Book Notes

Uighur Stories from Along the Silk Road

by Cuiyi Wei and Karl W. Luckert ix + 345 pp

The Uighur (sometimes spelled "uyghur") are a Muslim Turkic people found primarily in the Tarim Basin in Northwest China. Their region is officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, also referred to as East Turkistan. The name "Uighur" has passed in and out of usage in the past centuries, and the term has fairly recently reappeared to describe the inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. In this book Karl W. Luckert and Cuiyi Wei have collected several stories from the Uighur and classified them according to motif and stage of societal evolution.

Luckert and Wei state that folklorists in this area have been torn between the interests of the Chinese government, in their efforts to preserve material from minority cultures, and the interests of the Uighurs themselves and other minority cultures in China. Their book satisfies both, the criteria for selecting narratives being "the basis of literary aesthetics, their manifold reflection of Uighur life, and occasionally also on account of their relevance for our broad historical and evolutionary perspective" (4). Luckert and Wei outline the historical names of the group known as the Uighur.

Luckert and Wei use the evolutionary approach to divide societal progression into five parts: "gathering-scavenging-hunting," "domestication," "grand domestication," "universal salvation religions," and "democratic revolts" (5). They explain these five stages and point out that the "evolutionary commentary" on the stories is found at the end of each chapter in the form of numbered notes.

Gathering, scavenging, and hunting, the first stage of the evolutionary chain, is rare in modern Uighur culture but is still reflected in oral traditions. Some of these stories reflect the "pre-human flux" theme found in many tales, alluding to the ancient belief that humans, gods, and animals were once interchangeable and could speak the same language. Animal tales such as those found in chapters one and nine illustrate this concept. Domestication refers to control over plant and animal life through farming and herding. While this concept is ubiquitous in oral tradition, it is not often the major theme of a story. Luckert and Wei label "Watermelon Eating Hill," from the chapter on the origins of humankind, as a domestication story, as it tells of the origins of watermelon cultivation (7).

Grand domestication or overdomestication, on the other hand, is an omnipresent theme in oral tradition. The term refers to the control of groups of people through government, family structure, and other means (9). Any story featuring a ruler, judicial institution, or other social institution, carries the theme of grand domestication. One of the many stories in Uighur Stories from Along the Silk Road that carries this theme is "The Fox and Amitek," in which Amitek fails in his scheme of grand domestication (177). In addition, most of the stories in chapters six and eight deal directly with this theme. Chapter seven, "Winning the Bride," also contains this theme as the lovers face numerous obstacles due to social institutions. Many of the stories in chapter two, "Uighur Origins and Homeland," reflect the beginning stages of the overdomestication phase.

Universal Salvation Religions are popular in oral tradition as reactions against overdomestication (11). While overdomestication promotes social stratification, universal salvation religions promote egalitarianism in varying degrees, and they are open to anyone regardless of social standing. Most stories in chapter three, "The Coming of Islam," carry this theme, as do the Ephendi stories in chapter ten. Ephendi is a trickster figure who often uses religious principles in his insults against the grand domesticators of society. Democratic revolt is a relatively new theme in oral history, although revolt to grand domestication is common. Due to the political conditions of the region, these tales are often difficult to collect (14). There are, however, Uighur "identity" stories such as those found in chapter two that can be told in response to socialism and China's control over the Uighur land.