“Our Master Has Eyes like a Pen for a Thousand Sheep” : Parallel Processes in the Realms of Spirits and Humans as Viewed by the Mongolian Oral Tradition and Vietnamese Narratives by Nguyễn Dữ
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In the traditional views of the Mongols and Vietnamese, the landscape populated by humans is parallelly inhabited by many diverse species of beings belonging to various forms of existence. Regardless of whether these beings are understood within the Buddhist concept of the six domains of existence, or in a non-Buddhist context, their main shared characteristic is that they are considered masters possessing or exercising control over the area or particular components of the local landscape. The actions and processes taking place in the parallel realms are not necessarily ethically rightful. The beings of the parallel realms can engage in activities that are directly or indirectly harmful to the inhabitants of the human realm. In this case, it is the imperially authorized administrative power of the human realm which has the authority to intervene and to bring the beings of the parallel realm into a harmonious state. The idea of the mutual interdependence goes even further as the processes in the parallel realm (as quarrels between the spirits) are attributed the ability to influence events in the human world. Similarly, vice versa, the events in the human realm are reflected in the processes in the parallel world of spirits. This paper will compare narrative samples from the oral tradition of the Mongolian cultural area (mostly from the author’s own fieldwork) and the Vietnamese oral tradition literary processed in the 16th-century collection Truy?n k? m?n l?c (“Unconventional Records of Strange Tales”) by Nguy?n D?. |
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