蝶としての魂、あるいは蝶の魂 (新宮一成教授 退職記念号)

Abstract

In the Zhuangzi, the dreaming mind is famously equated with a butterfly. In Burman cultures, which are generally thought to be genetically related to Chinese culture, "souls" (the element in the person that transmigrates from one lifetime to another) can also be identified with butterflies (with the term "butterfly soul"). Is there a possible cognate relation between these two notions? Or could the trope of "soul" (whether dreaming or transmigrating) as butterfly have been diffused from one context to the other? However, a cursory comparative examination of tropes in a range of cultures and folklores widely dispersed across the globe quickly shows that both of these hypotheses are inadequate. If not necessarily a human universal, the trope of soul as butterfly must have been "re-invented" independently in multiple cultures in world history. This "lightweight" case study (weighing perhaps as little as the butterflies themselves) thus ends up serving as a useful exercise in the lessons of broad comparison. The present study stops at bequeathing the observation of the wide diffusion of this trope as a question to scholars in other fields: How might we account for the recurrence of this figure in such diverse cultural contexts?