Er Bo Qiang Villagers' Sense Of The Sacred

This ethnographic dissertation studies the sense of sanctity of the villagers in an Erbu Qiang village in Mao county, Sichuan province, China. This paper tries to understand the local villagers'ideal world from their "emics" of the sense to the sanctity based on the author's fieldwork, and then interpret their society and culture.Firstly, basic information of the Erbu village such as its location, village structure, resources and means of livelihood etc, were introduced. Then the local original myths, including the origin of the world, the production of the human and Qiang ethnic group, the origin of the cultural matters such as grains and clothing, the origin of the name of local village were narrated. And then it introduces the local gods and the structure of god system by the gods that the local wizards please in practice. We found that the space structure of the local people's world is actually equivalent to the structure of their gods, in other words the hierarchical structure of the gods frames the hierarchical structure of the world. Of course, the system and structure of their gods is not just in their brain. Through the description of the sacred space in their real life, we found that the concept and the reality are roughly the same. Then the paper introduces various kinds of life forms in the local world:dragons, animals, plants, humans, and evil things also survive in their world in addition to the gods. These lives have relationships with each other, and there are various diversifications, such as animals and plants can become a monster, even become immortal or a god through practice. And human also have kinds of status and changes:for example they can become ghosts after death; they also have the possibility to become a god; in some special conditions they may also become a monster and so on. From these life forms we know that the local world is an open world system.After understanding the origin, structure and life forms of the local world, this paper introduced the local life. First of all, it introduces the house which is the most important place in local people's lives. It described the details of the construction process, spatial pattern of the house and several ceremonies associated with the house. From these details we know that house is a place that gods, human and animals are living together, and it also is a fortress that resist all kinds of evil things against the outside of the house:it is a miniature version of the local world system. And then this paper describes three important rituals in local people's lives:marriage, birth and death. By introducing the process and related practices of these three major life events, this paper shows both how the local society is composed and that these events all are involved in gods and evil things etc. These are not simple family secular staffs, but rather social sacred events. In addition, among these things, we can find that the local people's religious concept is heterogeneous and mixing.Finally, this paper sums up with the following conclusions. First of all, the most distinguished characteristic of local people's sense of sanctity is multiply mixing. The myth, god system and life forms constructed the world system in local people's ideal world. They lived in this world with sanctity. These sense of sanctity had huge impact on their lives, namely giving meaning to their lives. More importantly, both their sense of sanctity and their everyday practices indicated that the local sanctity is multiply mixing. So we can infer from this:the Zang-Yi Corridor, which Erbu village represented for, is not only a corridor of ethnical history, but also a corridor of religious history. Going one step further, we can say that the multiply mixing of religions idea is one characteristic of human society.