《山海經》中人面蛇身的神聖書寫

古代中國先民依其認知所建構出來的世界樣貌，代表了先民觀看世界的視角與方式，而先民如何生活於這樣的世界之中，透過《山海經》的記載，保留了古代先民的認知與想像世界，書中出現的大量動物，顯示在先民世界中動物佔有很重要的地位。在《山海經》裡出現的眾多動物之中，蛇類現身的次數之多，很難不受到矚目，例如有著人面蛇身或人首蛇身形象的軒轅國人、相柳、燭陰、窫窳、貳負之神、延維等等。這種人蛇合體的形貌，透露出當時的人並未嚴格區分人與動物本質上的差別，兩者間的界限模糊不明，也呈現先民對於人獸一體的原始想像。然而這類初民的想像並非毫無根據的天馬行空，而有其內在的意涵。本文嘗試針對《山海經》中數種具人面蛇身或人首蛇身的神靈怪異分別梳理，觀察人面蛇身之形象在先民心靈世界中所具有的特殊地位與意義，並參酌文獻之外的實物圖像資料，試圖解讀《山海經》中人面蛇身形象的神聖書寫。

關鍵字

山海經；人面蛇身；人面；蛇

並列摘要

It is a good way to know the imaging and cognizing world of the ancients by reading the book ”Shanhai jing” 山海經. Through ”Shanhai jing”, we can find that animals played an important part of people's daily life in the ancient world. Among the animals shown in ”Shanhai jing”, snakes had made number of appearances. For example, the ones with human faces and bodies of snakes. The morphologies of these combinations revealed that there were no strict distinction between human beings and animals at the ancient time. The imaginations of such morphologies were not entirely groundless, and had their inner meaning. This paper attempts to analyze the ones with human faces and bodies of snakes in ”Shanhai jing”, observed the significance in the inner world of the ancestors, taking image data into account, and trying to interpret the sacredness of the ones with human faces and bodies of snakes in ”Shanhai jing”.