Excavating meaning from the complex myths of southern Africa’s San people
挖掘南非桑人复杂神话传说的意义
The San are the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, where they have lived for millennia. The term San is commonly used to refer to a diverse group of hunter-gatherers living in the region who share historical and linguistic connections. They were also called Bushmen, but this term is considered derogatory and is no longer used.
作为南部非洲最早的居民，桑人已经在这片土地上生活了数千年。“桑人”这个概念通常被用来指代多个在这片区域生活的、在历史和语言上存在关联的狩猎采集群体。历史上他们也曾经被称为“布希曼人”，但这个词通常被认为具有贬义，现在已经不再使用了。
David Lewis-Williams has spent 53 years studying the San people, publishing his first article in 1962. His 20th book on the San – Myth and Meaning: San-Bushman Folklore in Global Context – has just been published (see extract below).
学者David Lewis-Williams已经花了53年研究桑人，1962年他发表了自己关于桑人的第一篇文章，而上个月他刚刚出版了自己第20部有关桑人的著作——《神话与内涵——全球背景下的桑-布希曼民间传说》（见下文的节选）。
Lewis-Williams believes that the future of the San is uncertain. South Africa began passing laws in the 1960s to take over large sections of the traditional hunting lands of the Kalahari San for game and nature reserves.
Lewis-Williams认为，桑人的未来存在诸多不确定性。自1960年代开始，南非就通过一系列法律大片侵占生活在卡拉哈里沙漠的桑人世代狩猎及用于自然保育的土地。
Although the South African government is now much more helpful, the San people hardly have any land on which to hunt and gather. Lewis-Williams says they face a battle to hang onto customs in the face of modernization. The small number that remain stick to their beliefs and traditions.
虽然当前南非政府在帮助桑人方面做了比之前更多的努力，但是对桑人来说，目前已经几乎没有多少土地能够供他们狩猎和采集了。Lewis-Williams认为桑人正面临着一场在现代化挑战下维持他们传统生存方式的战斗。这一小群人仍然在努力坚守着他们的信仰和传统。
In his latest book, Lewis-Williams excavates meaning from the complex mythological stories of the San-Bushmen to create a larger theory of how myth is used in culture. He says the myths are not detailed in the paintings, but that the paintings and the myths derive from the same set of religious beliefs.
在他最新的著作中，Lewis-Williams试图从盘根错节的桑-布希曼民间传说中挖掘出一些内涵，以建立一个更大的理论框架来解释神话传说是如何在文化中发挥作用的。他认为，这些神话传说并未在桑人的岩壁画得到具体表现，相反，桑人的壁画和神话传说是同一组宗教信仰中衍生出来的。
Lewis-Williams explores the connection between myths and rock paintings in the Drakensberg. The paintings on the walls were not pictures of myths but actually important words or phrases – what he called small but valuable “nuggets”– about San life.
Lewis-Williams研究了南非德拉肯斯堡的桑人神话传说和岩壁画之间的关系。这些岩壁上的图案并不是用来详细呈现神话传说的内容的，而是一些有关桑人生活的重要词语和短语——他把它们叫做“珍贵的小金块”。
Extract from Myth and Meaning: San-Bushman Folklore in Global Context
下文节选自David Lewis-Williams的新作《神话与内涵——全球背景下的桑-布希曼民间传说》
One of the results of my own work has been that apparently simple texts such as the Song of the Broken String are studded with far-reaching words and concepts that are unintelligible to, and therefore easily missed by, modern readers.
我之前的一项研究成果表明，一些表面看来简单的文本（例如《残章之歌》【编注：该书是南非作家Stephen Watson的一部诗集，基于人类学家Dorothea Bleek对布希曼口述传统的直白记录，以诗歌形式演绎而成。】）中实际上包含了一些意义深远的词语和概念，现代读者很容易错过它们，因为这些词语和概念看起来很可能有些莫名其妙。
These “nuggets”, as I call them, encapsulate meanings that bring San lore and myth to life. Specific narratives are seldom pan-San, but, as we shall see, nuggets frequently are.
在这些被我称为“小金块”的东西之中，包含了许多能帮助我们在今天再现桑人神话传说的内涵。具体的叙事在不同的桑人群落中各有不同，但我们可以看到，这些小金块在各桑人群落中反复出现。
Nuggets should not be confused with the cross-cultural narrative motifs that, for instance, the folklorist Sigrid Schmidt used in her valuable catalogue of Khoesan folklore.
我们不能把这些桑人“小金块”与其它的一些跨文化叙事主题混淆在一起，就像民俗学者Sigrid Schmidt在她宝贵的科伊桑语系民间传说目录中所做的那样。
Nor are nuggets equivalents of Claude Levi-Strauss’ “mythemes” that, in his formulation, frequently comprise a subject and a predicate. Rather, nuggets are single words denoting, for example, items of material culture that have rich associations, or parts of the natural environment with cryptic connotations.
这些桑人“小金块”同样也并不等同于列维-斯特劳斯（Claude Levi-Strauss）提出的“神话主题”的概念，在他的定义里，“神话主题”通常都包含一个主语和一个谓语。而这些“小金块”则是单个的词汇，表现诸如物质文化中的物品等拥有丰富关联的条目，或者一些具有神秘内涵的自然环境内容。
They may also be idiomatic turns of phrase that are opaque to outsiders, or ellipses that hearers would have been expected to complete from their own knowledge. Although diverse, nuggets are important because they invoke reticulations of fundamental beliefs and associations that may not be explicitly expressed in the text.
它们也可能是一些外人无法理解的当地人惯用的短语，或者是一些期待听众通过自己的理解将内容补全的省略号。虽然很零散，但是这些“小金块”仍然很重要，因为它们能够启发出一系列并没有在文本中显式表达出来的基础信仰和联系的网络。
As a narrative proceeds, they add up to a powerful, all-embracing cognitive and affective context. They provide a counterpoint to the manifest plot of a tale, enriching its harmonies and resonances.
随着对一个神话故事叙述的不断深入，这些“小金块”逐步拼接成了一个强大而包容一切的认知和情感上下文。它们为一个神话传说的显性表达提供了一种衬托对位旋律，让故事本身获得了更强的和声与共振。
The manifest meaning, or “lesson”, of a narrative (if we assume one can be discerned) should be seen within this, for Westerners, allusive and often elusive context. My use of the concept of nuggets explores, in part, the same territory as the notion of “key symbols”.
一种叙述所要表达的意义（或曰“训”）只有通过这个在西方人看来充满暗喻而又难以捉摸的上下文中才能看出来。我在使用“小金块”这个概念时所表达的含义实际上和使用“关键符号”这个表述时在某种程度上是相同的。
Although broader than key symbols, the notion of nuggets does imply a summarising or synthesising function. In Sherry Ortner’s words, they “relate the respondent to the grounds of the system as a whole”. Respondents seldom analyse nuggets or key symbols, but they have absorbed their referents in the course of daily life.
虽然“小金块”这个词的含义比“关键符号”要更为宽泛，但其中也同样隐含了某些总结或者合成的功能。用Sherry Ortner的话来说，它们“在受众与该体系的背景这个整体之间建立了联系”。受众很少会去分析这些“小金块”或者“关键符号”，但他们已经通过日常生活中的各种经历了解了它们所指代的内容。
Indeed, nuggets are part of the “taken-for-granted” aspects of myth. Often indigenous narrators ignore the most important contexts and elements of a myth as being so obvious that they cannot imagine that their auditors do not think in terms of them. They themselves seldom, if ever, articulate them.
实际上，这些“小金块”是神话传说中的那些被人们认为“理所当然”的部分。通常来说，原住民讲述者们都会忽略掉一个神话传说中最重要的那些上下文和元素，因为这些内容实在太过于明显，他们无法想象自己的听众无法自己联想出这些部分。所以他们很少，甚至从不讲述这些内容。
In ancient Greece, for instance, writers and speakers rarely retold myths in detail. They more commonly merely referred to an incident or character in a myth on the assumption that their readers or hearers would know the full narrative.
举例来说，在古希腊，作家和演说家都很少详细地重述神话传说。他们通常仅仅提及一个神话传说中的某个事件或者某个角色，并假设自己的读者或听众都知道完整的故事。
Similarly with the San, we must constantly remember that in traditional circumstances the hearers were already familiar with the whole tale. They would mentally fill in “missing” episodes or details as the narrator progressed.
对于桑人也是这样，我们必须时刻记住，在传统的环境中，听众通常已经非常熟悉完整的神话故事了。随着叙述者的讲述不断深入，他们自己会脑补上那些叙述中缺失的篇章和细节。
It was therefore not necessary for narrators to spell out every incident in the tales that they were performing. It was not even necessary that a tale be told through to its end: everyone knew how it ended. The taken-for-granted factor was high.
因此叙述者们并没有必要说出他们正在讲述的故事中的每一个事件的细节，他们甚至不需要把一个故事从头讲到尾，因为所有人都知道它的结局如何。在整个故事中，那些“理所当然”的部分占了很高的比例。
Within an encompassing intellectual universe like this, a small part, a nugget, can readily stand for a vast, unarticulated whole. Indeed, synecdoche is intrinsic to a San speaker’s recounting and manipulation of narratives.
处于这样的一个知识环境的包围中，一个“小金块”这样的小片段能够很容易地代表一个巨大的、未被完整表达出来的整体。事实上，对于一个桑人讲述者而言，提喻是叙述中的一种固有手法。
In Chapter 7 I argue that this principle applies, in modified form, to San imagemaking as well. An appreciation of nuggets soon destroys the illusion of simplicity in myth and art.
在本书的第7章中，我认为这一原则如果稍加改动，也同样适用于桑人的岩画创作。通过对于这些“小金块”的深入了解，我们很快地破除了认为桑人的神话和艺术体系都很简单这一错觉。
翻译：Veidt（@Veidt)
校对：慕白（@李凤阳他说）
编辑：辉格@whigzhou