The Inheritance And Variation Of Zhanghu Town Snake Worship Belief Custom

Zhanghu Town, is a millennium-old trading town under the ecological feed of Minjiang River in the north of Fujian. The ancient agricultural civilization and advanced river civilization contribute to the forming of folklore tradition of the snake worship beliefs. The snake worship belief in the historical experience a contest between animal-god worship and human-god worship, including the transformation of the snake worship custom under auspices of Taoist and other religion culture, new connotation of the snake worship belief injected by migration in past dynasties and multicultural interaction in Zhanghu Town.The paper is a thematic study of Zhanghu snake worship belief customs, arounding "inheritance" and "variations" these two main lines, I’ll try to study from the following five sections:The introduction part is a literature review related to the field research materials and other snake worship culture in Minyue district relevant to the topic, these help to identify the following studies and other space research in this area.The part one, based on the main town in Zhanghu, describe the physical geography and local historical-and-cultural environment, local economic and social changes, as well as basic profiles of local belief in spirits.The part two, introduced the historical and cultural background of Zhanghu snake worship belief, including the early stage of original Minyue witch culture, the Minjiang Valley and its rivers-economy, the historical memory of ethics migration and the forming of Boat Dweller group.The part three, combining literature and folk oral texts, sorted out the origin and the evolution of snake worship belief in Zhanghu Town, including the transit of Python worship to the witchcraft under the integration of Yoga-denomination in Esoteric Buddhism and Lvshan-denomination in Taoism, the shaping of God personality under the predominate of Lvshan-denomination in Taoism, and the Confucian culture also reinforced the variation of Liangong’s identity.The part four focused on the citadel of Zhanghu snake worship belief:the serpent temple, described the historical development and change of snake worship beliefs, recording the sacrifice rituals of the snake worship belief and analysis the variation of snake worship beliefs under the of influenced of modern context.The part five try to find out the basic prototype of the snake worship in the sacrifice rituals. Analysis the Connotation of the ceremony under the foundation of local ecology.The part five try to analysis the snake worship from the perspective of river ecological. Including introduction of the Minjiang River eco-environment and its culture of snake worship relationships of the river eco-development and the snake worship belief.Through the above five parts research, the essay came to the following conclusion:snake worship faith formation is a joint creation of agricultural civilization and river civilization. Zhanghu snake worship belief originates from the Serpent worship, and the formation of human-god Liangong belief, is the influence of Taoism Lvshan-denomination and Tantric Yoga-denomination and other sects. As a Taoist pries of chopped down the snake, Liangong came into part of snake worship belief:Serpent King belief, under popular mighty snake-worship thinking. Snake worship belief reflects the coordinate relationship between man, nature and ecology, promote the harmonious stability of the local community culture orders.