A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE MYTHOLOGY

Abstract

Chinese mythology is rich in characters invented by the boundless fantasy of the human race, there are more than a thousand of them. Mythological works are directly related to literature, therefore legends and fairy tales, where these characters appear, influenced the literature of China, and sometimes even intersect with its history.At the beginning of our era, interest in China was focused on all the unusual and strange phenomena and things that could arise as a reaction to the "dry" practice of the followers of Confucianism. Remnants of myths, folk legends and beliefs began to appear on paper. Even the titles of books of that time testify to the authors' interest in a strange and incomprehensible phenomenon: "A beautiful and amazing description", "Beautiful fairy tales", "A unique and amazing story." Some of these books were created to imitate the ancient "Book of Mountains and Seas", which is the main source of information for researchers of ancient Chinese mythology. These remarkable collections of historical records have provided researchers with a wealth of material. They also greatly influenced the development of Chinese stories, which received plots and motives from these collections. Many centuries later, in the 16th century, Xu Zhong-Lin wrote the epic novel "Ascension of the Spirits" based on myths, in which he developed the ancient imaginations of the ancients. Zhou Yu, who lived in the 17th century, tried to combine myths into epics, calling them "Legends of the creation of the world".