Since ancient times, people have endowed ginseng with miraculous properties. Among the inhabitants of the Far Eastern frontier, ginseng is a plant embodiment of the Spirit of the Forest and Mountains. Phytolatry, as an integral part of perception of the consciousness of the inhabitants of the northeast of China, meets with totemism, animism and anthropomorphism – in folklore indications, the miracle root acquires a zoomorphic, ornithomorphic, theromorphic, entomomorphic, anthropomorphic appearance. Meeting with the emanations of ginseng threatens a person with testing for righteousness and knowledge of the Taiga law. In this publication, the morphology of the mythological plot that accompanies ginseng is concluded on the basis of a lexical-semantic analysis of plant names, projected onto folklore narratives collected in the first half of the 20th century by Russian and Chinese researchers on the territory of the Far Eastern frontier. The authors conclude that despite the individual constitutional promises of the studied folklore collections (pre-revolutionary journalism, Chinese chronicles, Manchukuo publications, collections of the 1960s), the mythology of ginseng, its sacred attributes and various incarnations demonstrates its universal archetypal stability, reflecting the regional specifics of the syncretic religiosity of the population of the Far Eastern frontier.
Key words: ginseng, Far Eastern frontier, Chinese, folklore, sacred, phytolatry, animism, anthropomorphism, mytheme
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2023_2_111
About the authors
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Anna A. Zabiyako – Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Literature and World Art Culture, Amur State University; 21 Ignatievskoe shosse, Blagoveschensk, 675027, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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Ye Yangyang – Junior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Frontier Studies, postgraduate student of the Department of Literature and World Art, Amur State University; 21 Ignatievskoe shosse, Blagoveschensk, 675027, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |