Uygur Folk Dastan's "Sejit Not?i" Study

The Dastan Siyit Nochi was created among the Uyghurs at the beginning of the twentieth century.The Siyit Nochi,who fought against the corrupted government and social unfair in the society,is the leading character in the Dastan.The Dastan mainly described the social situation in Kashgar on the bases of the leading character Siyit's life experience.The Siyit participated in a secret society called Gelaohui to fight against the corrupted local government and powers in Kashgar.And he was known as a folk hero among the people for his uprightness and bravery;but for the ruling class he was an upcoming disaster.Therefore,the local government tried to arrest him a few times and he reluctantly left his hometown and traveled to other places in Xinjiang.When he arrived at Uchturpan,the local ruler Ma Shaowu pretended to welcome him and kept him in the city.After a period of time,Siyit wanted to go back to his hometown and Ma Shaowu asked Siyit to help him deliver a letter to the Kashgar rulers.The illiterate folk hero Siyit knew nothing about the content of the letter.Apparently,the letter was Siyit's death sentence.Unfortunately,his frankness and honesty led to his death.The folk hero Siyit was executed just after he arrived at Kashgar.However,his heroic deeds and high morality were exalted from generation to generation in the form of folk songs and epic stories after his death.The present study aims to investigate the Dastan Siyit Nochi from a literary perspective and mainly analyses the motives and rhetoric features in the language of the Dastan.This paper consists of four parts,i.e.the introduction,body part,conclusion and appendix.The first part mainly introduces the current research situation of the Dastan and the relevant achievements in this field.In the body part,chapter one includes three sections;the first section focuses on the main content of the Dastan;the second section gives detailed information about the life of Siyit Nochi.The third section mainly analyses the central idea of the whole Dastan.Chapter two is the core of the whole thesis and analyses the various motifs used in the Dastan,by applying Thompson's motif theory.Chapter three discusses the Dastan's poetic features in two parts,first part mainly discusses the feet and rhythm of the Dastan;and the second part mainly discusses the rhyme features of the Dastan.Chapter four analyses the Dastan from the rhetoric aspects;here,the author highlighted the main language features of the Dastan by listing the widely used rhetoric features such as metaphor,analogy,contrast,exaggeration,parallelism,modification,euphemism,repetition and quotation etc.The appendix includes the Chinese translation of the Dastan and it is regarded as the most complete version of Chinese translation of the Dastan so far.