神的名义与族群意志——南方民族神话对早期社会内部的规范

The Name of God and Ethnic Will

南方民族先民树立的体现自己愿望的神灵形象,不仅寄托着人们支配自然的愿望,也担负着社会的责任,担负着对内凝聚族群意志,对外确立族群地位的功能。因而,人们所创造的关于这些神灵的神话,不仅叙述了他们如何开天辟地,如何战胜灾害性天气,如何确立族类在大自然中的地位,也叙述了他们对族群社会结构,对族群成员行为的规范,以及如何确立自己族群在各族群之间的地位。

The gods＇ images which southern ethnic groups had built up not only contained their desires to control nature, but also shouldered the social resposibility, took on the function of cohereing a group＇ s will inside and established ethnic position toward the outside. So, the myths of gods that people created not only described how they created the world, how they winned over the symbols of disaster climates, and how they established the ethnic station in the nature, but also narrated the regulations of ethnic social structure and members＇ behaviors, and told how to establish a station among ethnic groups.