史诗演述的仪式效力与知识共享:对彝族诺苏支系“勒俄”口头表演的民族志研究

Ritual Efficacy and Knowledge Sharing of Epic Narration:An Ethnographic Study of the Hne Wo Oral Performance among the Nuosu Yi

基于列维-斯特劳斯对神话叙事和仪式话语的关联性分析视角以及雅柯布森的文化翻译理论,本文探究了史诗演述的公共仪式性特征。通过在四川省美姑县进行的田野调查和个案研究,发现彝族诺苏支系的“勒俄”史诗演述在祭祖送灵仪式中为人类的起源、语言分化和谱系文化建构的稳定转化提供了一个基于口头表演和社会互动的文化翻译过程,也因此史诗演述者能够以社会建设性的方式来引导、阐释和确立社会宇宙时空的秩序更新,并基于仪式参与公众所理解和共享的听觉文化渠道来唤醒和调度整个仪式的赋灵效力。本文通过对史诗演述事件的分析,发展了“史诗演述人-仪式主人家(及家族亡灵)-仪式参与公众”的分析模型来理解神话和起源叙事所凝聚的知识、智慧、记忆、情感等社会价值;指出以感官和话语为中心的研究方法能够拓展对仪式沟通、口头表演和日常语言之关联性认识。

This study is based on a long-term ethnographic investigation of Yi people s mythic narratives and ritual discourses.We will show the ritualized dynamic of the Yi hne wo epic performance in the Yi ancestor spirit-sending ceremony,attempting to explore how the oral performance of the Yi creation myth and origin narratives along with the ritual signifying behaviors co-contributed to the construction of a symbolic system and the process of meaning-making of the spirit-sending ceremony.Through a field investigation and a case study in Meigu County,Sichuan Province,it is found that the oral epic acts in two ways:1)It inserts meta-linguistic translations of the ritual symbolism,and 2)it awakens and regulates the animating efficacy of the entire ceremony based on the aural channels familiar to and shared by the lay public.The exploration of the relevance between mythic narratives and ritual discourses can be traced back to Levi-Strauss who stressed the intertextual linkage of the verbal arts and the musicalized speeches in The Raw and the Cooked and the other three volumes of Mythology.For Levi-Strauss,the re-enactment of the mythic process in rituals is a crucial communicative process,which establishes the symbolic power or source of meaning based on collective representation.If we adopt Levi-Strauss analytical model and make some adjustments,we can see that epic narratives—as a means to follow the principles of the ancestor spirit-sending ritual and maintain traditional social relations—need to be composed of three parts in order to achieve its communicative power:1)The epic narrator s belief in his own narration efficacy;2)the host family and the spirits of the dead s belief in the epic narrator s narration efficacy;and 3)the lay public s expectations and needs for the epic narration.These three components also explain the process of cultural translation dominated by the epic narrator.In epic narration,the narratives about the origins of hne wo and the origins of human beings can be understood as“meta-lingual”comments or as a process of intra-linguistic interpretation of the symbolic communication system of ancestor spirit-sending ceremony.The ritual performance of epic narration is an important means to transmit and disseminate traditional knowledge,worldviews,language ideologies,and cultural memories of the Yi people.The hne wo narration in the ancestor spirit-sending ceremony shows that the genealogy system and cultural memory of the Yi are derived from the present,the recent past,and the mythical past among the knowledge-sharing group.In many contexts,the importance of mythic heroes such as“zhyx ge a ly”or“shy lyp wox te”in the story does not lie in the names themselves,but rather in the process of the names and stories being constantly remembered,as well as the voice of epic performance via competition being uttered,heard and believed.Based on the analysis of the content and interactive dynamic of hne wo narration held in the ceremony of ancestor worship and spirit-sending,we can see that the epic narration provides a cultural explanation via speech and poetry of the stabilizing transformative process of the emergence,differentiation,and social construction of humanness,and inserts the moral meanings of the Yi genealogy.Therefore,the sonic-hearing experience of epic performance is also a cultural translation process of community practice,which provides a sensory dimension of the understanding and communication for magico-religious practices and ancestor beliefs.