The Historical Study On Worshiping A Number Of Gods For Qiang People

As the living fossil of nationality, Qiang nationality is quite special in the history of China. Qiang people worship a number of gods. When Qiang first came into being, this kind of religion came along with its people and exists till now so many years later.Restricted by the geographical surroundings, the transportation here is quite inconvenient. Because Qiang people live on the top of each high mountains dispersedly, and with steep mountain roads, it's almost impossible for them to gather together to hold a memorial ceremony for sacrifice to heaven and to hold some other religious activities. So their festival ceremonies and religious activities are just celebrated in each tribe, village or neighboring villages. Qiang people have few chances to contact with people of other nationalities outside their world. Their laboring, daily life and customs are still in a primitive and inaccessible state. As time goes on, different Qiang areas produce various customs. This special geographical surroundings later cause different gods in different villages. And also with the long time isolation from the outside world, the religion of worshiping a number of gods can be preserved and passed to the current days, with little influence by the religions of the outside world. In the meantime we can find some other reasons for this. For example, because Qiang nationality only has its oral language but no Qiang characters, the doxy of its religion has only to be passed down by Qiang flamen - Shibi(Xu) in the form of Qiang spoken language. This further adds to the primitivity and mystery of its religion.Qiang people are polytheists. They have a number of gods. In different villages there are different gods for Qiang people to worship. In order to study easily, after careful analysis I classified Qiang people's gods for worshiping into four categories. They are nature worshiping, fairy things worshiping, totem worshiping and ancestors worshiping. And then this paper separately analyzes and studies the phenomena and speciality of Qiang's worshiping a number of gods, the making time and historical background of Qiang's primitive religion, the worshiping objects of Qiang people, the influence of the religion on Qiang people's mind, culture and social life.Qiang people's old and mysterious religion is one of a fantastic treasures of Chinese culture. To probe this valuable cultural heritage is of great significance in promoting local economy and culture.