從狡黠到恩典：緬甸佤山的先知、儀式和政治

From Cunning to Grace: Prophets, Ritual, and Politics in the Wa Hills of Myanmar

在過去兩個世紀滇緬邊疆地區佤族和拉祜族的歷史中，傳奇英雄或「千禧年先知」扮演了重要角色：他們擁有非比尋常的能力，提倡儀式創新，並成為政治運動的領導者。有別於其他研究先知的論點，將先知視為傳說中勇士的化身，或是對當地邊緣處境的反映，本文從當地的觀點出發，主張應將先知理解為徹底的革新者，尤其是他們那看似狡黠的行為，其實為當地引進了「恩典」的概念。這種從狡黠到恩典的轉變呈現在潛在力量的語義變化、儀式演講中的創新、和測量的採用。在這三個面向裡面，可以看到恩典作為一個具有不可測量性的特質、並相對於抽象和普遍測量結構的概念清楚地浮現出來。不同於其他人類學對於恩典的討論，將其理解為一種「調和的概念」，或僅是一種基督教語彙的應用，本文根據佤族和拉祜族的歷史經驗，來論證恩典這個概念的根本創新性。

Since the 19th century, legendary heroes and millenarian prophets played very important roles in the history of the Wa and Lahu ethnic groups at the China-Myanmar border: based on exceptional skills, they proposed ritual innovations and became leaders of millenarian movements. Rather than reincarnations of mythical‘men of prowess’or reflections of the peripheral situation, prophets were radical innovators, who used cunning to introduce a concept of‘grace’. The transition from cunning to grace is demonstrated in relationship to the semantics of potency, changes in ritual speech, and the use of measurements: in the three fields,‘grace’emerges as the horizon of immeasurability against frameworks of abstract and universal measurement. The radical novelty of‘grace’cannot be described as a‘mediative concept’, or as a simple consequence of Christian conversation, as other anthropological accounts have done.