Y is for the Yi (Sani) epic of Ashima (Women's Epics A to Z)

This year my theme for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is Women's Epics. My goal was to read 26 traditional epics from around the world that have women as their heroes. Because epics like this do exist, and they are fascinating! Read the intoduction post here.

Ashima
Sani (Yi)

The Sani are a branch of the Yi people who live in Yunnan province in China. Ashima's story, sung in a long narrative poem and handed down through the oral tradition, is one of their most popular folk epics. Variations of the poem were collected and compiled in 1953 by researchers from Beijing, and published as a composite "most complete" version. It was then translated into English and published in this volume (translated into rhyming verses). The book comes with a short introduction that has an undercurrent of centralized propaganda, so I an not entirely sure whether the "composite version" of the story has been altered or not.

What is it about?

TL;DR: Ashima, a beautiful girl is kidnapped by an evil man as a bride for his son. She resists the marriage, and her brother shows up to rescue her. He succeeds through a series of challenges, but on the way home he loses Ashima anyway.

The story begins with a couple who live a peaceful life with their two children: a brave and strong boy Ahei, and a beautiful, hard-working daughter Ashima. When Ashima grows up, she becomes famous far and wide as the perfect girl. An evil rich man named Rebubala decides to take her as a wife for his son. However, when his messenger comes to ask for the girl, her family squarely refuses - they want Ashima to marry a man she loves. Ashima rejects the rich man's suit. Rebubala, angered, sends people to kidnap her. The girl is snatched away, and the whole community grieves for her. Ahei, who is away pasturing his flocks, has a nightmare and returns home. When he finds out Ashima is gone, he immediately sets out to rescue her.

Ashima is taken to Rebubala's stronghold to wed his son Azhi. But she stands up to her kidnappers, refuses to marry the man, and calls them on their lies and their threats. She is beaten and thrown into a dungeon to break her will. When Ahei arrives, Azhi challenges him to a duel of sung riddles, but Ahei easily outsings him, and answers all the riddles. When he is let inside, Rebubala challenges him to see who can cut down more trees. Ahei easily fulfills the tasks: he chops down more trees than Azhi - and then he has to put them back, and does that faster too. Then he has to sow rice, and then pick it all up, but once again he is better at it than Azhi. Still, he loses three grains. He eventually manages to find them with the help of an old man (birds took them).

The challenges having failed, Rebubala and Azhi decide that they will sic their tigers on Ahei at night. While he sleeps, they send three feroicious tigers up the tower stairs to his room. However, Ashima plays warning music on her flute, and Ahei stands ready. He kills the three tigers, and skins the biggest one, then puts the skin back. In the morning, the villains are shocked to see the dead tigers, but they soon challenge Ahei to skin the largest. Ahei yanks the skin off, winning the challenge.

However, Rebubala still refuses to give up the girl. He locks Ahei out of the fortress. Ahei responds by shooting arrows over the wall with such force that no one can pull them out of where they struck. In the end, Ashima is summoned and she pulls them out with ease; finally, she is given back to her brother.

However, as the siblings ride away, Rebubala summons a storm. As they are crossing a surging river, the waves sweep Ashima away. She reappears to her brother later, standing on a rock in the ravine, and tells him that she had transformed into a spirit: she became the echo, and always answers when her people call.

The highlights

While in this epic Ashima doesn't rescue herself, she is still presented as a very stong and brave character. She rejects the suit, doesn't bow to threats, sees through lies, and states loud and clear that she will only marry a man she loves.

I adored the opening of the story that described how much the parents loved Ashima and how they celebrated her birth. It was similarly touching to read the part where they talked about their love for her to the wily messenger who brought the proposal from Rebubala. They wanted her to be happy, and they described unhappy marriages in great detail, fearing for their daughter's future.

I also liked that Rebubala's wickedness was described by saying that bees didn't visit his flowers, and ants didn't go inside his house.

A GIRL DOESN'T ALWAYS HAVE TO RESCUE HERSELF TO BE A STRONG CHARACTER.

Do you know of other heroines who are strong in different ways?

The children of snow (Folktales of Asian minorities 10. - Yi)

As a sequel to the Following folktales around the world reading challenge, I decided to start reading minority and indigenous folktales. First up are the minority peoples who live in Asia. You can find previous posts here, and you can follow the challenge on Facebook here.

The ​Nuosu Book of Origins 

A Creation Epic from Southwest China 

University of Washington Press, 2019.

The Yi live in Southwest China and number about nine million. This minority group is divided into various subgroups, each with their own name and identity. Among them, the Nuosu are the largest (about 2.3 million) - the epic in this book belongs to their tradition. It was translated as a collaboration between Mark Bender (who also translated the Miao epics) and Aku Wuwu (a prominent Nuosu scholar and poet).

Bimo. Pic from here

This traditional epic is known as The Book of Origins, and it contains creation myths, origin stories, genealogies, and migration legends. It has been passed down through generations for hundreds of years in manuscripts written in Yi script (different from Chinese writing). The text translated in the book was hand-copied and translated by Jjivot Zopqu, a traditional Nuosu mediator, from an older text. It is divided into 29 sections, presenting a fairly complete epic from a single source (as opposed to the versions pieced together from multiple sources by Chinese folklorists). This epic is usually recited by ritual experts called bimo on important occasions, often for several hours. Sometimes at weddings or funerals traditional singers also performed parts of it. The book comes with footnotes, references, pronunciation guides, appendices, and many other resources. The long introduction talks about Yi/Nuosu culture, everyday life, rituals, and the epic tradition.

Highlights

I loved it that the epic presents humans as one part of Nature's whole, our existence intertwined with that of plants and animals. The part where the Great Bimo, Awo Shubu, filled the world with plants and matching animals was especially beautiful. Later on, when almost everything was burned up by the six suns, red snow fell three times, and transformed into new creatures - the Twelve Sons of Snow. Ice turned to bone, snow turned to flesh, wind turned to breath. Six of the twelve became "beings without blood" (plants), while six became "beings with blood" (animals and humans). Their descendants and proliferation are detailed in the epic in a sort of folk taxonomy. It was especially intriguing that horses, which are not native to the area, were hatched from four snow-eggs by butterflies. On the advice of a frog spirit, humans and crows drank from the Water of Wisdom, and became the most intelligent among living beings.

The larger half of the epic details the genealogies and migrations of various tribes, with lots of names and repetition (kinda like the "begets" in the Bible). It was interesting to see why people decided not to settle in various unsuitable places, but other than that only a few short episodes disrupted the lists. One of the most exciting was the contest between two families, Hxuo and He, who competed in a series o shapeshifting challenges. Eventually, they were reconciled, and joined their children in marriage.

Nuosu manuscript with
Zhyge Alu, from here

There was an episode, not included in this version of the epic but mentioned in the notes, about the invention of the lightning rod. The hero Zhyge Alu found a village where people were afraid to light fires in the house, worried lightning would strike their roof. The hero climbed up to a roof wearing a copper helmet and a copper club, and managed to trap lightning in a copper net. Lightning as a living being was mentioned multiple times in the epic; it was noted that twelve kinds of lightning form a family that sleeps underground in the winter, and snores loudly in the spring.

Connections

This epic once again featured the motif of separating earth and sky (and propping the sky up with columns). Here the job was done by deities, spirits, and immortals, and the brand new sky and earth were swept clean by nine fairies with nine iron-copper brooms. There was also the motif of multiple suns and moons: Anyu Ddussy, the Spirit Monkey, summoned six suns and seven moons, along with all the constellations. The suns scorched the world almost to extinction, although a few animals (such as the water deer) managed to survive. The surplus heavenly bodies were shot down by the great hero Zhyge Alu. He was raised by dragons in a cave. He climbed various trees to get a vantage point for shooting, but only the fir could support him, which is why it is still respected among the trees. The last sun fled and hid, and had to be lured out by a rooster.

The fiery apocalypse was followed by another classic: a great flood. Here the only human survivor was the kind-hearted Jjumu Vuvu, who hid in a wooden box. He rescued various floating animals (a rat, a venomous snake, a bee, a frog, etc.), who in turn helped him get a bride from the sky. But since the elopement was not approved by the sky spirit, their children were born mute, and they needed the help of the mythical Apuyoqo bird to steal the secret of speech from the sky. Thus, various languages were born.

Another motif that appeared in the epic was that of the clever maiden who posed riddles to her suitor. The hero Shyly Wote failed to answer them, and he needed the help of his clever sister to win the bride anyway.

Nuosu women weaving together, image from here

Who's next?

The Nakhi people