earticle

영어

Study on the myths of alpine tribes in Taiwan Lee, In-Tack This paper deals with the mythic stories, especially motifs of origin of human, flood and brother-sister marriage, shooting of the sun of Ami, Ataya and Bunun tribes who belong to the majority group among Taiwanese alpine tribes, from the comparative perspective. This paper tries to further clearly investigate the mythic origin, relation & influence between tribes, universal or local common thinking way, and the unique characteristics of each tribe. As a result, we can confirm the following facts: First, the stone motif among creation mythic stories can be considered as the general type which a lot of countries preserve, and the myth of Ataya tribe contains the cosmology of sexual equality; second, the finding of the way of prosperity through the animal's teaching, the marriage of mother and son, the birth from a gourd, and the marriage of brother and sister+flood are the unique characteristics of the alpine tribes. And the concurrent shooting of the sun and the moon, and the appearance of the concept myth such as good and evil are very impressive. In terms of thought, the sexual equality, the divinity of humankind, the relation between man and nature, the existence of female founders, and the Totemism might be the representative thoughts of the alpine tribes. The relation between tribes can be organized as follows: Ataya=Truku=Kvalan, Bunun=Tsou, and Ataya=Bunun=Truku. On the other hand, Ami tribe is relatively isolated and also seems to be related to the south western minor ethnic group, Korea, and Okinawa.