History Current And Future Of The Folk Judge Of The Yi Nationality Of Liang Shan

There is a proverb in Yi nationality that"It is the De Gu who takes charge in the Yi area, the officer in the Han area, and the Lama in the Zang Area". De Gu refers to the kind of people who are knowledgeable in the custom and laws of Yi People, who are eloquent and fair, and who are trusted and respected by all. Before the liberation, due to the historical reasons, such as the traffic obstruction of the Liang Shan Yi people area and the nationality segregation caused by the long-term destructive nationality policy of the feudal governor in the central area, De Gu, as the law-officers of the Yi society, had a long history and undoubted reputation inside their own nationality, but were known by few people outside their areas.After the democratic revolution of the Liang Shan area in the year 1956, the influence and control of the government to the Liang Shan Yi society have reached an unprecedented scale and depth. At the same time, there has been the effort of establishing new ideology from top to low levels, which reinforces with the political control. Under this circumstance, many inherent knowledge, beliefs, conceptions and behaviors of the Yi nationality in Liang Shan are considered fatuous and cliche to be criticized and prohibited. De Gu were thought to be the tool serving the slavery system and the slavery owners of Liang Shan, and also were criticized and prohibited. After the culture revolution in 1976, the control rights of the government have been gradually contracted to top levels. The manufacture big group and the manufacture small group, which used to have the administrative function, have been substituted by the villages that adopt villager autonomous systems. De Gu are popular again and become the main mediators of entanglement between the Liang Shan Yi People.First of all, this paper systematically described the history and current situation of the research of De Gu, pointing out the meaning of doing this research. Then, it illustrated the origin of De Gu, the normal and process of mediation by case analysis and literature investigation. It also presented the current situation that De Gu have become the main mediators of Liang Shan area by application of field investigation, and analyzed its reasons. Lastly, it makes proper forecast and reasonable analysis of the future of De Gu.The conclusion of this paper is that the order in the Liang Shan Yi People society, which is different from the formal institution devised by the government, exists objectively. The normative knowledge of the Yi People should not be considered unreasonable just because that it is traditional. The reason why Yi People obey some long lived customs of solving entanglement by De Gu is that these customs and De Gu have the reasonableness of rooting in the Liang Shan Yi People social lives. Therefore, when the decisions of De Gu conflict with the laws of the government, we cannot defy their decisions rigidly, but should pursue a compromise and cooperation between the government law and De Gu's decisions.