| The Miao, an ancient nation that stood numerous vicissitudes in the process of long-term war and the constant migration, has formed its own unique lifestyle habits, thinkingmode and dress culture.The Miao nationality is rich in dress culture which is famous for its complex style,rich and elegant patterns and amazing colors. The costume of Miao has become the mostoutstanding dress among ethnic minorities. The pattern on Miao’s dress is not onlybeautiful but also loads bearing the significant national history, religious belief andculture connotation like the Miao people’s values. It is an indispensable part of Miao’sculture, which is always called "weared epic " by scholars.The writing, an important carrier of cultural inheritance in a society, is one of themarks that a civilized society appeared. It breaks the space and time limiting, realizingthe function of transferring knowledge and communicating information. No matter anykind of writing, it embodies the collective wisdom of one nation and preserves thenational culture, which plays a crucial role in national development.The formation of writing is not accomplished in one move and often need to waitfor a long time. At the beginning of the text generation, it is not used to record languageperfectly. Some of the early humans, however, used simple visual symbols to expresstheir minds. The Miao clothing pattern is a kind of ancient and traditional visual symbolin the Miao’s society, which loads bearing a lot of important national culture. It is animportant carrier that Miao ancestors expressed their idea. The Miao clothing pattern andearly form of writing are all basically alike.This paper starts the analysis from the point of view of generalized philology bytaking the "weared epic" as the research object, collecting a large amount of literaturematerial and patterns of Miao’s dressing images and analysing systematically. And then itis compared with the early writing so that we review its properties, structure type, culturalconnotation and functions. The result shows that it is a generalized philology.Research shows that basically the pattern of Miao’s dress is same as generalizedwriting. First of all, it is a visual symbol system. Secondly, it is a carrier which is used toexpress mind by Miao’s ancestors and it can effectively communicate the information. The essence of writing is symbol which can be used to communicate and transferinformation. So they are both had isomorphic function. Although the research ofgeneralized philology does not take philology narrowly as the main research object, it isbased on the research of narrow writing and absorbs the knowledge of the narrowphilology research widely. In this context, the study of the Miao costumes pattern in thispaper is based on the research of the word formation of narrow philology.Therefore, firstly we analyze the structure type of the patterns of the Miao costume.It can be divided into three types: pictographic type, imagery type and marked type. Thepatterns of pictographic type uses figurative expression and illustrates the form of stuff. Ittruly shows the expressed object and things which are all true of the world are picked assubjects, expressing people’s aesthetic value or sending some good wills. Imagery typepattern, which is processed by human’s abstract thinking and its form is very simple,condenses the wisdom of ancestors.’s Form of marked type pattern doesn’t have directconnection to the expressed object.The combination of signified and signifier completely is the result of conventionalizationof the social groups. Therefore, this kind of pattern possess strongly national flavors.The pattern of Miao’s dress has a significant role in Miao’s society. It has thefunction of cultural memory, religious function, identity function, aesthetic function andpredicative functions. Compared with the function of words, it is found that the functionof the pattern of Miao’s dress is the same as the function of early writing. The pattern ofMiao’s dress is regarded as an unique "philology" in Miao’s society. Because the patternof Miao’s dress contains the function of writing, Miao’s deeply national history andreligion belief could be inherited. And the Miao’s dress possesses such a rich culturalconnotation. The main cultural connotation of the pattern includes religious totem, thehistory of ethnic migration, remembering hometown, and memorial of Miao’s ancestorsand heroes. In conclusion, the pattern of Miao’s dress is a kind of symbol system which issimilar with philology. |
