Tales of Mesopotamia and India handout by Ban Haoyang
Examples of World Literature: Tales of Mesopotamia and India
哲学学院 16级励耘人文科学试验班 班皓阳 201611940229
This passage mainly talks about the tales of Mesopotamia and India. To know the literature genres and the context better, readers should know some backgrounds about this culture at first. Mesopotamia is undoubtedly the earliest civilization of human beings, while India also has a really long history, and the world literature is derived and developed from there.
Part1.The tales of Mesopotamia (Shidaowenfu, 2006)
History: Tales of Mesopotamia can be dated back to around 3000 B.C. and were written in cuneiform. Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite are 3 main parts of Mesopotamian tales. The tales people can read now were the clay tables once kept in the ‘Library of King Ashurbanipal’, they were buried after Assyria was beaten by Persian and the city Nineveh was totally ruined. In the modern times, the clay tables were rediscovered in the 19th century and translated so now people around the world know the tales of the ancestors in Mesopotamia.
Contents and significance: From these tales, readers and scholars are able to understand how Mesopotamian explain how this world was formed, how human being appeared, and the wisdom and life philosophy of them. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most famous poems of Mesopotamia and was said to be the oldest surviving narrative poem and the foundation of World literature , which includes the attitudes towards death and immortality of Sumerians at that time. Also the original version of the famous story called ‘Genesis’ in Holy Bible was also in the tales of Mesopotamia.
Part2. The tales of India (Huang and Wang, 2007)
Classification: Indian tales are tightly connected with religions since Indian people believe that their country and themselves are blessed by gods. There are 5 main origins of tales of India: Brahmanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. The tales of different religions are very similar to each other and they always use the same gods and goddess in tales and only change their names. But there are a little bit differences about who they appreciate the most.
Famous works and main gods: “Veda” , the oldest classification of Brahmanism; “Ramayana ” and “Mahabharada ”, the greatest narrative poems of India; “Puranus ”, the encyclopedia of Indian tales; “Jataka ”, a very important Buddhism classic which is about many times of reincarnation of Buddhist. There are three main gods in Indian tales: the god of creation, Brahma; the god of protection, Visnu; the god of destruction, Siva.
Significance and effects: Tales are not just literature masterpiece. Scholars also find out that tales often reveal the true life of people at that time. Like from “Veda”, readers can figure out the true condition about agriculture and medical treatments at that time. Besides, Indian tales also affect the literature of other country. For example, the famous figure called “Monkey King” in the book “Journey to the west” is from the Indian Monkey deity called Hanoman.
Reference
1、【日】矢岛文夫 著；张朝柯 译，“世界最古老的神话——美索不达米亚和埃及神话”，北京：东方出版社， 8（2006）
2、张蕾，“古代美索布达米亚与<圣经>创世神话的比较研究”，山东，第一章：神话与创世神话（2008）
3、 Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major “The New Lifetime Reading Plan” , HarperPerennial，3（1997）
4、黄文主编 王慧编著《印度神话》北京：中国林业出版社，34,80,97，第五章 印度神话经典典籍 （2007）
5、David Damrosch, “The Longman Anthology of World Literature”, Volume A, The Ancient World, 88（2004）