Investigation Of Liangshan Yi Genealogy Editing

Clan is the basic unit of Yi Ethic Group’s society in Liangshan. In traditional society, every family has its own complete genealogy, which goes down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Genealogy is a strong evidence used to prove people’s identity, especially to prove people having migrated to different areas whether they come from the same clan. Genealogy is used widely not only in claiming kindred with each other, but also in wedding and religious activities. Thus it plays an important role in daily life of Yi Ethic Group. Traditionally, education of genealogy is an indispensable lesson for every Yi boy in their childhood, after they growing up, they can all blurt out their own genealogy, some even can blurt out hundreds of generation.With cultural diversity and economic globalization, the strong impacts and deep undermines of foreign culture shake, even break the foundation of the traditional culture of Yi Ethic Group. Many young men of Yi Ethic Group no longer know their own genealogy, except for few elder. If leave it alone, no more people know the genealogy of Yi Ethic Group when those elder pass away. Therefore, for the sake of maintaining family emotion and inheriting culture of Yi Ethic Group, to rescue and protect the genealogy of Yi Ethic Group timely is very important. In recent years, many clans of Yi Ethic Group in Liangshan start to organize clan members spontaneously to survey, collect, edit and publish their own genealogy. A boom of editing genealogy of clans comes out among folk editors in Liangshan. How to understand and realize this cultural phenomenon is a question deserved to be answered earnestly. The author’s clan is also editing its genealogy compilation, he has taken part in the surveying, collecting and editing work, for which he is relatively familiar to the whole procedure.This paper is divided into four parts:The introduction introduces the previous research achievements and context mainly from the original reason of researching this subject, the general situation of this research, and the Vaqi Clan in Zhaojue.The first chapter sketches the genealogical culture in Liangshan, which is divided into three sections. The first section expounds the historical origin of Yi Ethic Group recorded in and reflecting from the genealogy. The second one introduces the content of the Yi genealogy and the tradition of its use in social life. The third one introduces the characters of Yi genealogy, including the patrilineal naming, the form of family tree, the oral heritance and its change along the time.The second chapter expounds the edit of the genealogy, which is divided into four sections. The first section analyses the five reasons of genealogy editing:the whole situation of genealogy editing in Liangshan, the psychological needs, the sense of identity of clan, the comparing attitude and the demand of inheriting genealogy. The second section introduces the organization mode of the genealogy editing work. The third one presents the main content of the editing work. The forth one points out problems in editing work.The third chapter discusses the significance and value of the editing work of Yi genealogy in Liangshan, which is divided into three sections. The first section analyses and elaborates the protective significance and realistic significance of genealogy editing. The second section expounds the value of genealogy research from historical and religious angles. The third section puts forward some proposals to solve the problems encountered in editing work.This paper takes the genealogy compilation of Vaqi Clan as a case study, supplementing the genealogy compilation of some other clans. Using methods of field working, studying documents and deep interview, and combining with knowledge learned before, based on related disciplines, including anthropology, ethnology and sociology, the author discusses the main reasons of nowadays genealogy editing in Liangshan, interprets the organization mode of the genealogy editing work, the content of the genealogy and problems in the work, discuss the significance and value of the editing work, then put forward some solutions. Based on the research of genealogy editing work of Vaqi Clan, this paper can reflect the overall situation of genealogy editing of all clans of Yi Ethic Group in Liangshan, then provides reference for research of the genealogy of Yi Ethic Group.