希腊神话

The difference between Chinese and Greek mythology Abstract: China and Greek are culture centers, and the culture of each of them have great influence. Their mythology are different in many ways. In this paper they are different in influence and characteristic. The diversities comes from the difference in ideas, the whole environment and so on.

Key word: Chinese and Greek mythology; the culture center; gods

As the origins of Oriental and Western civilizations, both of the two ancient civili zed countries can trace their mythological roots in an unbroken line for thousands of y ears. And coming very naturally, they both exert a great influence on the formation of t he man’s thinking and the development of their unique glorious culture. Here, I’d like to discuss several differences between the two mythologies,

which will do good to gain a further and better understanding of the two regions’cultur e.

Mythology is a national culture’s accumulation, reflecting the early human’s imagination and interpretation about natural phenomenon and social phenomenon, and it became the original form of national culture and civilization. As the most significant representative of the eastern and western culture, Greek and Chinese ancestors left a precious spiritual wealth.

Eastern culture and western culture have their own characteristics and give birth to their own unique cultural fairy tale. The east and the west cultural differences caused their mythical difference, but when talk about the same theme of legends, for example, the origin of the world, Greek mythology and ancient Chinese mythology have

something in common.

Both China and Greek were the culture centers of their areas in ancient time. They had almost the same amount of influence to their neighbor countries, yet they were different in many ways such as state institution, economicsystem, the spirit people respect. All those matters lead to different point of views of the nature and therefore cause a lot of diversities of mythology.

Even though those two countries were cultural centers once, their mythologies had different impact on other countries.

China has many romantic and splendid myths. We all know the stories that NuWa created man, The Goddess Chang’s fly to the moon,Kuafu Running After the Sun. These stories are famous but only in our own country and maybe a few countries which were deeply influenced in old days. Instead, foreign gods entered to our country and be well-known by our people. In Han dynasty, Buddhism was introduced to China and soon absorbed many followers. And China appeared many new gods which were original Indic gods who adjusted native culture and custom. We usually don’t consider this phenomenon as an invasion but a fusion, but it can somehow imply that our own mythology has little influence.

To save more people’s lives, Shennong tasted hundreds of different kinds of the h erds; to protect all the living creatures, Hou Yi was brave enough to shot down nine su ns in the sky, leaving one hanging there. While this kind of situation is hardly seen in t he Greek mythology. Hence, we can draw a conclusion that the gods in China are muc h friendlier to their mortal people, even sometimes they are willing to sacrifice their o

wn precious lives. Generally speaking, maybe just because the relationship between th e gods and human beings is not that close or intimate, so when it comes to the gods, th ey are always full of fear, they have to worship them to seek for a peace of mind, beca use once offending the gods, they will be held up by the several illness or pestilence. T he typical example is the Pandora’s

Box, which is full of evil. Still, the gods on the summit of Mount Olympus seldom giv e a hand to the mortals or show any mercy on them .Instead, they’d rather stand aside and look on everything beneath them,

whereas, in China, the gods and mortals live in harmony with each other. What’s more, they help the mortals to avoid many disasters, and give them the first aid when they ar e trapped into the trouble. In return, the mortals acknowledge them with gratitude and worship them from the bottom of the heart.

As we all know, in the ancient Greek mythology Prometheus stealing fire and carried it with him to the earth, and then he teaching human skill, but in the final he was punished by Zeus. Besides, Chinese mythology have Sui-Ren Shi (earliest people) make fire, Fu Xi’s invention. All of these mythologies reflect the human’s ability to know the nature have improved. They have strong desire to transform the natural and want to conquer the nature. In their body all embodies the spirit of adventure and heroism.

In addition, the Greek mythology of the Divine Divinity is the miniature of Homer age society, while in the ancient Chinese mythology, the kingdom of heaven

has a strong political color, and it is the reflection of the society at that time. Greek mythology and ancient Chinese mythology has many love stories: "Oedipus complex", Zeus and Europa, The Goddess Chang's fly to the moon etc.

Greek mythology and Chinese mythology all testify to the original social life condition, and the Gaia and Nuwa both played a decisive role in the birth of human being. They are reflecting the early original matriarchal society. And both them have the legend of heroes, so they also reflect the struggle of man against the nature.

Last but not least, I want to mention the fates of these gods. In Greek mythology, all of their fates are in the charge of the Three Fate. As a result, even the most powerfu l god, Zeus, don’t dear to offend them casually. However, in China, we stress that the f ate is charged by our own. So they relatively tend to venture into something challengin g. Such as, Jing Wei determined to fill up the sea.

In my superficial opinion, these are the differences between the two wonderful m ythologies. There is no telling which one is superior to the other, because they just repr esent the different ways of thinking and their unique culture. But there is no denying th at they both are of great treasure to us all around the world, which means to promote u s to pursue and create much more magnificent and splendid civilization.

References：《浅析中国神话与希腊神话二者之间的异同》；《中国神话与古希腊神话的对比研究》