A study on the traditional chinese myths

Myths are sacred narratives which took place in a metaphysics realm and in unknown times in the past, with the dominant characters being mostly gods or demi-gods, and which are generally believed as truth. There are significant differences between myths and other historical or sacred narratives. Thus, prose narratives such as legends, folk tales, epics, fairy tales, kıssa (parades), menkıbe (sagas) and memorates are briefly dealt with in this dissertation. The subject of this study is the mythical narratives in the ancient Chinese culture. These narratives were first formed in oral culture and were later preserved in writing since the 4th century BC. Myths belonging to this early period were narrated in various ways and in various literary works by different authors during the course of history. Moreover, these myths were reinterpreted by different religious or by philosophical schools in such a manner that they have consequently lost their original forms. For this reason, we aimed to identify and analyze the pristine forms of ancient Chinese myths in this study. The resources used in our dissertation basically consist of classical Chinese texts, which include the original and primitive forms of ancient Chinese myths. The myths constituting the root of traditional Chinese thought are classified in this study according to their main themes. Examples of such main themes include myths of origin, which address creation and generation topics, and myths of heroism, of which the main topic is the restoration of order by eliminating chaos. By doing so, archaic roots of the most fundamental beliefs (such as Ying-Yang or Dao) of ancient Chinese thought are revealed within these myths.