What percentage range do you think this series has of featuring new demons from Chinese ethnic minority myths(especially those ethnic minorities that have never been seen before)? i think that most works about chinese myths neglect those groups. it would be great if we get demons from hmong,nuosu(yi),manchu,qiang and more. (you can check about nuosu book of origins. very crazy)
Do I really even need to answer? I think you already know.
The Nuosu Book of Origins is at least currently available on the Internet Archive.
The most obscure demon in Megaten with a verifiable source remains Tingkat. It will likely never be out-obscured. And it's only in Soul Hackers thanks to Shigeru Mizuki, who was a mainstream source in Japan for these obscure creatures from around the world.
Demons from the myths of these obscure ethnic minorities are improbable in this era of SMT because:
they're unlikely to result in palpable hype/excitement for the game (people who are not hardcore myth nerds, i.e., the majority of SMT's audience, are not going to rush to buy the game because Y they've never heard of from X myth system they've also never heard of is in the game--this is the "demons as promotional material principle.") This of course unless Doi can make one into a HOT BABE with like long legs, a huge ass, wide birthing hips, and classic FFs overflowing from a skimpy top. Never underestimate the gooner Doi principle.
The "Lone Wolf" principle--It wouldn't be very exciting or meaningful if one of these obscure myths gets added with a single design/demon, because, you know, new roster slots are scarce these days. How is it going to interact with the greater, established SMT demon roster? Nuosu demon Y would, at best, be forced to spend eternity accompanying mainstream Chinese demons like Nuwa or Zhong Kui, and that wouldn't be much fun, would it? It's like a Hydrogen Bomb vs. Coughing Baby situation within the greater SMT framework.
More to your point, SMT is no longer a series where many dozens to hundreds of demons are added for every game. At most we get perhaps 2 dozen now. If this were still 1997 and there was no need for the majority of the new to be plot-relevant...maybe you might see one of these.
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A Year in Language, day 217: Nuosu
Nuosu, also called Northern Yi, is one of several languages spoken by the Yi ethnic group of China and surrounding Southeast Asia. It is the most widely spoken of Yi languages with about 200 million speakers around the border between China's Yunnan and Sichuan provence.
Nuosu, along with the other languages spoken by Yi people, are of the Loloish branch of Sino-Tibetan, named for an older term for the Yi, whose languages make up most of the branch.
Phonetically Nuosu contains several syllabic consonants that can be used as vowels. Syllabic consonants are not uncommon cross linguistically, though normally they are nasals (like the "m" in "hmm") or approximants (the most vocalic type of consonant ex. the "l" sound at the end of "little" or the "r" sound at the end of "writer"). Nuosu travels a very different route and instead syllabifies /z/ and /v/. People familiar with Mandarin will have already encountered a syllabic /z/ as in the syllable "si".
Nuosu was traditionally written in its own character system unrelated to the Chinese characters. In the 1970's that script was officially revised into a syllabary, containing over 756 unique glyphs. The Nuosu language is written "ꆈꌠꉙ" in this system.
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An epic narrative poem known as Hnewo teppy ("Book of Origins") holds a central place in the mythic and ritual imagination of the Nuosu people of south-west China. Existing both as oral performances and oral-connected written texts, the narrative relates the origins of the sky, earth, geographical features, and life forms-culminating in the origins of the forebears of the Nuosu people. Animals and plants populate the landscape of the narrative world, clustering in the categories of wild and domestic. Individual species tend to be associated with specific niches in the natural and human-modified landscape, their origins occurring in a dynamic of creation and destruction throughout the ages. Among the forerunners of living beings in the present age are the "tribes of snow," catalogued in taxons comprised of wild plants and animals. Moreover, many portions of the epic feature domesticated stock and crops that are associated with, and in some cases even sanction, Nuosu customs current today. In an approach drawing on folkloristic theory and ecocriticism, this article introduces and outlines a hitherto undocumented version of the Hnewo tepyy, examines how select images of life forms in the text relate to historic and contemporary Nuosu culture, and suggests that in the traditions of the Hnewo, boundaries between the realms are conceptually mitigated by the ultimate origin of all life in the sky.
Mark Bender. "'Tribes of Snow': Animals and Plants in the Nuosu 'Book of Origins'." Asian Ethnology, Vol. 67, No. 1 (2008), pp. 5-42.
The Hnewo (a common folk designation) is a central narrative in the oral and oral-connected traditions of folk literature and ritual of the Nuosu (Baqie and Yang 2001, 88-92; Bamo 2003, 33)-- The content of the narrative explicitly and implicitly saturates daily life, even in less traditional communities. Existing in many versions--both oral and oral-connected written ones--the narrative portrays a world in which Nuosu origin myths unfold as well as legends of early migrations. Even stories that are not in versions of the Hnewo perse can be contextualized in the story world of the master myth-narrative. Incidents and explanations in the narrative act as templates and guides for social behavior in a variety of situations today. These include kinship and gender relations, life cycle events such as weddings and funerals, customs for entertaining guests, the production and consumption of food, social comportment of individuals and groups, relationships with domestic and wild animals and plants, and so forth. In recent years, themes of the Hnewo have become ethnic emblems that are displayed in public forums and frequently appear in the literary works (especially poetry) of contemporary Nuosu poets and writers.3
As epic scholar John Miles Foley has insisted, oral poetry is filled with cultural integers--many metonymic--that reference traditional knowledge and convey meaning for insider audiences on levels beyond the understanding of outsiders to the tradition (Foley 1995, 39-41). This is certainly the case in the receptive traditions of the Hnewo, and the interest in this paper in ethnographic description is intended to provide readers with insight into Nuosu traditions referenced in the oral and oral-connected versions of the poem.4
[...]
In Nuosu rituals and folk beliefs, wild and domestic animals and plants tend to be categorized and treated differently. For instance, while priests (called himo) utilize the teeth and claws of certain wild animals as ritual tokens valued for their attributed powers, domesticated animals are usually used when sacrifices are made to the spirits.5 While a number of wild trees and plants are important in rituals, the accoutrements of the himo must be carried in loosely woven bags of cultivated hemp. As for food taboos, however, certain animals, both domestic (dogs and horses) and wild (monkeys, pandas, frogs, snakes, etc.), cannot be eaten. Also, Nuosu hunters say that wild musk deer and other game must be skinned according to certain protocols, some of which (such as making the initial skinning cuts on the legs in a certain order) are similar to those used in butchering domestic creatures. Thus, though at times clearly differentiated, the boundaries between wild nature and the human-modified world--marked by these living integers--are not always impermeable.
This permeability between boundaries may reflect an orientation towards the world that is reminiscent of those that Ingold has observed among hunter gatherers and pastoralists. He suggests that in instances where the strict Western scholarly dichotomy between "society and nature" is not descriptive, there may instead be different forms of "engagement" in which humans and animals are "co-participants in the same world" (Ingold 2000, 75). As in life, likewise, in the Hnewo, the realms of the wild and the human world at times intersect, and bound aries are not clearly distinguished.6 Yet, while immanent in life, these realms and intersections occur only rhetorically in an imaginary world keyed by a folk text such as the Hnewo (Foley 1995,136-39). This is in line with Ingold's (2000, 76) observation that "while humans and animals have histories of their mutual relations, only humans narrate such histories. But to construct a narrative, one must already dwell in the world, and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both human and non-human." In the mythic realms of the Hnewo, the same too could be said for relationships with plants.
Beneath these sometimes permeable though bounded realms, and the distinctions between the domestic and wild in both actual life and the poem, there is, however, a holistic unity. This linkage, in terms of relations between the realm of mortal life and the spirit world, is mitigated by ritual sacrifice, highlighted by funeral rituals, and expedited by beliefs in the existence of parallel societies of gods on high and of man on earth. As described in several instances in the poem, life descends from the sky to earth, and at times a two-way traffic between earth and the sky is evident.
[...]
The Nuosu are a subgroup of a large ethnic group in southwest China officially designated as the Yi.8 In brief, the Nuosu are speakers of dialects of Northern Yi, number about two million, and live mosdy in southern Sichuan and the bordering areas of northern Yunnan. The traditional economy is based on a mixture of animal husbandry--especially goats, sheep, horses, pigs, small cows, and chickens--and subsistence farming of buckwheat and other hardy grains, several varieties of potatoes, maize, beans, squash, tobacco, and other vegetable and root crops. Society is organized into patrilineal clans, and the traditional world view encompasses beliefs in nature spirits and malevolent ghosts. As explained in Note 5, traditional ritualists include two types: the male priests known as himo, who are literate in the native writing system and conduct major rituals, such as the elaborate funeral rites; and male and female shamans (the sunyi and monyi, respectively) who deal with the depredations of lesser ghosts. The question of the non-mythical origins of ancestors of the Yi and the Nuosu is under debate, though theories suggest early migrations from northwest China, indigenous origins in the Yunnan-Guizhou provincial area, or some combination of these factors not yet fully understood (Harrell 2001, 84).
[...]
The Hnewo proper has been transmitted over time in two major ways. One is in the form of oral-connected written texts composed and copied by the bimo, who are the most important ritual specialists of the Nuosu and other Yi groups (Bamo 1994, 2001). They utilize an ancient script (which varies by region) to record history, myths, discourses on literature, and folklore (Zhongyang 1992, 3; Bamo 2001a).11 The second mode of transmission--and the most readily available to the folk--is the chanting of portions of the narrative by bimo in a number of ritual contexts. Bamo has discovered that in Meigu county, parts of the Hnewo are sometimes performed by bimo in a kind of verbal dueling contest known as kenre.12 Similar performances by singers may occur in other areas of Liangshan as well.13 In some cases other tradition-bearers (such as the ndeggu described below) may also know and perform parts of the poem.
Depending upon event and subject matter, specific portions of the Hnewo are recited at particular life cycle events. The earlier sections of the narrative tend to be associated with funerals, rituals for guiding souls to the land of the dead, and the purging of ghosts, while the latter portions, especially those dealing with marriages, are part of more festive occasions, particularly weddings. As Bamo has observed, bimo priests commonly categorize the parts concerning the early phases of creation of the sky and earth as the "male" (apbu) segments (typically the first seven sections), while the latter sections relating affairs of earth are referred to as the "female" (apmop) segments (2003, 139). This seems to follow the traditional understanding that the cosmos is comprised of the sky above, the clouds and mists in the middle, and the earth below--as is reiterated throughout the Hnewo poem.14 Structurally, the poem is commonly conceived as having nineteen major parts (literally "segments of tree branches," or jjie) (Bamo 2003,123-26; 132-33). The number, length, and content of these parts, however, vary among the written oral connected versions, as individual texts may have more or fewer sections. Given the dynamics of live performance, oral versions vary widely, and the number of parts performed on a given occasion is dependent on contingencies of the performance situation (Bamo 2003,160).
[...]
Roughly the first half of the Xide version of the Hnewo (that is, up through Part Twelve), is set in a mythic world in which otherwise "normal" animals and plants have the power of speech, and sometimes other supernatural capabilities. Although some strange creatures also appear during the migrations in the latter sections, the setting of these latter parts is a world more legendary than mythical. Besides the regular (that is, "natural") animals and plants there are giant creatures--or as paleontologists might say "mega-fauna"--that in the early stages of the narrative are key parts of the biodiversity of the story world. These include the anthropomorphic monkey named Anyut Ddussyt, who hangs the numerous suns and moons in the sky, and the creatures associated with the birth of the hero Zhyge Alu (Zhyxge Axlu), arguably the most recognized and celebrated mythical being in Nuosu folklore and that of many other Yi groups.
The Northern Yi word for "dragon" is "/--," and by name Zhyge Alu is associated with dragons. Moreover, his birth clearly indicates that he is a "super-hybrid" derived from dragon, dragon-eagle, and supernatural human stock. The opening lines begin with the birth of dragons in the sky and earth, descriptions of a dragon dwelling in rivers, cliffs, and forests, and playing with various wild creatures, including fish, bees, and deer. Following these introductory lines, which set the context for the child's later adventures in the wild, the text presents a genealogy of Zhyge Alu's mother (which is, incidentally, the only genealogy of a female character in this Hnewo version)...
[...]
Although the wild animals mentioned as the "snow tribes" all occur in or near the Liangshan bio-regions, it is interesting that several animals, insects, and plants mentioned elsewhere in the narrative (and found in the region) are not listed in these catalogues. Although the text offers no conclusive answers, some observations can be made. To begin with, the unlisted animals include: various cervids such as the "qyp le" (a compound term denoting the muntjac (Muntiacus) and water deer (Hydropotes inermis)--primitive musk deer with fangs and prominent in Nuosu folklore); other deer such as roe deer (Capreolus); foxes, leopards and tigers; rabbits and Eurasian otters; corvids, including crows and magpies; pheasants, song birds, and smaller creatures with blood (Geist 1998, 44-48; 26-8; Xu 1989, 26-28; Mortenson 2006, 423). Some of the unlisted creatures, however, are among those spied by the sky spirit Ngetit Guxnzy as he peers down onto the drowned landscape after the great flood. He notices a number of animals--both wild and domestic, all living precariously in their respective niches--as well as a single hemp plant. The animals include both wild and domestic creatures: a goat, a deer, a fox, a black horse, a wild duck, a sheep, and a leopard.30
More fun Nuosu facts from the grammar I’m reading (Gerner 2013):
The voiced labial plosives /b/ bb and /mb/ nb are trilled to [ʙ] and [mʙ], respectively, before /u/ u and /ṵ/ ur, with stronger trilling before /ṵ/. And the voiced coronal plosives /d/ dd and /nd/ nd acquire bilabial trill off-glides, becoming [dʙ] and [ndʙ], before /u/ and /ṵ/, again with stronger trilling before /ṵ/. The other voiced plosives, dorsal /g/ gg and /ŋg/ mg, are never trilled.
The only creaky-voiced vowels are /ɨ̰/ yr and /ṵ/ ur; the other vowels have no creaky-voiced counterparts. This strikes me as bizarre—I thought phonation contrasts tended to exist for every vowel, like tone contrasts. And {ɨ, u} doesn't even seem to be a natural class, given that the language also has /ɯ/ e.
There is a contrast between /o/ o and /ɔ/ uo among the mid back vowels, but the only mid front vowel is /ɛ/. Which is weird, because normally it's the other way round; different heights of front vowels are more easily distinguished than different heights of back vowels.
There are three basic tones, and they are more or less distinguished by level alone; the contours are given as 55 for the "high" tone in -t, 33 for the unmarked "mid" tone, 21 for the "low falling" tone in -p. The fourth tone in -x is called "mid falling or mid" by Wikipedia, but Gerner says its contour is 44 (so it's really a level high-mid tone) and it occurs for the most part only due to tone sandhi processes whereby one of two adjacent syllables with the unmarked tone has its tone dissimilated by raising of the pitch.
The -x tone can, however, also appear on some verbs which normally have the -p tone, in which case it indicates that the preceding constituents are in the order agent-object rather than object-agent. Cf. mu jy lu ti shep 'Mudje looks for Luti', mu jy lu ti shex 'Luti looks for Mudje'.
In simple clauses, the word order is SOV if the clause is imperfective and OSV if the clause is perfective.
There is a feminizing suffix -mop (cf. le 'ox', lemop 'cow') which is also used as an augmentative for inanimate nouns (not a dimunitive!) (cf. lot jy 'finger', lotmop 'thumb'; vat 'rock', vatmop 'big rock'; yyp 'water', yypmop 'river'). (yypmop is a pretty cool word, although bear in mind it's pronounced /ʐɨ˨˩mo˨˩/.)
Ordinal numbers are formed from cardinal numbers by reduplication, and take the definite article. (I don't know much about ordinal-forming strategies, but reduplication is not one I would have expected.)
There are lots of cute four-syllable idiomatic phrases, such as ke nrat ha xnrat 'eloquent' (lit. 'nice mouth nice tongue'), o hxi hmy ga 'refuse advice' (lit. 'head shake tail drop'), ke ssyt nyuo hxi 'naughty' (lit. 'mouth bite eye wave').
