While stories and myths are common in all societies, the development of what may be termed a “literature” is a much rarer occurrence. Most spoken languages do not even possess a script, and the appearance of writing, of visible language, does not itself mark the advent of a literature. How then does literature come about? This paper attempts to answer this far-reaching question by looking at a small Tibeto-Burman minority group in southwest China, the Naxi, and how their ritual texts might have developed into a literature for broader consumption.
This leads us back to the history of literature, to literary beginnings, and by way of an illustrative example, to the recent compilation on this very topic: How literatures begin: A global history (Lande & Feeney, 2021). As the title suggests, the editors Joel Lande and Dennis Feeney aim in this volume at revealing the beginnings of literature; in doing so the book is geographically organised: we move from China to Japan to Korea, then to India, Greece, and the Latin of the Roman Empire, then onward to the Romance Languages. Africa is represented, as well as African American literature. The section on “World literature”, however, is almost a footnote, added to the back of the book in a derisory couple of pages; one can only presume that the world has, by this point late-on in the volume, already been traversed. Therein lies the problem: is not Chinese, or Greek literature also “world” literature? In the conclusion to their conspectus, the editors seem almost aghast that something approaching translation may be a commonality to the emergence of literature across the globe. Rethinking translation’s role in the literature of the world would mean coming up with a different way of looking at literature: what would a history of literature, (which is, I argue, a history of translation), look like if it were radically decentred? The problem of the role of translation in literary beginnings is similar to the problem of world literature as a whole: the context cannot be grasped in its totality. What is required is a clearer focus, and this calls for a kind of telescopic approach. That which is distant must be magnified. We start off, then, by addressing the problem (How might translation beget literature beyond the production of “world literature” as a contemporary translational genre?), then we look through the telescope and begin to focus in on some greater detail. So, we begin with Asia and zoom in, to Zomia, that place populated with hill tribes that tend to resist state governance (Scott, 2009). Zooming in further, we see multi-ethnic southwest China, and the great river valleys of the Himalayan foothills. The focal length increases yet again, and the city of Lijiang comes into view. This is the cultural capital of the Naxi ethnic minority.
The Naxi have a well-developed mythic narrative surrounding a white bat that travels to the heavens to collect sacred books of divination. The white bat story has a compelling narrative, and a hubristic hero who is something of a rakish joker. Just as Buddhist translator Xuanzang (602–664) in the Chinese tradition evolved into an emblem of Buddhist literary culture (the transmitter of sacred texts), the more clearly mythological white bat serves a similar purpose for the Naxi. But where did this story emerge from? Why was the white bat given such a role? How did the myth become literature? This paper takes the tale of the white bat in the Naxi tradition as a case study, specifically revealing how Eastern Himalayan narratives coalesced via a translational process into a distinct literary tale that became emblematic of book culture. Before a literary work can be translated from language A to language B, the proposed path from myth and ritual to literature requires a multitude of translations. The most important being a literarization, a movement that I envisage as traversing along a spectrum of actualisation. We can see this process of what could be called “literary actualisation” firsthand in the Naxi bat myth.
It has become literature, but only after a series of translations: translation as borrowing, translation as bricolage, translation as a kind of building up, an embellishment. Investigating the story episodes of the myth, we will find that it is cobbled together from a number of sources, it is translation as a compilation of previous signs to create something new, a bricolage. A bricolage is a mixture of bits and pieces, and the story of the white bat is a mix of multicultural bits and plurilingual pieces. Eventually the bat acquires the scriptures, but it is nothing if not filled with hubris, and in its negligence drops the books right into the mouth of the golden frog, which is then killed, and its body and viscera become the building blocks of divination practices: the five elements and the Chinese zodiac.
The myth takes on a more literary form in the late 20th century when Naxi author Sha Li reinterprets it within a Chinese language essay exploring the frog symbol’s significance on traditional Naxi women’s clothing (Sha, 1998). Sha Li embellishes the narrative with contemporary elements and incorporates Chinese cultural allusions. I have tried to theorise the genesis of the white bat story, its turn toward literature, as both intersemiotic translation (i.e. the movement from myth to literature or ‘folk wisdom’ to literature) and more traditional interlingual translation (form Tibetan to Naxi, or from Naxi to Chinese), but above all, as a translation from a less actualised to a more fully actualised literary form, a process that is inherently interlingual and intercultural.
Aligning with the “outward turn” in translation studies, the paper advocates a radical rethinking of literary history, moving away from established canons and world literature towards a decentralised approach that considers marginalised traditions. Translation is not merely about transferring texts between languages but a fundamental process of transformation and adaptation that shapes literature itself, from its very inception, highlighting the dynamic and fluid nature of literary traditions often obscured by conventional studies. When our attention focuses on the smaller literatures of the world, more may come into view.
