The Influence of Natural Environment upon the Traditional View of Life and Death and the Methods of Funeral of Minorities in China: With Special References to The Silk Road and The Tea Road
This study puts its purpose on finding the influence of n ...
The Influence of Natural Environment upon the Traditional View of Life and Death and the Methods of Funeral of Minorities in China: With Special References to The Silk Road and The Tea Road
This study puts its purpose on finding the influence of naturalenvironment upon a view of life and death, and the way of a funeral. For this purpose we have made a selection of most reasonable cases in China. They are the minorities of The Silk Road and The Tea Road, and their natural environments. As you know, the natural environments of The Silk Road is different with ones of The Tea Road, and in the views of life and death of the minorities of two Road’s surroundings we can find some remarkable differences, and also it is very interesting for us to look to a lot ofdiscrepancies in the method of funeral of both areas.
Then, what is the relation of natural environment to their view of life and death and to the way of funeral in the cases of minority peoples in China. We have tried to discover the relation by two academic methods. One was the analysis to typical literatures of two regions, Hajif’s Knowledge of Happiness(福樂智慧) in case of The Silk Road and Padmasambhava’s(連花生) The Book of Death(死亡之書) in case of The Tea Road. In these books we could find the influences of natural environment upon the view of life and death of minority peoples of two areas. The other was to conduct a spot investigation in field, and in fact we investigated there for two month. It was very informative survey to find the difference in natural environments of two sides and its influence on the view on life and death.
In the basis of the study through two methods, we have called the natural environment of The Silk Road as ‘Open Space’(OP), that is the area to ease to access from the outside, and one of The Tea Road as ‘Closed Space’(CP), that is the area to difficult to access from the outside. And we could find the fact that the minority peoples of OP are more outwards, more straightforward, more combative, more exclusive and more separable from others, whereas ones of CP are more inwards, more smooth, more peaceful, more inclusive and more integrative in life. Besides, it was very interesting to us the discovering that while the former has showed a marked tendency toward visual sensation, the latter have thought the hearing sense is more important than the visual.
The influence of natural environment to the minority peoples are come into view in the methods of a funeral. Because of the methods in the peoples of OP are contrasts to ones in the people of CP. We have tried to compare and find the differences of them.
In conclusion, we could make a paradigm for the relation of the natural environment to the view of life and death, and the ways of a funeral. We think this paradigm could be useful to the cultural studies in the fields of sinology, the study of religions and ethnology.
The table of contents is as follows:
Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. The Natural Environment and a Paradigm for Thought
1. Open Space and Closed Space
2. A Paradigm of ‘Visual’ Thought
3. A paradigm of ‘hearing’ Thought
Ⅲ. The Environment of The Silk Road and The Tea Road, and Methods of a Funeral
1. The environment of Silk Road & Tea Road
2. Methods of a Funeral in the Silk Road and the Tea Road
Ⅳ. The Environment of The Silk Road and The concept of Life and Death
1. The Concept of Life and Death Knowledge of happiness(福樂智慧)
2. A Paradigm of ‘Visual’ Thought in the Silk Road
V. The environment of Tea Road & The concept of life and dead.
1. The Concept of Life and Death in The Book of the Dead
2. A paradigm of ‘Hearing’ Thought in The Tea Road
VI. Conclusion
<Key Words>
The Silk Road, The Tea Road, the naturalenvironment, the cultural environment, the view of life and death, the method of a funeral, religious culture, ‘open space,’ ‘closed space,’ the minority people in China, religious exchange.