中国神话与希腊神话的区别 Different myth system between China and

2024年3月31日发(作者：锅炉检修)

Different myth system between china and Greece

If you pay little attention to the myth system, you will find that in Greek

mythology the relationship between each god and goddess is pretty clear. It has an

explicit system. All the gods and goddess in Greece were multiplied from generation

to generation whereas Chine myth mentioned very little information about the

god couples and there are no clear connections between ordinary gods and major gods.

In one word Greek myth has a clear system but Chine myth does not.

Why is there such an obvious difference between Chine and Greek myth's

system? What is it that made Chine myth's system so vague? There are many

possible reasons.

The first possible reason is about the different region. Ancient Chine lived by

the Yellow River Basin. They lived a hard life mainly bad on agriculture, therefore

they paid more attention to the practice rather than fantasy. The Greek peninsula,

however, were surrounded by ocean. Obviously the view of the vast ocean brought

ancient Greece unlimited imagination and this unlimited imagination made them more

active in creating imaginative myth stories, so there is no doubt that ancient Greece

have more myth works than Chine. What made things wor is that Gree is just a

small island on the Aegean Sea but China is known as a vast land country. Of cour

the broad land led the Chine myth to a very embarrasd situation--becau of the

difficulties in communicating with each other through the vast land at that time an

abundant statements of myth system which are totally different from each other

sprang up there and made it a really hard work to unite an authoritative system from

all. The birthplace of Greek mythology was much smaller than that of China that it is

absolutely easier to unite an authoritative system and then to popularize the works

after the myth stories were completed.

compared to the Greek mythology Chine mythology emed lost at the very

beginning.

The cond reason that made Chine myth so vague is a inevitable one. That is

the trend of the development of character. The ancient myth were spread by words

of mouth, however, the character appeared gradually. The ancient people have to

replace the flexible spoken words of the myth with rigid character to save the

stories. As you know the limitation of the character made the written myth stories

lost their fun and some part of the truth of their own. Needless to say that it is

impossible to bring the half-human beast image in the ancient stories

into historical pedigree completely. On solving this difficult task ancient Greece

obviously showed much more talent than ancient Chine for Greece has evidently

more famous painters than China at that time.

This all result the first loss of Chine myth.

The last one, also the most important one, is about the Chine social institution.

Central Plains Civilization before the Warring States Period was the dominate culture

in ancient China. Before that was the 800 years domination of Chou Dynasty. People in

Chou Dynasty created very little myth themlves but they tried their best to

abandon the spread of myth of every ethnic which ruled by them. That made the

ancient Chine heavily destroyed. After Chine entered the feudal system they

paid more and more attention to the real world rather than the supernatural beings.

The ancient sages especially Confucian equaled myth to the ghosts an superstition.

They not only did not attach any importance to collect the myth stories but also

demoted them. We all know that all the Greek gods or goddess are related to Zeus in

some way just becau Zeus is a famous merry god. He has many lovers except his

legal wife so that he has many legitimate children and illegitimate children. All his

children are different gods or god-men or supermen. Greek myth system could be so

clear apparently depended on the merry god Zeus. Compared with Greek myth

Chine myth could be described as a purest shy girl becau you can not even find

any single hair of a merry god. It can not be proved but it ems quiet possible that

becau of the thought of Confucian and their high requirement for the morality that

they bowdlerized the merry stories of the Chine gods. What is quiet certain is that

the actions that the sages took did lead to the annihilation of a large number of myth

and made the ancient absurd fantasy story not inherited by orthodox literator for

future generations.(BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINESE FICTION BY LUXUN)

Otherwi, for the needs of themlves the governing class also took many

actions to bowdlerize the myth at will. Such as the revi of the book IMPERIAL

COLLECTION OF FOUR of Qing Dynasty. They ruined a horrible number of books. In

addition to intentional damage the damage caud by wars such the YongJia Rebelion

and the Wu Dai Shi Guo is also very rious. After suffering so many misfortune the

Chine myth only can be en in very small number of books which are ShanHai

Classic, HuaiNan Tzu and ShiBen.

Compared to China the fate of Greek mythology is much more lucky.

I have been wondering that how the Chine myth would develope if there were

not so many misfortune. I even have wept for its imperfect. But after i finishing

finding out all the reasons i realized in a flash that incomplete is also an appealing

beauty. The incomplete myth developed together with China, witnesd the hardships

that Chine had been through from ancient times to modern times and saw the

growth of China. Even if it does not have a completed system i still love the Chine

myth becau it has its own characteristic. Every time i read it i feel my country .