Abstract
Ancient Chinese mythology is different from those in other civilizations in its fragmentariness, and the fragmented nature is the result of the collective destruction of historical documents in the pre-Qin feudal states burnt down all historical documents, on top of the massive burning of books and the burying-alive of Confucian scholars during the reign of the First Emperor of Qin. This silent "cultural revolution" in the pre-Qin and Qin era resulted in the destruction of the first generation of Chinese mythology. During the wave of Asian emigration, myth fragments from India, Iran and West Asia constructed the second generation of mythology with The Legends of Mountains and Seas as its representative. The construction of a new god system, mainly based on the diachronic cultural transmission instead of synchronic collective unconsciousness, closely paralleled with the model that African homo sapiens responded to global colonization. However, the construction of a new mythology was blocked by pragmatic rationalism in the Axial Age. Emperors and scholars of Qin and Han dynasties tried to replace god worship with ancestor worship and to replace the historical narrative with myth narrative, which eventually led to the annihilation of the second generation of Chinese mythology.
First Page
192
Last Page
201
Recommended Citation
Zhu, Dake. 2013. "The Fragmented Ancient Chinese God System." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 33, (1): pp.192-201. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol33/iss1/17
