Comparative Research On Faith Of Dragon And Snake During The Warring States And The Qin-Han Period

Research on folkfaith becomes a newly emerging thing among the humanities in recent years. the scholars also paid attention to the folkfaith of Chinese ancient times never existed before. the scholars always paid close attention to the research on dragon and snake, because it is an important content of folkfaith of Chinese ancient times. dragon and snake went through a very long expand course. In this time, their figures and content of folk are different in different background era. In fact, drogon doesn't exist in the nature thoroughly. dragon only changed in people's mind. So, it is very difficult for the scholars to grasp the main purpose of dragon. snake is a common reptile in real life, it is easier to know the purpose of it. Dragon isn't concerned with snake. butwe can find that they are resemble in many aspects. On the whole course of development, they interveaved from beginning to end. So, their relations are bewildering. It can enlighten our research of folkfaith of Chinese ancient times, if we can understand how to influence each other and what is concrete content. This article was writted on the basis of owning much historical documents and drawing lessons principle and method from folklore and anthropology.This article covers six parts.Part one: The preface. It review the 1980's researchs, pointing out success and raising the defaulta and problems. It also introduces the gist of the article, explain principle viewpoints and the research method.Part two:This part analyses the content of folkfaith of snake during the Warring States and Qin-Han period. It covers worship and taboo. Snakes possess gods and spirits, so people all worship it. Snake is closrly related with power of mankind and national politics rise and decline, and individual prospect and destiny and sage. Nevertheless, snake is ugly, everybody is disguste with it.Part three:This part analyses the content of folkfaith of dragon during the Warring States and Qin-Han period, dragon possesses an important standing in mythology legend ang supernatyral being idea. Because dragon is noble and mysterious, it is in keeping with the claim of emperors deifing themselves, they just established thecentralization. So emperors get in regular touch with dragon. Once dragon show, it will become the presage of politics rise and decline. For this, the Hans have summed up convention integrated principle. From the documents, we can khow that people create the figure of dragon, they give the character of dry and rainwater. Additional, dragon is a divinities in the heavens, so people pray for rain with it.Part four.This part sum up part one and part two. Contrast the faith of dragon and snake. Pointing out their identical aspect and differentness.Part five: This part is postscript. Expounding the rational knowledge for dragon and snake at the same time superstition and worship them.Part six:This part summarizes the article. Leading to the purport of the article and pointing out the focal pointof article in the future.