The Study Of The Mythology Of Silk Road

"The study of the Silk Road literature", proposed by Prof. Wang Zhong-ling, my supervisor, is a new scheme of international interest and great promise which transcends national, ethnical and regional boundaries. This dissertation, within the above-mentioned scheme, serves as a continuation of the one written by Dr. Song Xiaoyun, entitled A Study of the Chinese Literature of the Silk Road in Yuan Dynasty. With a grand and sublime background set along the Silk Road, and starting with a study of the myths circulating among different nationalities in the West Region, the dissertation strives to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the Silk Road mythology, through a detailed examination of its creation, development, dissemination as well as its variation.The whole writing falls into 3 parts: introduction, main text and conclusion. The introduction defines several key concepts, attempts to justify the special method of taking up myths in the West Region as the starting point for an analysis of the Silk Road mythology, and points out 3 cultural conflicts as the determining factors in the cultural development in this particular region as well as the characteristics of the mythology under discussion. It also provides a brief review of the present achievements in this field of research and the significance of my particular work. The main text consists of 5 parts and contains a discussion, at once synchronic and diachronic, mainly in the style of"aboriginal study", of the context within which the mythology concerned was created and disseminated, together with an analysis of its features. Chapter One points out that the shaman mythology is the core of the mythologies in the West Region. With the life styles of those nationalities in that region changed, their gods split into two categories: those of the nomadic and those of the agrarian, and myths revolving around them became the staple of the mythologies there. Chapter Two discusses the creation,survival and variation of the Silk Road mythology as against the totality of the special cultural background in that region. This includes a study of the traveling of the mythologies in the West Region to the east as well as to the west, of their appropriation of foreign mythologies, and of the...