Original language:
Chinese Translated from: Russian
Authors: Juan, Kė
Translated by: Vėlyvis, Jonas, Mikalionis, Vaclovas
ISBN: 5-417-00769-2
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 1998
Publisher: Mintis
People have dreamed about having various supernatural powers since ancient times. One of those is the ability to fly and because of that, we have fairy tales about flying carpets and other similar fairy tales or myths, which include supernatural powers. However, myths are not just stories about people’s dreams.
Primitive people could not explain some certain forces of nature so they used to spiritualize them. Myths gave people strength they needed to overcome life difficulties and they inspired people to work. People used to create gods according to their own imagination and used myths to get the work done. When society split into classes, rulers took myths and used them to scare people, make them obedient.
This book describes the myths that people used to sing about. Also unforgettable are heroes who managed to separate sky from earth, gods who created human beings and taught them how to light a fire, recognize herbs and how to do agriculture. The book will introduce you with Chinese culture’s spiritual world. Myths’ expert Juan Ke uses writings of ancient sources, so the reader will find myths about how humans used to believe theories of the world creation, will learn about the dark and bright sides of gods in the ruling of earth and sky. Moreover, readers will learn what kind of gods were were and how do they created human beings. Also, people will find out about the god of sun’s lessons about how to sow corn and gods’ influences to medicine and pharmacology.