A Study On Modern Rain-praying Under The Perspective Of Folk Customs

Folk custom refers to the life culture created,enjoyed and inherited by the masses of people in a country or nation.Since ancient times,there has been a close relationship between folk customs and village community.In many village communities,folk customs play a controlling and integrating role in the form of unwritten law.At present,some scholars believe that with the strong impact of modernization on the village community,many village communities face the crisis of disintegration.As the saying goes there is no skin,there is nothing attached to it.As a result,the inheritance of folk customs in some rural areas is on the verge of being interrupted or even lost.Rain praying is a ceremony for people to change this kind of crisis situation when drought occurs,which can relieve people’s worries and fears,and strengthen the unity and identity of local ethnic groups to overcome the crisis.The folk custom of drought and rain-praying in northeast rural areas has a long history,which can be traced back to the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China.Village E is a typical village with a surname outside northeast China,which is located in Fuyu City,Songyuan City,Jilin Province.The development of modern science and technology has a certain impact on the development of village E,which greatly facilitates the life of the villagers.But the folk custom of E village in the face of the strong modernization,did not present a completely collapse of the weak posture.The author thinks that E Villagers bring the convenience of modern science and technology into the development system of folk custom in their daily life practice,and present a kind of appearance of keeping pace with the times.They still play an important role in maintaining the village community.Based on this,the author takes E village in spring of 2018 as a case,on the basis of field investigation data,using interview method and participating observation method to prove that folk custom still has irreplaceable important function in the maintenance of village community.To reflect on the practical significance of the continuation of folk customs from the perspective of modernization development.The first part of this paper is the introduction,which mainly introduces the research background,reviews the literature of the domestic and foreign research on the rain-praying ceremony,the purpose,significance and innovation of this research,and so on.The second part of the article consists of five chapters.In the first chapter,the paper gives a brief introduction to the human environment and the natural environment of the E-village of the field from the angle of environmental anthropology and ethnography,and mainly describes the folk custom of E-village from the macro-level.In the second chapter,the paper gives a detailed description of origin and development、the preparation of the ceremony、the process of performing、the results of the rain praying.The preparatory work includes the route and principle,the participation of the main body,the place of assembly,the convening mode,the period arrangement,the preparation of the sacrificial product,etc.The exhibition process is mainly conducted from the main temple ceremony,the wandering village,the guest temple ceremony,the return of the main temple;The special ritual program is divided into the following:to ask for Gods —to subdue Gods—to greet Gods—to kowtow to Gods—to entertain Gods—to send Gods—to say goodbye to Gods.As a result,the rain-offering has produced two results:one is the failure of achieving the expected rain and the other is accelerating the start of artificial irrigation.The third chapter undertakes the further analysis of the deep meaning of the rain-offering,mainly from the two classical anthropological ceremony research angle:the structure orientation and the symbol orientation.The structure orientation can be mainly divided into the external mode structure and the internal faith structure.The external mode structure also can be divided into the separation stage,the liminal stage and the communicative stage.The internal faith structure can be understood from the three angles of the village temple belief,the folk Buddhism and the magic belief.The symbol orientation mainly analyzes the symbol factors involved in the ceremony exhibition,which can start with both the obvious symbol and the implicit symbol.In the fourth chapter,the village community where the rain-praying ceremony is conducted is combined with the social field village E.In villagers’ daily life practice,it is demonstrated that the rain-praying ceremony,which fails to achieve the expected purpose of seeking rain,still has the ability to ease tension,enhance community consciousness,release the village conflict and rebuild the countryside public function at the level of maintaining the village community.The fifth chapter undertakes the other result of the above-mentioned which is the failed praying for rain ceremony promoted artificial irrigation throughout the village.And further expounds that the extension of the folk customs and the development of the modern science and technology are not in contradiction but a relation that is both opposite and complementary to each other.Firstly,the development of modern science and technology has brought the folk custom to the development trend of secularization.Secondly,the folk customs integrate the application of modern science and technology into its own development system,and present the positive face of the times with the times.The more modern the science and technology,the more modern it needs a kind of heavy cohesion from the tradition,and the folk custom is the source of this tradition and the heavy meaning.The last part of this article is the conclusion that the author further put the folk custom into the modern trend from a more macroscopic perspective,and argued a dialectical point of view to examine the inheritance and continuation of the folk custom so as to a better serving for the development of the society and the progress of the civilization.