创世神话的思想功能与文化多样性

Intellectual Function of Creation M yth and Cultural Diversity

创世神话具有人类思想范型的重要功能。创世神话通过讲述宇宙起源和人类由来的故事,形塑族群最基本的文化观念和命运共同体的意识,也具有被当代激活和创造性转化的潜能。如何像保护生物多样性一样,尊重和保护文化多样性,成为当代语境下研究中华多民族创世神话的新关注点。二三十年前的中国创世神话理论研究,关注点在于从神话到哲学和思想史的发生脉络;新世纪以来则拓展到关注从创世神话范型到神话历史展开的整个过程。尤其是文学人类学一派提出文化大小传统再划分的理论创新,使得神话学研究的视野通过非文字符号物的解读,从两三千年延伸到八九千年,与玉文化的大历史相互打通和衔接。

The creation myth plays an important function as a paradigm of human thinking. It establishes the most basic cultural concepts and ideas of community by telling the stories of origins of the universe and human beings. These heritages in the primitive era also have the potential to be reactivated and transformed. How to respect and protect cultural diversityas a part of protecting biodiversity may become a new focus of Chinese multinational crea- tion myths research in the contemporary context. The studies of Chinese creation mythology twenty or thirty years ago focused on the context of mythology, philosophy and history of thought. In the new century, it has expanded to focus on the entire process from the crea- tion mythological model to mythistory concept. Above all, the School of Literary Anthro- pology puts forward the theoretical innovation by redistributing the culture concept of Great tradition and Little tradition. Therefore, the vision of mythology studies will be extended from 3,000 to 8000 or 9000 years through the interpretation of non-textual symbols, which connect with the Big history of jade culture.