A Research On The Narrative Forms Of Kailu Jing,the Epic Of The She Ethnic Group

Since its discovery,Kailu Jing,the Epic of the She ethnic group has not received much attention from the academic circle.In 2014,the author successfully applied for the fund support for Kailu Jing,the Epic of the She Ethnic Group(Dongjia people),which was approved as a sub-project of One Hundred Chinese Epics Project specially commissioned by the National Social Science Fund,and later completed the basic work of collecting its text and image,and their sorting and translating.In order to make a further in-depth study of the epic,I have conducted field research on the epic in various villages in the inhabited areas for many times in the past four years,and collected many first-hand materials about the variants of the epic,as well as many interviews with artists.This paper is the first try to systematically study the epic.The epic,Kailu Jing is a long narrative poem narrated by the She Ethnic people in Guizhou at the funeral ceremony.The epic is usually narrated completely through the whole process of a funeral,with seven rhapsodes as the pathfinders playing the roles of "seven fathers and seven lords".they are armed with knives and guns to open the way for the soul of the dead.The ceremony for Kailu Jing is similar in function to Keyi held by Taoism master,aiming at expelling ghosts for the soul of the dead on the way to the nether world and worshiping their ancestors.Apart from the elegiac address in the beginning and the end part,the main part of Kailu Jing tells the story of Creation,power struggling among brothers,the flood,marriage between brother and sister,shooting down the sun,migration and the life experience of the dead.As an epic,it combines the myths of origin,hero and migration as the whole.It comprehensively reflects the history,society,astronomy,geography,customs and other information of the She people and has important cultural and artistic value.The She ethnic group has language but no writing.The singers sing and recite the whole epic in the language of the She.The whole process takes seven or eight hours and there are more than 10,000 lines of scripture.Kailu Jing at present has not yet been studied by academic research.This thesis,with a lot of fieldwork,observation and life experience,tries to break through the traditional social cultural research with the perspective of folk narrative to make a study of epic.The narrative form of the epic is divided into static state and living state,the former is to take the translated text as the research object,and respectively analyze them from the narrative structure,narrative plot,motif,function,and the narrative language;The latter takes the narrative text collected in the field as the research object,mainly focuses on the observation and record of two funeral ceremonies in two villages as ethnography.on the basis of comparison,the thesis focuses on the interpretation of epic narrative context,inheritance pedigree,narrative skills,dialogue and exchange,and so on.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The introduction mainly starts from the research origin.It introduces the researchers’ familiarity with She language,experience of the compilation and translation of various versions of the Kailu Jing and the long-term field research.Then,literature review and evaluation are made on the research status,focusing on the demonstration of the epic nature of Kailu Jing,the research review of epic text and its narration,and the evaluation of the theoretical applicability of epic as the narrative text.The first chapter makes a general overview of the She people’s epic Kailu Jing,explains its the ceremony and significance,compares it with the Taoist ceremony of keyi,and clarifies its subtle relationship with Taoist culture.Again under the wider ethnic and regional setting,as well as with the consideration of culture and tradition,the thesis reveals the status quo of the epic,seeks to define its cultural circle,and finds its relationship with Mencius culture.Based on the similarity between different ethnic culture,the thesis will make clear the distribution of epic,its inheriting status and the chosen versions of the epic research.The second chapter takes the static version of the Kailu Jing as the research object including its collection,sorting and translation,and divides Kailu Jing into three part according to its themes of creation,hero and migration based on the general theme characteristics of southern epic and the text content of She epic.Creation narration is the precondition of an ethnic group’ss existence in the world and the sacred narration of the rationality of existence.Heroic narration is an ancient legend of human beings’victory over natural beasts and a demonstration of the strength of ethnic spirit.The migration narration emphasizes the "history"of the epic from the historical level and reveals the ethnic survival and reproduction process and the history of ethnic relations with others.The Kailu Jing is not only narrated for the dead,but also for the relatives and audiences on the scene,who form an interactive narrative context.At the same time,they also console the living in an invisible way,letting them get rid of their grief as soon as possible,so that they can put them into the usual production and life.The epic goes back to the origin,tells the humanistic knowledge and ethical principles of the ethnic group,and plays the narrative significance of standardizing the behavior of the ethnic group and condensing the ethnic emotions.The third chapter is to understand the long and complicated epic from its content.The external structure is the beginning and the end of the epic as well as its main part.The analysis of the internal structure shows that its time order is closely related to the funeral ceremony procedure,and every part is related to the emotional concept of the public.The public does not pursue the "authenticity" of epic narration,but a sense of existence that satisfies the current people’s need for divine power and demonstrates the ethnic spirit of unremitting self-improvement and continuous improvement.Epic narrative plot does not include intense conflict,the arrangement of sequence of events shows creative use of ethnic narrative skill,questioning for the narrative logic rationality and realistic needs for the meaning of the narration.The plot comparison among other epics from the adjacent ethnic group shows that the narration plot is generally for god,half-human and human,the intrinsic meaning of the plot development is not only to describe the story of the ancient,but the rationality and legitimacy of the history of the ethnic group in the current present.The fourth chapter is to make comparative analysis of the different epics between She and other nearby ethnic groups.The author first will refine and study the narrative motif of Kailu Jing,which includes the motif cultural hero creating the heavens and the earth and the flood myth motif.Reciting the epic to the dead reflects ancient people’s fear toward the nature and their conquer over the nature.Primitive thinking theory let people believe that death is not the end of life,but another state of life cycle,this myth narration are reasonable explanation to the life.Different narrative functions reflect different ethnic ideas and ways of thinking.Epic often replaces actors with their own ethnic heroes and strengthens the mysterious deterrent power of stories,so as to increase the sacred narration of epic.The fifth chapter mainly explores the narrative language of the epic,which is the internal value embodiment of the epic literature.Epic is a long form of narrative poetry,on the one hand,to tell a long narration,one must use colloquial narration to make the audience understand the story and be attracted by the characters and plots.On the other hand,in the selection of words and sentences,it pays attention to the construction of ancient and elegant language and poetry,and employs rhetorical devices such as duality,repetition,parallelism and exaggeration to add the beauty of language.Through the actual narration of rhapsodes in past dynasties,it gradually improves the beat and rhyme of the epic text,making the epic language more musical and artistic.In chapter six,the author explores the living state of the text in the ceremony in order to study the epic Kailu Jing much more completely.The author makes ethnography for the different funeral ceremonies in the Liubao village and Xian’e village which are the two main inhabited area of the She people.The research focuses on the context of the narration,narrative skills inheritance,inheriting pedigree,and the multiple identities of the rhapsodes and makes comparative analysis.With the help of the theory of performance,the author analyzes dialogue and exchanges,narrative voice and movement,person perspective,narrative time and other factors in the epic.The conclusion makes a comprehensive review of the thesis and finally puts forward the research prospect:Kailu Jing,the Epic of the She ethnic group is only one of the southern epics,so it is necessary to expand the research field,from individual and special study to the complete study,from field study to the text study,in order to seek the deep meaning and universal law of Chinese epic research studies.