The Research On The Custom Of Soul-sending In Ethnic Groups Of Southwest China

The most of ethnic groups in Southwest China maintain a custom named Soul-Sending. Different from the one kept by peoples of other areas, it is characterized in such a rite: after death, people's souls would be sent to their ancestors' hometown with the guide of priests station by station.Obviously, the custom has rich contents of history and culture, as well as great value for study. This is determined by two factors: on one hand, some ethnic groups of non-Tibetan-Burmese branch of languages also maintain the custom, but theirs are originated from the counterpart of the Tibetan-Burmese groups in fact, so it can be regarded as the symbol by which we can distinguish Tibetan-Burmese groups from others, and it is apparently associated with the special natural environments and historical-cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, the custom itself includes many information of ancient culture of these ethnic groups: the possible locations of origins, the trace of historical process, relationships among them and so on. All of these are reflected in this custom at some degree, and they help us understand the origins and progresses of these ethnic groups more easily. The fact that we should attach great importance here is that some of these ethnic groups have no their own characters, and some have but do not popularize them, therefore, there aren't enough written materials for the researches on the history and culture of these groups. Because of this, the abundant in formations included in the custom become especially important.The dissertation consists of five chapters. The first, namely, prologue, explains the reasons for thesis selecting, and concisely introduces the progression of the researches relative to the custom; The second puts forward the concept of Soul-sending in advance, roughly delineates its regional distribution afterwards, and clear up several soul-sending roads in some ethnic group; The third mainly analyses its correspondence with languages and ascertains the part Soul-sending plays in the funeral ceremony; The fourth links the custom of soul-sending with migration story, and discuss theirs relation at the same time; The fifth aims at drawing a brief conclusion on what we have had said.The author suggests that the investigation and research on the Soul-sending should be associated with the history of Tibetan-Burmese groups and the progression of their languages. Also, Soul-sending shouldn't be regarded as the unique custom of a certain group but a popular phenomenon in the Southwest China. Undoubtedly, such a thread would play an active role in our study about the history and culture of these groups.