琵西雅在巴都牙也：剖解朱洋熹《夜虎》之獸人傳說

Pythia at Batu Gajah: Dissecting the Legend of Beast-men in Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger

希臘神話中，阿波羅神殿女祭司琵西雅（Pythia）在德爾斐（Delphi）受神啟後，手持樹枝、焚香念咒，以阿波羅之名為信眾們預言未來。若琵西雅以帝國之名來到殖民地巴都牙也（Batu Gajah），被當地人稱為獸人的西方殖民者，是否也能以同樣手法斷定被殖民他者的未來？馬英小說家朱洋熹（Yangsze Choo）筆下從英國來到巴都牙也的膠園主之女莉迪亞（Lydia），挪用當地「夜虎食人」傳說，物化被殖民者為可任意被消滅的害蟲來操弄被殖民者命運，然食人的卻是獸人而非虎人。德爾斐琵西雅的故事是神話，巴都牙也的莉迪亞的則是殖民濫觴與糾葛，而將神話與殖民􃔀事連結的就是夾竹桃。本論文將借歷史學家湯恩比的殖民史觀、後殖民論述先驅塞澤爾的「殖民迴力鏢效應」，與眾病理學家對夾竹桃毒性的探討，剖析並解構《夜虎》（The Night Tiger）中的獸人傳說。殖民主挪用當地傳說來掩蓋他們在殖民地進行的不法情事，雖然某種程度遂行所願，但卻付出了相當大的代價，並造成無可挽回的遺憾。

In Greek mythology, after receiving divine inspiration at Delphi, Apollo’s priestess, the Pythia, prophesies the future for believers by holding a branch, burning incense, and chanting incantations in the name of the God of Truth. If the Pythia, in the name of the empire, were to come to Batu Gajah, a British colony in Malaya, could the Western colonizers, referred to as“Beast-men”by the locals, similarly determine the future of those they colonized by using the same maneuver? Lydia, the daughter of a rubber plantation owner in Malaysian-English writer Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger, brought with her the oleander to Batu Gajah while appropriating the local legend of the“man-eating night tiger”to objectify the colonized people as vermin beings that can be eliminated at will, thereby manipulating their fate. The story of the Delphic Pythia is mythology while that of Lydia in Batu Gajah concerns the origins and entanglements of colonialism. The connection between the mythological story and the colonial narrative is serendipitously established through the oleander; the oleander makes Lydia the Pythia of Batu Gajah. This paper will draw on Arnold Joseph Toynbee’s colonial historical perspective, Aime Cesaire’s concept of the“boomerang effect of colonization,”and some pathologists’analyses of the toxic oleander to dissect and deconstruct the Beast-men legend in The Night Tiger. Colonizers appropriate local legends to conceal their illicit activities within the colonies. While this may achieve their immediate goals to some extent, it comes at a high cost and leads to irreversible regrets.