| As an agriculture-based country from ancient times, the agricultural production in China maintains a pretty close relationship with rainwater. However, the special natural conditions bring frequent drought to this country. At that time, the lower productivity had not yet reached the level to resist droughts. And people couldn't give a scientific explanation to the natural phenomenon of rain because of their extremely limited cognitive level, so they thought that the rainwater could be obtained by invocation. To achieve favorable weather, people often prayed for rain and formed a pray-for-rain practice. As a mythical and legendary animal that only exists in the mind of people, the dragon was considered to be powerful to fan the flames of rain and cloud since ancient times, so it became the protagonist in pray-for-rain practices. Praying for rain with dragon was an important component of the production folk-custom of Han nationality; it also is accepted by minorities in the transmission process.With many factors, including social progress, the ruling class'respecting ,the people's utilitarian psychological factors, and the impaction of the introduction of Buddhism, the convention of praying for rain with dragon experienced a lot of changes: at first ,static imitation was used to induce the genuine dragon to bring rainwater, such as the production of mussels dragon, soil dragon, grass-painting dragon, and the lizards and geckos that were similar to the dragon had also became the objects of worship when drought came. Later, it was felt that dragon dances would induce the genuine dragon more easily, so people prayed for rain by the dragon dance. The static imitation and dragon dances all have strong tinct of voodoo. Later, people took the dragons as gods, and therefore formed a dragon invocation. In this process, the dragon upgraded to King, dragon temples were built throughout the country. To avoid droughts; people also did the front-end emotional investment, and therefore formed a festival customs of dragon worship in lunar February 2 and lunar May 20. The variance of the convention of prayer for rain has showed the characteristics of diversification, sacrificing amusing and so on.Make a comprehension of China's prayer for rain with dragon customs, merits and demerits mixed. It causes a lot of unnecessary waste to the farmers, which gets even worse especially in the bad years. At the same time, it also affects social orders. However, it also strengthens the cohesion among the people. The custom of prayer for rain with dragon has promoted the development of drama, song and the trade, and enriched the rural life. People's worship to magical dragon are conducive to protect the ecological environment, and it's still a use reference in building a harmonious society today. However, it is the product of backward culture after all, we need to critically inherit the cultural heritage and discard the backward things. To transform social traditions, our main tasks are to develop science and technology energetically, afforestation and to construct water conservancy projects to eliminate drought radically, which is the biggest natural enemy of agricultural production, and to help farmers step out of the predicament of living by nature. It can't neither be banned immediately nor be prohibited forcibly to such kind of folk belief, guiding people to give it up autonomously is the right way. |
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