MYTHIC NARRATOLOGY AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN INDIGENOUS NIGERIAN AND CHINESE CONTEXTS

Abstract

Mythic narratology, the art of creating stories to entrench myths, has significant ways of affecting people’s belief systems. Nigerian and Chinese indigenous cultures share a lot in their worldviews. Several critical works exist on myth-making but there have not been works of significant comparative magnitude between the two nations. Taboos and totems, indigenous myth-making processes common to Nigerian and Chinese worldviews, were investigated with a view to identifying and discussing how this sociocultural correspondence can be beneficial for national cohesion. Elizabeth Wright’s Model of Psychoanalysis and Poststructuralist Semiotics served as framework. Interpretive design was used. Data included 15 in-depth interviews each with cultural custodians (folklorists, chanters, bards, sages and herbalists) from Nigerians - Yoruba (5), Igbo (5) and Hausa (5) ethnic groups, and Chinese - Han (8), Mongolia (4) and Tibet (3) nationalities. Nigerian cultural documentations and oral traditions, and Chinese Gesar Epic and oral practices were purposively selected on the grounds of shared features. Thirty-five each of totems and taboos from each of the selected areas were collected. Data were subjected to critical analysis. Nigerians and Chinese create animal totems with similar spiritual significance in lion, tiger, python, cobra, monkey, dog, alligator, crane, tortoise, rat and parrot. For instance, the lion is a totem of royalty in Nigeria and China, and the genealogy and well-being of ethnic groups are mythically linked to totemic animals. In the class of plants, while the pine in China and the palm tree in Nigeria share a convergent totemic reference; the jade has a significant economic and cultural relevance in Chinese as the Kolanut has among Nigerians. While Chinese deify human totems like Zhang Guolao, Li Tienguai, Han Xiangzi and He Xiangu; Nigerians deify multiple births and people born with deformities. Nigerians and Chinese create taboos around food, eating habits, sexual organs, sexuality, death and the dead, relationship within kinship and attitudes within the society. The human blood is a sacred totem across cultures in China and Nigeria. Mythic narrations have been consciously formulated to create an attitude of fear, love, acceptance or reverence concerning totems and taboos. In China, it is believed that if one eats with the knife on the New Year day, he would remain poor for the entire year; and in Nigeria, several narrations forbid eating with the tip of the knife. While the great Yellow River is a totem linked to the history of the Han Dynasty in China; Ọ̀ṣun in Òsogbo, Rima in Sokoto and Idemili in some Igbo communities are some totemic rivers in Nigeria. Misfortune and death through lightning, thunder and shipwreck are some of the mythic penalties for violating totems and taboos. Nigerian and Chinese worldviews engage similar totemic and taboo mythographic practices; yet the Chinese narratology is unifying, while the Nigerian is ethnocentric. The Chinese cultural praxis could be adopted for social cohesion in contemporary Nigeria