A perennial symbol of fertility, this lunar animal is valued for its seasonal metamorphosis. Its stomach waxes and wanes like the moon. Its belly groans like thunder. It comes alive in spring and hibernates through the winter. For the Zhuang tribes now living in central and western Guangxi, the frog is also their totemic ancestor, their Shangdi. They still have myths that tell of the frog as the agent announcing the coming of rain and prophesying the fortunes of the harvest for the community.

Every New Year is attended by a rite of hunting and sacrificing a frog, a celebration that lasts for fifteen days. It begins on New Year's Day with everybody out digging in the fields, looking for a hibernating frog. The first man to find one is sure to have good fortune for the rest of the year, and his catch is announced throughout the village. A small coffin is then prepared and the frog entombed in it, after which it is paraded through the village amidst much merrymaking and general gift-giving. That night, everyone attends a formal funeral for the frog. But first, the body of last year's frog is exhumed. Based on its coloration, the fortune for the coming year is told. If the bones have turned yellow, it means a good harvest; if black, a bad one; if grayish, an average one. If they are white, it means there will be a good cotton crop.

The ritual is more intact than the myths, which have apparently suffered some corruption. Some totemic beliefs have been overly rationalized. In one myth, for example, it is said that the frog was the son of the thunder god. Whenever mankind needed rain, it had only to inform the frog, and the frog, by croaking, would pass man's request for rain to his father. The thunderclouds would then gather and rain would fall. The croaking of the frog apparently acted as sympathetic magic, imitating the thunder of Heaven that preceded the rain. Originally the sacrifice of the frog was the sacrifice of the tribe's totemic ancestor, its giver of life, rain, fertility, and general good fortune.

But this sense of reverence has been lost in some redacted versions of the myth, perhaps because men had trouble identifying themselves with the frog as a fellow kinsman. Thus it is now said in one tale, for example, that a certain family was mourning its dead when a frog nearby joined in the chorus. Offended by its noisy croaking, one family member grabbed a pot of boiling water (a wicked substitute for the falling rain) and killed the frog with it. With the messenger so killed, prayers for rain to the god of thunder went unanswered. It was not until the people consulted their (human, not frog) ancestors and learned the cause of the drought that amends were made. Henceforth mankind showed filial respect to the frog and gave it a decent burial every year to ensure that the rain would fall. This is clearly a patched-up story, a broken and badly retold myth about a totemic sacrifice. If, indeed, the mistake lay simply in killing the messenger, why not stop the annual ritual killing altogether?

The next two stories have been affected even more by secular rationality. In one, thunder was plotting to strike a human hero (a rewrite of the old ancestor). The frog, a general serving the god of thunder (instead of being the god's son), leaked the secret to the man. The hero then laid a trap, captured the thunder god, and coerced him into sending rain. That the god did, but he was so angered by the frog's betrayal that he has sought to strike frogs dead with lightning ever since. A popular proverb now has man boasting, "No frog in hand, no fear of being hit by lightning." The other redacted tale, an explanation of the New Year's rite outlined above, goes even further. Mankind now boasts of killing one frog, and of threatening the thunder god with killing more if he does not send rain. This is not worship, it is blackmail. These tales tell of a mankind no longer fearful of the thunder god. As a result, the frog ends up being a mere pawn in the struggle between man and the natural elements.

The Confucian rationalization of the frog myth is complete in the following tale. Once upon a time, the thunder god had decreed that at death the old must allow themselves to be eaten by the young. This cult of human sacrifice (a rewrite of the totemic feast) ended when one filial (i.e., Confucianized) family secretly killed a cow instead. The god was angry at the deception and sent the frog down to spy on man and find out who innovated this practice. But the frog was caught and forced to reveal to man the secret of how thunder was made, which was by beating on a large bronze drum topped by four carved frogs. This drum would send off lightning bolts. Learning this, the family made a similar drum with six frogs, two more than the god's. Beating the drum not only brought rain but also chased the god of thunder away for good. Large, ancient, bronze drums with four frogs on top have now been retrieved from archeological sites in South China. The above story is now told at funerals even as the shamans dance to modern versions of these frog drums.

In these frog tales, we see how an ancient Chthonian who used to rule on high suffered during the rise of the cult of Heaven. First it was demoted to the status of a fertility god in the marshes. For some time, though, this totemic god could inspire fear in men by withholding rain from the fields, before it suffered further indignities as the myth was rewritten into mere folktales about the unlucky frog. The White Ape fared better in this regard. It at least retained the virile power to seduce women. Not so the frog, which lacks even enough potency (de) to qualify as an occasional Frog Prince for a human mate.

Quelle:
From protean ape to handsome saint: the Monkey King / Whalen Lai