神话传说与历史意识——三谈中国史学起源

Mythical Legends and History Consciousness:A Third Exploration into the Origin of Chinese Historiography

神话传说是历史意识的统一体,在形成与传播过程中不断被加工、改造,搀杂了各个历史时期的各种不同的历史意识或历史观点。中国的神话传说被加工改造的主要趋势是:不断地政治化、历史化。从神话传说中探寻“史影”,一定要注意材料的时代性,分辨其中包含的原始历史意识和后人搀杂进去的历史意识。

Mythical legends are combination of history consciousness. In the course of their forming and transmitting, they are constantly revised and updated. Hence they are mixture of various divergent history consciousness or history viewpoints of different historical periods. The main trend of the revising and updating of Chinese mythical legends is that the political and historical elements are constantly infused into them. Therefore, When searching for the 'histor- ical trace' in the mythical legends, we should take into consideration the historical times of the materials and differ- entiate the original history consciousness contained in them from that added by people of later ages.