Religion, Totemism and Symbolism

宗教、圖騰信仰和象徵主義原著： W. E. H. Stanner

導讀：陳美華（ Chern Meei-Hwa ） 南華大學宗教學研究所副教授

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I shall sketch as briefly as possible the positive character of the religion as we now understand it.

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(1) The Aborigines thought the world full of signs to men; they transformed the signs into assurances of mystical providence; and they conceived life’s design as fixed by a founding drama.

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(2) At its best the religion put a high worth on the human person, both as flesh and as spirit. (3) It magnified the value of life by making its conservation and renewal into a cult.

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(4) It acknowledged the material domain as being under spiritual authority. (5) Religious practice included a discipline to subdue egotistical man to a sacred, continuing purpose.

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(6) Religious belief expressed a philosophy of assent of life’s terms. (7) The major cults inculcated a sense of mystery through the use of symbolisms pointing to ultimate or metaphysical realities which were known by their signs.

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Each proposition rests on well-established facts, which have often been recorded and left, uninterpreted, as mere “custom”. To deny them what seem their plain implications is now unjustifiable. I shall discuss each of the main statements in turn.

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It will then be clear, I hope, that what prevented their earlier recognition were the unexamined assumptions of scholars who were either not interested in religion as such, or had too narrow a conception of it, or misunderstood their task. (Stanner 2002: 92)

我應盡可能的簡略勾勒我們目前所理解的宗教的正面特徵。（一）原住民認為世界充滿著給人類的符號；他們把這些符號轉換為對神秘的天意的信心；並且他們設想生命的設計是由創發的劇本所固定的。

（二）宗教的最佳狀態是把人在靈與肉價值抬高。（三）它把其守舊和更新變成教派，以擴大生命的價值。（四）它承認物質領域是在精神權威之下。（五）宗教實踐包括了馴服自私自利的人的紀律，讓他們臣服於一個神聖和持續的目的。

（六）宗教信仰表達了對生命週期的認可哲學。（七）主要的教派透過使用象徵指向終極或形而上的事實來反覆灌輸神秘感，這些事實是以它們的符號而被認知的。

每一命題都是依據鞏固的事實提出的，這些事實常被記錄下來但沒有給予詮釋而被當作純粹的「習俗」。否認看來是其直接了當的含意，就現在來說，是不合理的。我會依次逐一的討論主要的陳述。

我希望可以藉此弄清阻擾對這些事實的及早認識是因為學者們抱持不經檢驗的假設，而這些學者們不是對這樣的宗教沒有興趣，就是對宗教有太狹隘的觀念或者誤解他們的任務。（ Stanner 2002 ： 92 ）