20世纪中国神话学概观——《中国神话学文论选萃》(增订本)序言

Review of Chinese Mythology in 20th Century:Introduction to the Selected Works of Chinese Mythology(Reset and Enlarged Edition)

中国神话学是晚清末年现代思潮即民族主义、平民意识以及西学东渐的产物。蒋观云于1903年发表《神话·历史养成之人物》，提出“增长人之兴味、鼓动人之志气”的神话价值观，夏曾佑、鲁迅等继之，中国神话学发端。20-30年代西方人类学派神话学等各学派传入，给初建中的中国神话学以强大影响和推动。中国神话学有两大来源，即以非西方民族田野材料为根基的西方人类学神话学和以搜神述异为主导的本土传统神话理论。中国神话学从诞生之日起，将两种思潮融为一体，显示了反传统和现代性的特点。20年代，“古史辨”神话学、田野调查研究、文学研究并辔而行，神话研究出现了第一个高潮。40年代，以大西南的学者群体为中心，把典籍神话与少数民族神话的研究融为一体，开创了文本研究加综合研究的新阶段，是为第二个高潮。80～90年代，全面推动了从文本研究向田野研究的过渡与兼容，学术理念的更新和研究方法的转换。20世纪初提出的“创造一个中国神话的系统”的学术理想，到世纪末已接近实现。

Chinese mythology is the product of modern thoughts such as nationalism and civilian consciousness and Occidental learning. Jiang Guanyun published Myth：the Characters Nurtured by History in 1903, which advocated mythological values of ＂advance people＇s taste and agitate people＇s morale＂. Xia Zengyou, Luxun and so on followed. From then on,Chinese mythology made a start. The spread of western anthropological mythology in China in 20s and 30s contributed greatly to the primary establishment of mythology. Actually,Chinese mythology has two main sources： one is western anthropological mythology based on the fieldwork in non--western societies; the other is the native mythological theories orientated to collect leg- ends about magic and weird things. Combining these two thoughts together,the Chinese mythology was anti --traditional and modern since it was created. In 20s, the first climax of Chinese mythology came with Ku-- shih--pien mythology,field work and literary studies. In 40s, the second one was characterized by the integrative study of myths recorded in ancient books and the myths of minorities by southern--west scholars, which opened up a new era of text study and comprehensive research. In 80s and 90s,the Chinese mythology began to transfer from text study to field research and the academic conceptions and methods have also been changed. The academic ideal of creating a Chinese mythological system proposed at the start of 20th century has almost been accomplished at the end of that century.