritual used for offerring sacrifices to ancestors. It is the very important carrier which concentrates on emerging Ge people's history,culture,crafts as well as arts,and was incorporated in the first batch of manual of Guizhou Province's intangible cultural heritage in 2005.Nowadays,the study on Ge people limites most in the aspects of national origin,history,language,culture,crafts and arts. It can not comprehensively reflects the deeply meaning of Ge people's culture. Based on the information which is come from field work,this essay takes Ge people's Harong Ritual as an example,from symbol anthropology's viewpoint,using the symbol ritual theories to interpret the deeply meaning behind the Harong Ritual. At the same time, this essay has introspected the symbol theories during the research process.Besides introduction and conclution,the whole article is divided into four sections. The first section takes the point of ethnography to describe the drill process of Ge people's Harong Ritual. The second section stresses on the specific symbol"ancestral drum",using leading symbol theory expounds that"ancestral drum"is the leading symbol in Ge people's Harong Ritual. Under this leading symbol structure,"ancestral drum"is not only the general symbol of Ge people's ancestors, but also the elucidating symbol which stands for"the origin of safety,luck and life,the memories of ancestors and the identification of clan". The third section uses ritual process theory to analyse the symbol of Harong Ritual in its limen stage. The process of Harong Ritual is"passing through the limen". In the blending stage of limen, Ge people express luxuriant cultural symbol meanings. These meanings appear as the characteristic of counter-culture. However,during the limen stage of Harong Ritual, Ge people also has the characteristic of"structure", and thus forming up a"special structure"—a new"structure mode"which contains both"counter-structure"and"struture". I would like to call it"origin strucure".With the action of"origin structure"mode, the symbole meaning of Harong Ritual is showed by an"unusual blending". The forth section has explained the the symbol struture and symbols in Harong Ritual's field. The symbol struture of Harong Ritual mainly includes"dual structure","ernary structure".These types of strcture are the deeply"non-sense"struture. Dominant symbols and instrumental symbols are the two main kinds of symbols in Harong Ritual field. Those symbols contain the struture attributes of"concentration"and"different kinds of meanings". They are the main"medium"and"carriers"of ritual's smybol meaning, and carry lots of complicated cultural meaning.Generally speaking,this essay makes up a Harong Ritual's symbolic network system according to four aspects that"leading symbol—process symbol—symbol struture—symbols"basing on the description of ethnography of Ge people's Harong Ritual's demonstration. According to the research on this specil symbolic network system,we express the symbol meaning contained in Ge people's Haroong Ritual.