Enduring motifs: contemporary Hani cosmogonic narratives and textual data from ancient Chinese sources

This paper compares the cosmogony of a Tibeto-Burman speaking people of Yunnan -- the Hanis, with major mythical themes of the Chinese mythology. A century after Henri Maspero's masterpiece "Legendes mythologiques dans le Chou king", the issue is to gauge the extent to which oral traditions of China's ethnic minorities can be used as an analytical tool for interpreting Chinese ancient mythology. The main interest of the Hani oral tradition lies in the fact that it combines several cosmogonical schemes appearing in the Confucian Chinese classics in a sequential and generational way. Besides, its narrative structure exhibits some similarities with that of the ancient Chinese cosmogony contained in the famous Chu Silk manuscript of the Warring States period. Adapted from the source document.