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The Image of Nature in the Buryat heroic epic

A good deal of attention is given to the image of the Mother-Earth in the Buryat myths. In the old days they worshipped the Earth that gives everything to the man including life and everything returns back to her. She is the Hostess of the water, she represents the souls of fish, bird, snake, all the beasts and animals. She is taken to be the Great Mother of the Beasts. The image of the Great Goddess in the Buryat epic “Geser” has its parallels in the world folklore. The most ancient image of the Mother – Earth was discovered in Ur, an ancient Sumerian city on the Euphrates. This is a mother holding the son in her hands, both depicted with the snake’s head. The snakes represent the eight kinds of the spirits of the Earth worshipped by the peoples including the Buryats who thought the snake-like sabdaks to be the hosts of the territory or locality. In Sumer she is a dual divinity, in the morning she is the goddess of the battles and heroes, whereas at night she is the goddess of fertility. In a later time in Egypt she was understood as the virgin giving birth to all the worlds. In the Buryat uliger or epic she conceives from the rays of the Sun and the Moon and gives birth to the daughters who continue the lineage of the human beings.

Yenkhoboi sisters from the Geseriade like the Mother-Earth from Sumer also had the long breasts, they threw them back which symbolized death and forward which symbolized life. The bulls in the epic are understood as the totemic forefathers of the Buryats. The grain is often mentioned in the Buryat uligers. They are of the sacral meaning, Geser when praying throws them around as an offering to the hosts of Nature.

Understanding of the essence of the physiological phenomena like pregnancy, birth, growing of corn from grains, the appearance of birds out of eggs, the reproduction of fish, insects, worms in the water led to the sacralization of the biological vitality. The water, grain, egg were attributed the magic vital potentiality. Their ritual part in the religious cults was enormous. Those natural elements have a deep symbolical meaning connected with the idea of the vital energies. The larva reminding of the worm is of interest in understanding the phenomenon of the sacralization of Nature.

One of the main attributes of the shaman is the crown on his head which is connected with the idea of the World Tree. On the crown there are the hangings. The semantics of those objects was not quite clear. The hypothesis put forward by S. V. Alkin enables to solve the problem to some degree. He takes them to be the images of the larvae of the insects. The crown is the image of the World Tree with the souls of the unborn people that are depicted as the larvae. The outward similarity of the human and the animal embryons with the C-like larvae might give rise to the formation of a peculiar cult.

The epic gives much attention to the chaos, fire, water, air, wind, rain, frost, etc. which all have the special epical names. One of the powerful personages of the “Geser” epic, Gal Durme Khan is the symbol of the Fire. Thus one can say that the prime elements of nature are attached a great significance to in the Buryat tales. The Buryats took note of the fact that their household and everyday life were dependent on the natural phenomena, such as the periodical change of seasons, the climatatic variations, rain and snow, humidity of soil, etc. Alongside with this they mastered the reality in the spiritual sense, they had the ideas of the spiritual relationship of Man and Nature. As a result there emerged quite a few cult rituals.

There is a custom of hanging from a tree a Khii-morin (air horse), a personal votive flag for well – being and prosperity. This is connected with the honor and respect for horse. The horse is regarded as mediator between the Sky and the Earth. The horse plays one of the most important parts in the Geseriade and in the life of the Buryats, especially in the early ages.

There are the special rituals when building something. Earlier it was prohibited to dig ground not to damage its upper soil which was taken to be most fertile. It was needed to appease the spirits of the Earth, to calm them down, to ask them for the permisson to erect something. The spirits of the Earth get very angry when people without any reasonable excuse dig the ground, break stones and rocks, fell treеs, contaminate rivers and springs, throw the dirty things into the fire. One has to appease the gods and the spirits making offerings and addressing them with the invocations.

Before the battle the heroes of the epic complete the special rites. Geser is often shown going onto the top of a high mountain and praying. Before he starts his prayer he unbuttons his coat and takes off his belt.

Nature played a great role in the life of the Buryats as it is shown in the epical works. It is inseparable from the nomad¢s everyday life. It gives strength to the nomad, the latter receives from Nature his/her life energy. The idea of the cohesion of Man and Nature which is depicted in the Geseriade has been of great importance in all the times because the alternative idea would be non-acceptance of all the laws of Nature. Thus there were the numerous cults connected with Nature.

Hunting in the taiga had some territorial limitations, the hunters were well aware of the stock of the hunting areas, they had a good idea of how much game they could catch or kill in order to keep in balance the number of the wild animals, i.e. the food stock of the nomads. The latter abstained from hunting the she-animals, especially with the cubs and the young animals with no couple. Thus there was the cult of hunting and the Lord of the thick forest. Before going hunting the Buryats completed the special rites, among them chanting of the “Geser” verses.

The atmospheric phenomena are presented in the epic in the personages of the tengris. Among the 44 eastern tengris there are the tengris of the summer, autumn, winter mists, the black dirt, the black smoke. Among the 55 western tengris there are the following: the Tengri of the Upper Wind, the Tengri of the Fire, the Tengri of the Sun Warmth, the Tengri of the Rain, the Tengris of the Lightning and the Thunderstorm, the Tengri of the Snow, the Tengri of the White Bottom) or in the other words the cloudless sky, etc. The struggle takes place symbolically between the warmth and the cold; between the clear, sunny weather and the black nastiness; between the rain contributing to the growth of the vegetation which is favourable for the nomad-cattlebreeder and the drought.

The Geseriade evidences of the fact that the Buryats were noted for their ecological approach to Nature which presupposed the adaptation to the natural conditions. The form and the type of the dwellings, the utilitarian constructions, the tools, the clothes, the customs and the habits are chiеfly dependent on the climate, the geographical position, the flora, the fauna, the temperature and the other objective factors that gave rise to the numerous religious cults and rituals.

The proto-Buryats, i.e. the hunters and the collectors of the plants representing the forest tribe communities entered the new stage of the social and economic life brought about by the establishment of the paternal right much later than the ancestors of the other nomad tribes. The socio-economical ties were those of a tribal community and the Buryats did not undergo the process of the unification for a considerable period of time. Even in the end of the XIX century the Buryats somewhat preserved the patriarchal and tribal relations since the new tendencies did not display themselves so vividly in their economy for there were neither factories, nor railroads, nor electricity, etc. Due to fact the epic preserved itself almost in a pure form.

One should mention that the epic of Geser in its versified version which is believed to be the Buryat creation was preserved by the “western” Buryats, among whom most widely spread were the shaman rituals. One can say that the oral “Geser” and shamanism are to some extent interrelated. The versification and the shaman elements evidence of “Geser’s” being ancient since it is generally recognized that the most ancient epical works of the Mongolian people as well as the shaman invocations were in verse, not in prose. The epic “Geser” as well as the shamanism underwent the two gross pressures: one, that of the Buddhist authorities and the other, that of the Soviet period when it was persecuted as “anti-people”.

One can’t understand the essence of the current shamanic rituals without touching upon the old beliefs which the contemporaries hadn’t watched but which the epic and the other folklore pieces help reconstruct, though they underwent some changes.

Some functions of the Mongolian shamanism or boo are close to the bon belief, an ancient Tibetan belief. The epic of Geser was quite popular among the Tibetan bon-po communities. Some nomads take “Geser” to be an oral people’s monument of the bon epoch. They liked to recite or rather sing it to the musical instruments.

The mythological consciousness or religiousness revealed in the epical sources of the Mongolian tribes is of the diverse forms. At the early stages of its formation the religiousness reflected the primitive cults of the early communities. The epical material contains the evidences of such phenomena as the deities, spirits, souls of the ancestors, the added properties of the real objects or the fetishes as well as the “supernatural” relations amongst the objects of the material world (the magic, the totem). The ordinary religious consciousness or religious psychology as the epic evidences was being shaped out without any predetermined frame or rather chaotically at first sight. It was certainly the sensual reflection of the everyday life. In this period, the “infant” period of the evolution of man, of particular importance in his life were the feelings and frames of mind associated with the animistic, totemistic magic ideas which in their turn were related to the formation of shamanism, bon, the various cults, those of the Sun, Fire and the other natural objects.

The animistic ideas as one of the relics of the primitive religious syncretism penetrate the whole of the Mongolian and Buryat folklore and epic. Widely spread were the genealogical myths in which the cult of the mountain spirits is depicted. It is just the mountain spirit who appears to be in fact the father of Geser on the Earth. According to the epic the man possesses not one soul but a few of them. One soul is in the body, another may leave the body, the third soul may be somewhere else out of the body.

Very often the souls are of some zoomorphic form. There may be the two golden fish coming out of the mangus’ nostrils during his sleep. One might recollect the hero’s chasing of the three stags that had the soul of the mangus. In the Oirat epic the soul may be found in a copper-headed iron-winged raven that flies out of a cut-open breast of the mangus’ mother. The raven turns into a fish, a marmot. The hero chases it as an eagle, fish or marmot. In the demon’s body, both male and female, in one of the big toes or in one of his ninety five stomachs found not infrequently was an invulnerable baby combining in itself the features of the enemy’s unborn offsprings and of some powerful “inner strength” of the enemy.

Most often the birds and snakes or fish that present the universal cosmic symbols of the upper and the lower worlds come as the embodiments of the soul. A soul saving itself from pursuit flies into the sky as bird or plunges into the sea as fish. It might be associated with the dichotomy of the upper and the lower, e.g. the placement of the mangadkhai’s “golden seed of soul” firstly in the plume of Khankhan Kherdig bird (Garudi) whose nest is on top of an aspen growing on top of a high mountain, then in the stomach of a gigantic black frog, living in a yellow lake or the placement of another soul of the same mangadkhai embodied in the thirteen quails in a golden and silver box placed in a silver trunk in the yellow milk sea under the protection of a one-eyed woman whereas the soul of the hero is hidden in the western Heaven with the seven celestial smiths.

Such episodes are quite typical for the Buryat epic. One can recall some Mongolian epical motives of the destruction of the enemy’s soul located in the three bees, in the plume of the Kherdig bird, in the toad, in the mangus’ mother’s box, the transformation of the soul into the quails, the roe deer and the hero pursuing them in the form of a hawk, a wolf, etc. Mentioned as the soul keepers are the knotted larch, perch, bull, wolf, fox, frog, birds like the quail, falcon, crow, eagle. Then there might be the snake, the fish, the goat, the ram, spider, the stallion, the lion, the mule, the Kherdig bird’s plume, the thread, the needle, the gold.

One should mention the existence of the cult of the mountains, prayers on the mountain, begging for children and the birth of the child from a mountain spirit. If the necessity arose to move the stones from one place to another it was advisable to complete certain rituals to appease the spirit of the mountain. The relics of such consciousness may be observed in our days too. As we have already mentioned there are the totemic features fairly well preserved in the epic. In a Khori genealogical legend of Khoridoi-mergen the hero gets married to a celestial fairy that had formerly been a bird. Very well known is the motive of the swan, the ancestor of one of the Buryat tribes. In the Mongolian epic of Geser the two bulls are shown as fighting, one of them being white, the other black. The white one is taken to be the protector of Geser, the black of the mangus. The totemic ancestors of the Bulagats and Ekhirits are the grey Bukha noyon bull, the black and white bull. This motive has its parallel in a Tibetan legend, describing the fight between the white and black snakes that come out of the mangus’ nostrils or in the Tibetan version of the Geser epic where the two snakes fight having come out of the mangus’ ears.

The nomad tribes of Central Asia left the monuments resembling the “deer stones” or the stone slabs with the engraved inscriptions, magical formulas. In Transbaikalia and Mongolia they found the sacral writings on rocks, the so-called rock paintings or petroglyphs on which depicted most frequently was an eagle in flight. They date back to the second half of the second millenium B. C. They all are of the conventional nature and are given as symbol or sign. There is much in common between the drawings mentioned and the zurags on the Balagan ongons (mascot, amulet). The ongons are the symbols of the ancestors’ spirits and the eagles are also thought to be the spirits of the ancestors. The Baikal region is abundant in the legends of the genealogical totems depicted in the form of a flying eagle. According to those legends the host of the Oikhon (Olkhon) island on the Baikal, married a tengri’s daughter. She gave birth into a son, Burged by name which means “eagle”. He adopted the eagles as sons. The latter gave the beginning to the kin of the Ol’khon shamans who were known as the shubuuni noyod (lords of birds). They say that earlier during the sacrifice ritual to Khan Khoto Babai they made the three replicas of the eagles from the birch bark. There are the beliefs that the eagle was a shaman. One can come across his image everywhere. We might just mention in this respect Khan-Garudi. Garudi came originally from India perhaps via Tibet, its image might have intermingled with that of the eagle, the cult of which is so widely spread in Buryatia.

The heroic epic of the Mongolian tribes is rich in the other diversified mythological elements. One could mention the demons that appeared out of the remnants of the evil deities thrown down to the Earth. Geser has the reputation of the destroyer of the demons and monsters, the personifications of the dark chthonic forces. The epic tells of the Tengris coming down to the Earth, of the middle place between the Sky and the Earth, of the dragons, of the various monsters such as mangadkhais, manyheaded snakes, birds, huge dogs, frogs, ants. The fantastic images reflect the mythological essence of the epic and hence its archaic shamanic nature. The cosmic elements are widely presented in the epic of the Mongolian tribes. They are the Sky, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the Earth, the water, etc. To this may be added the cosmogonic prologue of the Geser epic. In the Kalmyck “Djangar” the main character gets married to a celestial girl. Geser is often given help by his three celestial sisters. Presented also is a solar motive. The conception of a child is associated with a golden pole of light coming through the upper hole of the yurt.

The performing of the “Geser” epic was of ritual, magic, shamanic nature. The epic-tellers sank into trance when performing the epic. The epic was used by the shamans for exorcising the evil spirits. This is reflected in the shaman practice, in the invocations. Geser is taken to be the son of the Tengri (Heaven). Sometimes the Earth and Water are regarded as Geser’s parents, this fact is associated with the shaman ideas of the human personification of the souls of the mountains and localities. Reciting of the uliger appeases the spirit of the Master of the taiga (thick forest) and helps in hunting. A folklore performer himself was in fact a shaman or is now a peculiar type of shaman.

The natural phenomena and the epical heroes

According to the epic the people are deeply affected by the natural phenomena. To be more exact, this all reminds of some of the features and deeds of the main character of the Buryat epopee “Geser”. He gives an impression of being quite often an emotional and caring personality in his attitude to his family, relatives, kinsmen, motherland and nature. All his deeds are closely connected with the natural forces and phenomena. The heroic epic of the Buryat people narrates of the noble deeds of Geser liberating the people from the evil, of his battles with the monsters that would not let people live in peace and harmony. Not infrequently those monsters-mangadkhais personified the powerful, threatening forces of Nature that were beyond understanding of the common folk. They were quite unaware of the origin and the cause for their being sometimes quite merciless. Therefore those powerful forces were taken as, say, Gal-Nurman Khan who was the symbol of one of the prime elements, i.e. the Fire, the oppressive heat and drought. One might recall Loir Lobsogoldoi who was the personification of another prime element, i.e. the water, flood and overflow that badly damaged and injured the people, animals and plants. One could add here monster Orgoli who was taken as Master of the taiga (thick forests) and could deprive hunters of their game or sometimes took up their lives. Then there was Shereem Minata khan with an iron whip and a pig iron thigh who possibly symbolized the starting point of the blacksmith shop, the first steps in mastering the art of forging. The sparks and flames coming from the glowing metal were perceived by the ancient forefathers of the Buryats as a threatening iron whip which might burn or dazzle. One might as well recall the epical devil Arkhan who wanted to swallow the Sun and the Moon and plunge the Earth into the darkness. This might be the symbolical representation of the Sun and the Moon eclipse in the perception of the ancient Buryats.

On the other hand, the Buryat epic sings glory to the same natural prime elements. Not only do those forces of nature harm the people but they also do them a lot of good. Man could not do without the fire, water, gifts of the thick forests including wood, plants, game, etc. Man realized it too well. He felt that the fire, water, forest, stone, metal possessed the positive qualities too. They helped him survive There was more favourable for him in those objects than negative. So he worshipped them, took them to be sacral. Hence there are the many cults, that of the Sky, for example, though it sent down to the Earth the thunderstorm and lightening, heavy rain and floods. There was the cult of the Sun and the Moon that is closely connected with the light, heat, warmth and fire. One cannot but mention the cult of the Water, lakes and rivers, as well as the cult of the Master of the taiga that provided the Man with the food and wood. There were many other cults. Since there were the sacral cults there certainly were the cult rituals, the sacral ceremonies which were to plead the divinities to help the man prosper and protect him from the evil spirits. Each hardship in life was thought to be directly connected with the unkind spirits whom it was needed to keep away with help of the deities. This double nature of the earthly and the cosmic elements interfering with the life of man was the reason for the emergence of the pantheons of the gods and deities. They had the special names and were in charge of the specific meteorological and the other phenomena. Naran Gerel tengri was in charge of the sunny days. Oyor Sagan tengri was in charge of the cloudless weather. The following divinities come the first among the rest of the Heavens according to their role and status: Yekhe Ekhe tengri (Great Mother the goddess), the eldest gods Manzan Gurme and Mayas Khara, Esege Malan tengri (the bald-headed or cloudless Sky) and idle, careless Khormusta tengri, Altai Ulan who represents the older generation of the deities, Zayan Sagan tengri (The White Creator). The sense and cult perception of the world made the Buryat people depict the epical personages either as men with some extraordinary features (the anthropomorphous creatures) or animals with the exaggerated grotesqueness (the zoomorphous creatures) or just the mixed types bearing the features both of human being and animal (the mixmorphous creatures). One can understand why it was so. The powerful forces excited the fear and shock so that the people gave those inexplicable phenomena like the lightning some fantastic mysterious coloring.

As a consequence the Buryat tales give the exaggerated grotesque fantastic descriptions of the personages irrespective of their being either positive or negative. Some are horrible, ugly and fearful whereas the others are the ideals of beauty, strength and generosity. The former are quite fear-exciting with the many eyes, many heads, sharp claws and teeth covered with snakes, blowing out flame and sparks. The latter are well-built, strong and slender, handsome and attractive.

The ideas of the heavenly origin of the totemic forefathers of the Buryats as well as the ideas of the spirit-hosts of the localities, the shamans, the epical heroes are related to the archaic cult of the Eternal Blue Sky which is taken to be the highest divinity and the creator of all that is found in the Universe. The highest divinity, the sky or the Heaven (“tengri” in Buryat) is personified in the epic as Khormusta Tengeri or Esege Malan Tengeri. The most archaic cult of the Mother-Earth, the foremother, has the genetic ties with the cult of the World Tree and the World Mountain. It has greatly affected the emergence of the other, not less popular cults, like those of the Fire, the Mountain Caves, the Water, the Genealogical tree. There are the shaman elements and the Buddhist inclusions. Then one can mention the cosmogonic prologue of the epic, the creation of the main hero by the Heavenly Gods who was then sent down to the Earth with the mission of fighting the evil, Geser¢s three celestial sisters, the theme of the cosmic marriage or the motive of being born from a cracked-apart stone. The archetype of the celestial forefather is often connected with the solar motive, e.g. a golden pole or rays of the Sun coming through the upper opening of the yurt are associated with the conception of the son. This all proves that the Buryat people were respectful towards nature, natural objects and natural phenomena.

Geser is both a shaman and a healer. He can control the natural atmospheric phenomena. Geser is one of the sons of Khormusta tengri, residing in the Heavens, the highest sphere of the Universe. When there came the time of trouble and misfortune on the Earth he was chosen to descend to the Middle sphere (the Earth) to struggle against the evil and complete his mission of salvation of the people. He was born on the Earth an ugly child, this is accounted for by the necessity for him to survive, it was kind of protection against the evil forces, the spirits and the like. When he was a child one of his names was Bukhe-Beligte (strong and gifted). Since childhood he was noted for his unusual gifts. He committed good deeds, displaying the magic abilities which helped him in doing good things. When he grows up he turns into a mighty warrior. The three cosmic spheres are in his power. His origin is in the sky, among the divinities, i.e. in the Upper World. He lives on the Earth, in the Middle world. He travels to the Lower world, i.e. the Water kingdom and establishes the ties with its Lord having married his daughter.

Much of what has been mentioned above is in favor of the idea that people in the past were guided by the intuitive, emotional, humane feelings. In the past the folklore, the rites and the creative arts made a significant contribution to the psycho-emotional state of the members of the communities. One can also draw the conclusion that all the phenomena somewhat “magic” in their essence are closely connected with, affected and inspired by Nature and the way the people treat it.