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标题: 壮族的巫英文版The Witches of Zhuang [打印本页]

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-9 10:12
标题: 壮族的巫英文版The Witches of Zhuang

The Witches of Zhuang

By Xu Xiaoming Institute of Religious Studies of Sichuan University

本站原创文章，欢迎指正。未经作者授权禁止转载，或作为其它商业之用。

Good morning everybody, My major is minority religious studies. I would like to share the traditional religious culture of Zhuang with all of you.
My topic is the witches of Zhuang. I will expound in the following three parts:
1. The looks of witches.
2. The works of witches
3. The social effects of witches

1. The looks of witches.
Generally speaking, when we talk about the witches, some uncomfortable images will appear in our minds: an ugly unpleasant old woman who is believed to have magic power, especially to do evil things. Who wears a black pointed hat and flies on broomstick.
On the contrary, the image of witches is showed differently in Zhuang’s cultures.
1.1 The way they are addressed.
In general, our researcher calls them “The oral ritual masters” or “the spirit medium”, when they perform the rituals, instead of using any scriptures, they just speak, chant and sing. They can chant for the whole night, almost lasting 8 hours. As “spirit medium”, they let the gods land on their body and they speak for the gods in the ritual.
People call them “Meh slingq”[me6ɬi:ŋ3], “yah gim”[ja6kim1], or “meh moet”[me6mɔt8]. The meaning of “yah slingq” or “yah gim” is “the intelligent ladies ”. “meh moet” is referred to “the queen of ants”, when they perform the rituals, people sitting around them, like the ants sitting around their queen.
1.2 Their looking.
The look is a very important factor to these ladies. They have gorgeous looking, elegant manners and eloquent expression, usually, brilliantly dressed. A brilliant witch is very popular in society of zhuang. She has many fans just like a movie star.

2.The works of witches
Witches play an important role in society of Zhuang. They do many jobs.
2.1    Ritual master.
They master the rituals from birth’s to death’s, from family’s to public’s. Some of them are very busy; they work about 300 days per year, except the first day and 15th day of each month of the lunar calendar.
2.2 Arts
Witches use many arts to perform the rural, including chanting, singing, dancing, and paper cutting, etc. We know that Zhuang people are good at singing. A good singer, especially a good master singer, is called “king of queen”, she is always a witch.
2.3 Doctors , mediators and educators.
In Chinese religious cultures, A Taoist is always a Doctor .It is the same in Zhuang. To show how effective of their spell, Witches always use the methods of medicine. Actually, we know that the word of “medicine” also refers to “spell” in English. Apart from that, Witches is also a psychologist, they lessen people’s stress by performing ritual.
Sometimes, they are mediators and educators, they use persuasive and educative chant to mediate many disputes and teach people how to respect each other.

3. Conclusion: The social effects of witches
In conclusion, witches have high position in society of Zhuang. The social effects of witches are as following.
3.1 Who keep the social harmony.
They mediate the relationship between human being and nature, people and their society, people and people, people and their inner world. In this way, the society of Zhuang exists in harmony.
3.2 Who improve women’ social position.
They get the power of mundane society by controlling the power of religions. Thus they can share the equal rights with men in society of Zhuang.
3.3 Who carry on the traditional cultures.
What they chant is part of oral literature of Zhuang. The paper cuttings, folksong art, dancing are important part of arts of Zhuang.

That is all. Thank you for you attention.

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-9 10:30
怎么还上传不了图片呢？

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-9 10:31
要有一句话才能一起发图片。

作者: 风中行人 时间: 2012-12-9 20:59
很神秘的文化.

作者: 僚园星火 时间: 2012-12-9 21:17
it is a good article , but i would like to suggest you correct the subject to“ The Witches of Cuengh ”.
in English , we should use "Cuengh" instead of "Zhuang" , "Zhuang" is Chinese wording , isn't our "Cuengh" .

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-9 21:24
gyoimaiq 僚园星火

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-10 20:26
希望自己以后发帖子的时候尽可能和中英双语。呵，加油！可以让世界有机会看到我们。

作者: 度莫 时间: 2012-12-13 13:36
是靖西一带吧，这些仪式俺看起来很眼熟！

作者: kxj 时间: 2012-12-13 22:29
我觉得“meh moet” is referred to “the queen of ants”这种说法是胡乱猜测的，把她理解成蚂蚁皇后，哪巫婆的另外一个称呼“boux moet”又该如何理解？？？？？

作者: kxj 时间: 2012-12-13 22:38
观点比较新颖，可以写一篇论文了。

作者: kxj 时间: 2012-12-13 22:41
不过少提道教这些破东西，少拿他们做例子，给老外觉得壮族不独特，老是有和他们一样的东西。

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-13 22:47

kxj 发表于 2012-12-13 22:29
我觉得“meh moet” is referred to “the queen of ants”这种说法是胡乱猜测的，把她理解成蚂蚁皇后，哪巫 ...

就我个人而言是有些怀疑，这里用的是别的学者的观点。

作者: kxj 时间: 2012-12-13 23:04

土人香草发表于 2012-12-13 22:47
就我个人而言是有些怀疑，这里用的是别的学者的观点。

我英语不好，一知半解的，以为是你的观点，就乱评说了。

作者: 土人香草 时间: 2012-12-14 12:48

kxj 发表于 2012-12-13 23:04
我英语不好，一知半解的，以为是你的观点，就乱评说了。

没关系，大家一起讨论。有时候就算文化持有者个人，也不一样很清楚一些词的真正来源。

作者: 蝶朵 时间: 2013-1-13 03:39
“meh moet” is referred to “the queen of ants”, when they perform the rituals, people sitting around them, like the ants sitting around their queen. "第一次听说。好有意思啊。meh moet的来历原来是这样。
therefore，thanks for your topic, sis, i clearly know that the witches in our Zhuang culture is a kind of medium which links between God and human being, nature and human, collective and individual, even assists people communicate with their inner world.

but the suggestion is, the third part is telling audiences about [The social effects of witches], and these viewpoints are't coming from the first and the second part, hence you could not put the word 'Conclusion' before this paragraph. it made me a little confused.

however, i 've learnt a lot. many thanks.

作者: daniel 时间: 2013-6-7 15:14
本帖最后由 daniel 于 2013-6-7 15:20 编辑

Who are your targeted audience? You need to adjust your speech according to your audience, with a clear purpose. If your target is Westerners, you need to know there is a big conceptional gap you cannot simply overlook: for many of them, witches are demon-possessed.

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