A Study On The Rituals Of The Yi People In The Mountains From The Perspective Of Social Change

Qiang ethnic minority is one of old minorities in China,which has been developed the old and mysterious culture during the past thousands years.Sacrifice to Mountain is the deposit of its culture and the most important religious rite of its social life,which plays the extremely essential role in people's daily life.The Sacrifice to Mountain reflects the belief idea that all things having souls and the polytheistic worship for Qiang people and it is a significant link to lengthen the social structure,integrate the social relationship,and strengthen the emotions between the ethnic groups.Since the founding of new China,the Sacrifice to Mountain of Qiang people like some folk rituals of other ethnic minorities has experienced the changing process of “lengthening-breakage-revival-transition” during its social development.Social development is an indefectible topic in the sociological research.Based on the mainline of social development,the study has applied the structural functionalism to investigate the functions and changes of Sacrifice to Mountain within the time background of social development of Qiang people.And then the important significance is analyzed from the changes of Sacrifice to Mountain for the local social life.Firstly the traditional Sacrifice to Mountain and its social function were introduced.And then the revival process of Sacrifice to Mountain and its development since 1980 s were explored.Meanwhile,the changes of sacrifice form and the transitions of its function were analyzed.Finally the reasons of changes in Sacrifice to Mountain were researched.There are total five chapters including the introduction of research background,methods and literature review in Chapter 1,the overview of general development conditions of Luobozhai village community in Wenchuan County from five aspects of economy,politics,culture,religion and so on since the modern times in Chapter 2,the analysis of functions for traditional Sacrifice to Mountain of Luobozhai village by the literature review consisting of functions of ecological protection,cultural inheritance,ethnic group integration,and psychological adjustment in Chapter 3,the description of Sacrifice to Mountain after the revival and its functions changes covered from cultural inheritance to economy appeal,from rite to culture performance,from religious rite to ethnic culture,from ethnic group integration to ethnic identity in Chapter 4,and the conclusions and discussion in Chapter 5 that the social development as the basic motivation for rite development and the rite revival as a result from the comprehensive effort of country,market and society.In addition,the culture performance is an efficient way to promote the cultural inheritance especially under the absence of traditional cultural inheritance for the local people.