A Field Study In The Oral Genre Sa⁴⁴quen³⁵ Of The Xiangxi Miao

The"sead ghunb"(sa44quen35), which refers to the songs sung by the"bax deib xongb"(the local wizard) in rites such as ancestor worship, averting of disasters, funerals, construction and festivals, is transliterated from the Xiangxi dialect of the Miao language. Although these songs, which are believed to be the secret languages negotiated between the"bax deib xongb"and the ghosts as well as gods, consist of ancient words that are difficult to understand, they are still well-known by the local people and have a great effect on them.The analysis presented in this thesis is based on more than 70 days'field survey in the townships of Heku and Liubo in Fenghuang County of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture. Using the folkloristic theories of Oral Poetics and Ethnopoetics, the author attempts to show the mechanisms by which these songs are created, performed and inherited by analyzing the form of the text and describing the cultural discourse objectively.In the analysis part of the discourse, through exploration of the inheriting mechanisms of the"bax deib xongb"(the inheritor) and professional morality, personal observation and thorough descriptions of different kinds of rites, the author places the emphasis on three mutually associated factors, i.e. the"sead ghunb"(the oral text),"bax deib xongb"and the rites, in order to reveal the true image of this tradition and its influence on the lives of the local people. Its functions are also discussed, and attention is drawn to the development of this tradition as well as its effects on cultural and social change.In the analysis part of the text, the local oral expressions"ghob gind ghunb","ghob goul ghunb"and the inheriting process of"sead ghunb"are used as a point of entry in order to analyze the structure of the text of the"sead ghunb", on the basis of which 16 major themes are proposed. The characteristics of the"sead ghunb"are presented by observing the combining rules of the 16 major themes. The diversification from"ghob gind ghunb"to"ghob goul ghunb"may be summed up as follows: the existence of special themes, the array differences among the themes, the increase or decrease of the themes, the addition or deletion of the content and lineage of one particular theme.