Study On The Reception History Of The Classic Of Mountains And Seas

The Classic of Mountains and Seas is one of the most important classic texts recording the ancient Chinese myths. It contains the knowledge of people from the pre-Qin period about the origins of the world, the astronomy and calendar, the nature and meteorology, the invention of civilization, the history and lineage, etc. all of which was basically formed during the Warring States Period. However, in the reception history of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, scholars from different dynasties had different opinions about its content and character. They defined it variously, such as a numerology book, a geography book, a history book or a novel book, etc. Ⅰ consider that this interesting phenomenon was not attributed to the variation of the text itself, but owing to the recipients who had a variety of knowledge backgrounds and ideologies. In general, through the livelong controversies about the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the present thesis devotes itself to analyzing the changes of ancient Chinese myths during the whole intellectual history of ancient China.The present thesis is composed of four parts. First, under the premise of clarifying the concept of myths, Ⅰ try to detailedly analyze the myths in the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the knowledge hierarchy from which they generated. Ⅰ also try to represent the historical transition of these ancient Chinese myths from an oral tradition to a writing tradition by using many other materials, such as the "Tian wen" from the Verses of Chu, Zidanku silk, "Hnewo Teyy" —the most popular epic among Yi people living in the southwest of China, etc.Second, Comparing with the thoughts from the school of Zou Yan, the "Wang hui" from the Lost Book of Zhou, Mr. Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals, the Huainan zi, etc. Ⅰ am supposed to introduce and classify the inheritance and development of the knowledge of the Classic of Mountains and Seas before Liu Xin’s edition. Through this way, the reception history of this classic text can be traced back to the Warring States Period. Moreover, Ⅰ creatively classify this reception history as three different parts:the sacred world where nature and man in one, the ordinarily objective world and the externally unknown world.Third, I engage with including abundant materials from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty into the three different parts mentioned above, such as the "prognostic apocrypha", Fu of Han and Wei dynasties, Shuijing zhu, Bowu zhi, Annotation of the Classic of Mountains and Seas by Guo Pu, officially compiled encyclopedias of Dang and Song dynasties, etc. Meanwhile, an analysis about the marginalization of the Classic of Mountains and Seas in the knowledge hierarchies of these dynasties is supposed to be present.Fourth, except the perspective of scholar-official above, I focus on the encyclopedias for daily use, the publications of images and the popular novels during Ming and Qing dynasties by the perspective of lower-class. All these cultural consumer goods renewed the knowledge of the Classic of Mountains and Seas. These ancient Chinese myths became the material sources of the mythological and fantastic novels of Ming and Qing dynasties.In all, throughout the reception history of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, we can conclude that it reveal an evolutionary process about the ancient Chinese myths during the whole intellectual history of ancient China.