PDF《TOO MUCH LOVING-KINDNESS TO REPAY:》

Gerong Pincuo and Henrie?tte Daudey.

2013. Too Much Loving-Kindness to Repay: Funeral Speech Rituals of the Wenquan Pumi. Asian Highlands Perspectives 28:81-128. TOO MUCH LOVING-KINDNESS TO REPAY: FUNERAL SPEECH RITUALS OF THE WENQUAN PUMI Gerong Pincuo (Independant Scholar) and Henrie?tte Daudey (La Trobe University/ SIL International)1 ABSTRACT Two Pumi funeral speech rituals of the Wenquan Pumi area in northwestern Yunnan Province illustrate the traditional genre of speeches through their use of metaphor and parallellism. The speeches express the central concept of giving and repaying that plays an important role in strengthening social cohesion among Pumi relatives. KEYWORDS China, funeral, metaphor, parallellism, Pumi, Yunnan

1 Gerong Pincuo (k??izo? p?i?ts?u) was born in Wadu Village, where he lived until he was sixteen. He then moved to Yongning because of schooling, to Kunming, and later moved to Lijiang because of work, but still regularly spends time in Wadu Village. He has a longterm interest in his language and culture and is currently writing a monograph on Wenquan Pumi culture. Henrie?tte Daudey is a PhD candidate at the CRLD at La Trobe University, Melbourne. She is currently writing a descriptive grammar of the Wadu speech variety of Pumi. The two authors have worked together on documenting Wadu Pumi language and culture since 2010. Too Much Loving-Kindness to Repay

82 INTRODUCTION2 This study introduces two interlinear Pumi (autonym ?????m?3 '

White People'

) funeral speeches from the Wenquan area4 of Southwest China that provide readers insight into the structure of the language and the beauty of its verbal art, something that is easily lost in translation. Due to China'

s push for rapid modernization, many minority languages are under great pressure C some are already disappearing (Kraus 1992, Bradley 2005). A record of traditional verbal art in its original language is thus valuable for language and culture documentation. A detailed ethnographic description of a funeral is beyond the scope of the present study, but we do provide some detail on the background of religious and ritual practices to aid the reader. We write from a lay perspective and present a '

typical'

Wenquan Pumi person'

s general knowledge of religion and ritual practices. The English version was expanded from the original Chinese and edited for ease of reading, and is thus not a direct translation. For the benefit of local readers, a Chinese version follows the English version. In this initial section, we provide background on the Wenquan Pumi and their language. The second section introduces the Wenquan Pumi funeral and the place of the two funeral speeches in the overall funeral ritual. The third section presents the interlinear text of the x????? '

dedication speech'

, followed by a brief commentary on the most relevant cultural background. We then present and comment on the interlinear text of the ?idz???

2 The authors thank the editors for their comments.

3 Pumi terms in general follow the guidelines of IPA transcription, except for a ? syllable-final that denotes a nasalized vowel. Tone is marked by diacritics over the vowel: an acute accent (á) for high tone, a circumflex (?) for falling tone, and a hac?ek (a?) for rising tone. Place names are presented in Chinese Pinyin.

4 Yongning Township, Ninglang Yi Autonomous County, Lijiang Municipality, Yunnan Province. '

Wenquan area'

is used here to refer to the area occupied by four Pumi villages adjoining Wenquan Village. The area is part of the administrative Wenquan Cunweihui, which includes about thirty villages. Asian Highlands Perspectives