The Belief Expressed By The Ritual Soundscape Of Badaixiong, Badaizha, And Xianniang Of The Xiangxi Miao(Hmong)Minority Group Of Western Hunan Province

This thesis is an ethnographic study on the ritual soundscapes of three kinds of ritual experts in Miao Minority of western Hunan province. The "Xiangxi Miao (Homg)" refers to the people now inhabit Wuling Mountain Area, including Fenghuang County, Jishou city, Huayuan County,Baojing County, and Yongshun County in Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of western Hunan province. The three kinds of ritual experts in the belief system, Badaixiong, Badaizha, and Xianniang, are locally called "Miao Wizard","Ke Wizard" and "Gangxian" by the Han people. Most ceremonies of Miao Minority in western Hunan province are performed by these experts.From the perspective of "institution" and "relation", this thesis adopts the methods of both case study and comparative analysis, starts with the requirement of local people’s belief in their daily life, proceeds along the principle line of "Ritual Performer-Ritual-Ritual Soundscapes", discusses different ritual soundscapes performed by the three kinds of ritual experts. First, I choose the most typical rituals performed by the experts, discuss and analyze the ritual process and soundscapes; then, I compare the ritual soundscapes from the ritual experts. By showing the correspondence between"different soundscapes" and ritual beliefs from the insiders’perception and comments, I illustrate the "supernatural power" endowed by the Miao minority and the connotation and meaning contained in such power of intangible world, and understand the "look of the belief" in Miao people’s thought, explore the connotation and meaning of different ritual soundscapes in local overall beliefs.