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The San religion is the religion of the San people. ==Mythical figures== * Cagn (also known Kaang or /Kaggen) is the supreme god of the San. He is the first being and the creator of the world.〔Hastings, p.522〕 He is a trickster god who can shape-shift, most often into the praying mantis but also takes the form of a bull eland, a louse, a snake, and a caterpillar.〔〔Lewis-Williams (2000), p.143〕〔Moore, p.113〕〔Meletinsky, p.169〕 In some variants of the San creation story, Cagn receives so much opposition in the world that he moves his abode from the earth to the top of the sky. Cagn is said to have created the moon which holds special significance to the San people; the phase of the moon dictated when rainmaking rituals were to be performed.〔(Reconstructing the Past - the Khoikhoi )〕 * Coti is the wife of Cagn. She gave birth to the eland, and Cagn hid it near a secluded cliff to let it grow.〔McNamee, p.52〕 One day Cagn's sons, Cogaz and Gewi, were out hunting.〔 Not knowing their father's love for the eland, they killed it.〔Solomon, p.63〕 Cagn was angry, and told Gewi to put the blood from the dead eland into a pot and churn it.〔McNamee, p.53〕 Blood spattered from the pot onto the ground and turned into snakes.〔 Cagn was displeased. Next, Gewi scattered the blood, and it turned into hartebeests.〔 Again, Cagn was unhappy. He told Coti to clean the pot and add more blood from the eland, with fat from the heart. She churned it, and Cagn sprinkled the mixture on the ground. It turned into a large herd of eland.〔 This was how Cagn gave meat to his people to hunt and eat.〔 The San attribute the wildness of the eland to the fact that Cagn's sons killed it before it was ready to be hunted, spoiling it.〔〔Lang, p.146〕 The scholar David Lewis-Williams recounts a variation of the eland myth involving the meerkats. Cagn's daughter the porcupine married Kwammang-a, a meerkat. They had a son called Ichneumon (a mongoose).〔 Ichneumon was close to his grandfather Cagn.〔Barnard, p.84〕 Cagn used to take honey to feed his favourite, the eland.〔Lewis-Williams (2000), p.145〕 The people were curious as to what Cagn was doing with the honey, so they sent Ichneumon to spy on him and find out.〔 When Ichneumon saw Cagn giving honey to the eland, he reported his discovery to his brothers, the meerkats.〔Lewis-Williams (2000), p.146〕 While Cagn was out gathering honey, the meerkats persuaded Ichneumon to show them where the eland was.〔Lewis-Williams (2000), p.148〕 They called the eland out of its hiding place and killed it.〔 * Heitsi-Eibib is usually as a culture hero, but his role is fluid. He is sometimes called a trickster. In other contexts, he appears as a patron of hunters and in some stories he even had a part in creating the world, impressing specific characteristics into different species. For example, he cursed the lion to walk on ground instead of nesting on a tree.〔 The multiple roles of Heitsi-eibib have been called a reflection of the fluidity of San religious resources and rituals, which are usually ambiguous and lack in standardization.〔 Heitsi-eibib was also a life-death-rebirth figure, dying and resurrecting himself on numerous occasions. Resulting from this, his funeral cairns can be found in many locations in southern Africa, and it is customary to throw a stone onto them for good luck. In different accounts, Heitsi-eibib is born from either a girl or—more often—a cow, who got pregnant by eating a magical grass. Heitsi-eibib was a legendary hunter, sorcerer and warrior. * Tsui'goab is a sky deity associated with the phenomena of thunder and lightning.〔 His name translates to "bloodied knee", and he is said to dwell in a red heaven located somewhere in the east, as opposed to Gaunab's black heaven.〔Lang, p.124〕 * Gaunab is a god of sickness and death who is locked in constant battle with Tsui'goab.〔 * Utixo or "Tiqua" is the name used by missionaries as a translation for the Abrahamic God. * The Ga-Gorib'' is a beast who lived on the edge of a pit. It would trick people into throwing stones at it, but the stones would always bounce back from the creature's hide, and the thrower would fall into the pit. When the hero Heitsi-eibib met the beast, he refused to throw stones until Ga-gorib turned away from him, whereupon he cast a stone that knocked Ga-gorib into its own pit.〔 In another version of the same story, Heitsi-eibib wrestled with the Ga-gorib and was thrown to the pit repeatedly, but could not be kept down. In the end, the Ga-gorib is again thrown to his own pit by Heitsi-eibib. Gorib is "the spotted one" (meaning leopard, cheetah, or leguaan) in Khoe languages, so the Ga-gorib probably has some connection with this formidable species. The element "ga-" remains to be explained. Possibly, it is a negative, "not-a-leopard", not only on comparative morphological grounds, but also because its adversary Heitsi-eibib is connected symbolically to the leopard. *The Aigamuxa (singular Aigamuchab) are a race of man-eating, dune-dwelling creature that are mostly human-looking, except that they have eyes on the instep of their feet. In order to see, they have to go down on hands and knees and lift one foot in the air. This is a problem when the creature chases prey, because it has to run blind. * Hai-uri and Bi-Bloux are man-eating creatures which have only one leg and one arm, and travel by jumping, similar to the monopods in Pliny the Elder's ''Naturalis Historia''. Hai-uri is the male variant, while Bi-Bloux is female. * !Xu is considered a benevolent and omnipotent supreme being.〔Richard Katz, Megan Biesele, Verna St. Denis. 〕 He is also the sky god to whom the souls of the dead go. He is said to "Summon the magicians to their profession, and gives them supernatural powers." The San add that he provides the rain and is invoked in illness, before hunting and before traveling.〔Dorothea F. Bleek, . ISBN 9785882327261〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「San religion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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