Bird and Humans Transforming into Birds -- A Research into Taiwanese Aborigines’Oral Literature

• Main Authors: Mei-Whei Chen, 陳美慧
• Other Authors: 陳器文
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/80728837590842173434

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 中國文學系所 === 96 === For most indigenous people of Taiwan, birds have assumed significant roles in their tradition and culture. Though the parts birds have played vary—e.g., messengers, supporters, souls of ancestors, prey, according to their species and particular tribesmen—they have profoundly influenced the daily life of Taiwanese indigenous people. Research into Taiwanese aborigines’ oral literature shows that birds often appeared as culture heroes. Myths say birds helped to lift up the sky and to make rivers, to carry back oval stone from which the human race was born, to enlighten human knowledge of breeding offspring, to take back fire which helped humans to develop cooking, and to present millet and rice to people by which human learned about cultivation. Tribesmen used feathers as headdresses to distinguish social rankings, tattooed faces which modeling the beak of crows to be a sign of identification in order to return to heaven after death, and took omens from bird divination before things happened. Most aboriginal tribes have rigid taboos against hurting birds with the belief that some birds posse the souls of their ancestors and some birds are deities who posses supernatural powers. Myths associated with transformation are abundant in Taiwanese aborigines’ oral literature and many are about humans transforming into birds. In various stories, humans that are transformed into birds are freed from suffering, are being punished, are reborn after death or are capable of taking vengeance. Though all of those stories are not maturely constructed, they clearly depict the profound affects Taiwanese aborigines bore toward birds, the mysterious species.This research focuses on the beliefs that Taiwanese aborigines had about birds and the correlation between the customs of bird worship and the “from humans into birds” transformation myths. Analyses of the implied primitive ideologies and the effect on the construction of cultural traditions, e.g., taboos, customs and rituals, were processed as well. Furthermore, after comparing some cultural traits of different ethnic groups that live on Asian mainland and Southeast Asian islands, this research adheres to the theory that aboriginal groups migrated to Taiwan from different areas at different periods of times.