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82 3 Ethnicizing Myth, Bride Abduction, and Elopement “Coqbbersa,” a story that tells of the marriage between Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil and Coqsseililee, is described as the origin myth of the Naxi people which explains the importance of the Heaven Worship Ceremony (Meebiuq) to Naxi familial, spatial, and social reproduction (McKhann 1989, 157). The myth is one of the most important, if not the most important, dongba texts (Cheng 2001; He 1992; He 1993; Tang and Jin 1983; Wang 2003; F. Yang 1993; F. Yang 2003, 481). The following oral version from Pagoda Hill Village, in one of Lijiang Prefecture’s western mountain districts, is still recited today: Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil, a celestial maiden, descended to earth in order to avoid marrying her mother’s brother’s son. Coqsseililee, a [mortal] young man, was in search of a wife. In gratitude for Coqsseililee’s assistance in crossing a river, a rat directed him to a place where he could find a mate.1 The rat advised Coqsseililee to ignore the other women and to select Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil. Since Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil was a celestial woman, she had earrings with wings that would allow her to fly back to heaven. In the beginning, the rat warned, she will not like you. So you must pull off her wings so she cannot escape and then drag her off. The rat also warned that Ceiheeq­ bbubbeqmil would use pine sap to reattach her wings and try to escape, but when the sun came out the sap would melt and she would fall back to earth. Ceiheeq­ bbubbeqmil flew up three times but fell back to earth each Ethnicizing Myth, Bride Abduction, and Elopement : : : 83 time. After the third time, she realized there was no escape and that she had no choice but to live with her mortal captor. Because Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil needed to fly up to heaven to tell her parents of her union, Coqsseililee used glue to reattach her wings. At first, embarrassed by the situation, she hid Coqsseililee, but Zzeelaqapv, her father, smelled iron and brass and realized that a mortal being was among them. Zzeelaqapv told the young man he could marry his daughter only if he completed a number of impossible feats. Assuming he would fail to complete them, Zzeelaqapv made plans to kill him after each feat. But with the aid of Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil, her mother, and armies of rabbits and ants, Coqsseililee was able to complete all the tasks. So his father-in-law gave him various types of grain and animals to take back to earth. But since Zzeelaqapv did not give the couple the cat [hualleiq] or the turnip [manjing], Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil stole them. In retribution, the cat and turnip were cursed by Zzeelaqapv: from that time onward, the cat makes an irritating and repulsive sound [purring], and the turnip weighs a lot but is full of water and gives you gas. Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil and Coqsseililee had three sons who were born mute. Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil overheard her father and mother talking. The mother told Zzeelaqapv not to be so cruel because the couple was now a family. He replied that they only needed to worship him once a year by holding the Heaven Worship Ceremony. [Ceiheeqbbubbeqmil relates this conversation to Coqsseililee, enabling him to learn the secret of how to undo Zzeelaqapv’s curse.] Coqsseililee then held the Heaven Worship Ceremony, after which the three children each began to speak a different language—Tibetan, Naxi, and Chinese—and they became these respective peoples. The privileging of the Coqbbersa story as the Naxi origin myth may be understood as part of the project of creating “dongba culture,” that is, the reform era essentialization of ancient Naxi history and culture.2 Dongba culture is equated with an originary, authentic, primordial, or ancient form of Naxi culture that represents all Naxi. Naxi scholars identify dongba culture as persisting in the contemporary practices of some rural mountain villages, particularly in the beliefs, narratives, and rituals that appear in the texts of dongba priests who practiced in the mountains.3 In the 1990s, Lijiang Town and basin residents were unfamiliar with the Coqbbersa myth. 84 : : : c h a p t e r t h r e e Rather than treating the Coqbbersa myth as representative of the entirety of Naxi culture and history, an alternative interpretive strategy would be to consider it as saying something particular about the history and practices of the regions where the text circulates and continues to be part of an oral tradition. Drawing on the ethnography of marriage...

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