日本文学
Online ISSN : 2424-1202
Print ISSN : 0386-9903
零落した神々の伝承
佐々木 孝二
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ジャーナル フリー

1982 年 31 巻 4 号 p. 36-46

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As social systems and cultures changed, and as values shifted, the gods supporting the order of the old communal groups had to change as well. The gods who could not respond to the changing conditions were banished, converted into malevolent spirits. In the course of this process, tales of human sacrifice and miscegeny were born. This essay will anayze their nature and the circumstances of their emergence. The banished animal gods originally belonged to the murky boundaries of the universe, with close ties to the fertility gods. They were natural targets for expulsion by the new forces of power, which, together with new gods, seized control of the community. Even when the gods changed, however, the human psyche remained fundamentally the same. In China, here the development of anthropomorphic gods was well advanced, tales of misdeeds by priests circulated from early on, whereas in Japan, tales of divine misdeed tended to proliferate. Since, in fact, gods and priests constituted a community bound together by fate, the decline of the gods implied the decline of priests and the rise of itinerancy.

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© 1982 日本文学協会
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