TUNGUZ RELIGION

TUNGUZ RELIGION . The peoples of Siberia speaking Tunguz languages numbered 65,900 persons, according to the 1989 census of the U.S.S.R. The most numerous of them are the Evenki (30,000) and Eveny (17,000), who are collectively called Tunguz in the older literature. Sometimes the ethnonym Lamut ("sea person") is employed, applying only to certain groups of Eveny. The close racial and cultural relationship of these two peoples makes it possible to examine their beliefs in the framework of a single system, which may be designated "Tunguz religion." Other peoples speaking Tunguz languages are the Nanay (Goldi; 12,000), Ulchi (3,200), Udege (1,900), Oroki and Orochi (1,200), and Negidalʾtsy (600). They represent a special cultural area, extending as far as the basin of the lower Amur River and Sakhalin Island, that includes the ancient cultural legacies of the Ainu and Nivkhi (Giliaks) and the inhabitants of northeastern China. A common religion has long been the primary factor uniting the atomized society of Tunguz hunters who, in small groups, mastered the vast space of taiga and tundra between the Yenisei River on the west and the Sea of Okhotsk on the east and between the Arctic Ocean on the north and Lake Baikal on the south.

The periodic religious ceremonies of the Tunguz are closely tied to their mythology, and in several instances they directly reproduce myths of creation and of the heroic deeds of their first ancestors, beginning with the words tarnïmngākāndu bičen ("this was in nimngākān "). The term nimngākān means "myth, tale, legend; warm fairyland; bear ritual; shamanic séance." Each group of Tunguz has a myth on the creation of bugha —its own inhabited territory. Bugha has a variety of meanings: "locality, world, native land; cosmos, sky, earth; spirit master of the upper world/lower world/hunt, God, devil; paradise, hell; icon." The Tunguz also use this term to designate the entrance into a bear den or a small hut made of young larches with small figures of beasts and birds placed therein in preparation for shamanic performances. The basic meanings of the term bugha embrace, in this way, notions of the creator, creation of the world, and of a model of the world. For designating the deity of the upper world the Tunguz also use the names Mayin, Ekseri, Seweki, and Amaka. The first of these names is tied to the concept of "success" or "hunting luck," whereas the last is a kinship term referring to representatives of the older age groups: "grandfather, father, uncle," and, in general, "ancestor." The word amaka also has other meanings: "bear; God; sky."

According to the perceptions of the Tunguz, the upper world (ughu bugha ) is connected to the middle world (dulu bugha ) through the North Star, termed bugha sangarin, "sky hole." In turn the middle world is also connected to the lower world (hergu bugha ) through an opening within it. In the nimngākān the first ancestors were able to move between all three levels of the world. Thereafter this became the privilege of the shamans, who use for this purpose Tuuruu, the Tunguz variant of the World Tree, or its equivalent. Engžekit, the mythical river called "the place that no one sees." It flows from the place termed Timanitki ("toward morning; east"), transects the middle world, and enters into the place called Dolbonitki ("toward night; north"), beyond which stretches the realm of the dead, Bunikit or Buni. Into Engžekit flow the many branch rivers of individual shamans. Somewhere at the confluence of these tributaries with the mythical river are the Omiruk, territories inhabited by souls (ōmī) ; these lands comprise the sacred wealth of each clan.

One of the myths associated with Engžekit tells of the origin of the first people, of reindeer, and of cultural objects from the various parts of the mythic bear's body. He voluntarily sacrificed himself to the heavenly maiden, who was carried off on an ice floe in the current between the upper and middle worlds. In other myths the bear, representing the ancestor of one or another Tunguz tribe, is similarly depicted as a culture hero, the creator of reindeer breeding, bequeathing after his inevitable death the ritual of the Bear Festival. This festival, which is essentially the same among all the Tunguz, is associated with the seasonal hunt of the animal in its den, which takes place in early spring or late autumn. The most important detail of the Tunguz bear ceremony, which has an explanation in their religio-mythological perception of the world, is the way in which they handle the bear's eyes. Hunters, having cut off the head of the slain beast, take out its eyes with great care, seeking to touch them neither with a knife nor with their fingernails. Then they wrap the eyes in grass or birch bark and carry them away into the forest, where they place them high in a tree. The Udege did this in the hope that the bear's eyes might be illuminated by the first rays of the rising sun. In the tabooed language of Tunguz hunters the bear's eyes are called ōsīkta ("stars"). The connection of the bear with heavenly luminaries is well illustrated in a Tunguz myth in which the bear, named Mangi, follows the reindeer or moose who had stolen the sun. Having caught up with his prey, the bear returns the sun to its place. Both protagonists in this myth form the constellation of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, in Tunguz cosmology (Chichlo, 1981, pp. 39–44).

This myth of the heavenly (or cosmic) hunt was reenacted by the Tunguz during the greatest festival of the year, Ikenipke (a name derived from the word ike, "to sing"), which took place in a specially constructed cone-shaped dwelling (žumi), whose name designates not only "house, household, or family" but also "bear den" and uterus animalis. In the center of this dwelling is placed a pole called Tuuruu, along which Ekseri, the spirit of the upper world, and Hargi, the spirit of the lower world, travel in order to hold conversations with the shaman. The festival, which may be called the Tunguz New Year, consists of eight days of dancing, singing, and pantomine. The people, led by the shaman, would move inside the žumi in a circle in the direction of the sun's movement as they traveled up the river Engžekit behind an imaginary reindeer. In his song, the shaman would describe all the details of the travel, which lasted a year—all the animals, spirits, and obstacles encountered. At the end of the festival the men would shoot from a shamanic bow at wooden reindeer figures, shattering them into pieces that each man kept until the next festival.

Other important shamanistic rituals of the Tunguz took place in specially constructed dwellings in the taiga. With complex auxiliary structures, these represented a model of the supernatural world. The first, nimngāndek, signifies "the place where nimngākān is fulfilled." The second, sevenčedek, is "the place where a ceremony with seven is performed." Among all Tunguz peoples, seven means "shaman's spirit helper," but this word is connected to one of the names of the high God, Sevek or Seveki, and to the taboo reindeer of light coloring, sevek, which is also called bughadi oron, "heavenly reindeer." The ritual of dedicating the chosen reindeer as sevek is either independent or part of the ritual cycle in the Ikenipke festival. From the moment of this dedication, the sevek serves only for the transport of sacred objects. After its death, this reindeer is laid out on a platform set up in a tree.

The word seven also signifies the ritual dish at the Bear Festival, which is prepared from rendered bear fat mixed with finely chopped bear meat. Scooping the seven with a spoon, the hunter must swallow it without its touching his teeth. This method of partaking of the body of the beast deity is identical to the rules of handling bear eyes. The boldest hunters may swallow them but only without touching them with their teeth; otherwise the hunter will become blind. The meaning of these rules becomes more understandable in light of the strong prohibitions associated with the domestic hearth. The firewood and coals must not be stirred with a sharp object, nor may broken needles be thrown into the fire. Even to place a knife with its point toward the fire may put out the eyes of the spirit of the fire. This spirit, according to an Orochi myth, is a pair of bear cubs born from the mating of a bear and a woman. According to the Evenki, the bear is a culture hero who gave people fire. Reconstructing the Tunguz spirit of the domestic fire discloses his bisexual nature, corresponding to an androgynous deity like the bear. It is therefore understandable why hunters do not risk swallowing ōsīkta ("bear's eyes"), preferring to return them to the taiga. The luster of these "stars" on top of the World Tree assured hunting success, and the projections of the luster are the light and warmth of domestic hearths.

When considered as a system, the myths, concepts, rituals, and customs of the Tunguz show what a large, if not central, role the bear occupies. The most powerful shamans have him as a guardian spirit. At the time of the séance they don his skin, thus receiving power over all zoomorphic spirits, which they gather in the darkness of the sacred dwelling that represents, in essence, the cosmic bear den. The moose as well plays a significant role in the religious life of hunters and shamans, but its significance cannot be explained, as it is by most scholars, by economic functions alone. It must be noted that, according to myth, the moose emerges from the bear's fur and is, in consequence, part of him. And if Ursa Major is termed Heglen ("moose") by the Tunguz, this denotes a shift of stress in the direction of one member of a binary opposition composing the structure of the myth (and constellation), in which prey and hunter can change places. In their ritual practice Tunguz shamans preferred to place this stress on the figure of the hunter, inasmuch as they considered Mangi, who tracked the cosmic moose, to be their forefather.

Traces of the myth of the cosmic hunt in the religious life of Tunguz peoples still remain, as attested by ancient wooden disks of the Nanay that represent the sun (siū ). On the upper part of one of them is a drawing of a bear, and on the lower is the representation of a moose turned upside down. The Nanay hung such disks on the door of a dwelling or on a child's cradle; to the shamans they were an indispensable accessory of their costume. Possessing healing and protective functions, these disks are concise and expressive signs of the fundamental myth of the beginnings of human history. In the Nanay culture area, the myth of the bear Mangi, who freed the sun from captivity, and the myth of the hunter Khado, who killed the excess suns, which were burning all living things, came into contact with each other. Both myths are similar insofar as the Orochi, neighbors of the Nanay, consider Khado the father of the shamanistic spirit Mangi, the representation of which is on the shamans' staffs.

The Tunguz, whose livelihood depends upon success in hunting, conducted simple ceremonies that gave the hunter confidence in his own powers and in the benevolence of fate. He could do without a shaman, having enlisted the support of the master spirit of a locality and having gained a personal spirit helper. One of these rites is Singkelevun, "obtaining singken (success)." This ritual appears to be the simplest imitation of the concluding ceremony of the Ikenipke rite: the hunter makes an image of a reindeer or a moose, takes it with him into the taiga, and then shoots at it with a small bow. If the image is hit immediately, it becomes a singken. The dried parts of previously killed animals (hearts, jaws, noses), which the hunter saves, are also guarantors of success. Certain groups of Tunguz began to call the spirit master of the taiga Singken. The Evenki and Orochi conducted a Singkelevun ceremony in October, before the beginning of the winter hunting season. It was performed among them as a complex shamanistic ceremony consisting of several cycles.

For the preservation of human life, the Tunguz prepared special repositories of souls, which were "earthly" miniature copies of ōmīruk found in the basin of the Engzekit River in the upper world. The domestic ōmīruk are small boxes with little figurines placed in them. Each figurine holds the soul of a person placed there by a shaman. Certain shamans placed tufts of hair from persons needing protection in the ōmīruk. Such little boxes were strapped to the saddle of the heavenly reindeer. The ōmī was evidently a reincarnated substance circulating within the limits of a determined social group. Among the Nanay, for example, the ōmī lived in the form of small birds on the clan tree, from which they descended into women's bodies. Depictions of these trees are still found on the robes of Nanay women today.

In the case of frequent deaths of children, the shaman had to set out for the upper world, where he snared one of the soul birds and swiftly descended to earth. Evidence of his successful trip was a fistful of wool strands pressed together, which he threw into a white handkerchief held up for him by an assistant during the séance.

The traditional method of disposing of the dead among the Tunguz was aerial: the body, washed in the blood of a sacrificial reindeer and clothed and wrapped in a hide, tent cover, or birch bark, was laid on a scaffold set up in the branches of a tree. Coffins, when used, were made of hollowed-out tree trunks and set upon tree trunks or on posts dug into the ground. The belongings of the deceased were left with him, and his reindeer was strangled and left at the place of burial. After christianization in the eighteenth century, the Tunguz began to practice underground burial. However, the traditional ritual persists in the Siberian taiga even today.

The Tunguz considered the cause of death to be the departure or theft by evil spirits of the beye soul, the name of which translates as "body." In conducting the mourning ceremony for the dead a year later, the Tunguz sometimes prepared a temporary "body" from a section of a tree trunk, which they clothed in part with the deceased person's clothing, provided with food, and bade farewell to forever. The shaman, completing the conveyance of the deceased into Buni, asked him not to return again nor to disturb the living. Among the Nanay, the initial conveyance of the deceased, termed Nimngan, took place on the seventh day. Here, the deceased was represented by a bundle of his clothing, in which the shaman placed the hanʾan, the "shadow" soul of the deceased, which he had caught. This bundle of clothes was treated like the living for a period of three years, until the final farewell with him at the large kasa memorial festival, lasting several days. But even here, under the unquestionable influence of Manchurian Chinese customs, the Nanay and other Tunguz peoples of the lower Amur region observed traditional division between the living and the dead. An ancestor cult did not unfold here nor, more forcibly, was it characteristic of the Evenki and Eveny, the nomads of the Siberian taiga.

Shamanism and the traditional religion of the Tunguz have not totally disappeared, as is commonly believed, notwithstanding atheist propaganda and prohibitions. As recently as 1958, four nomadic Even communities, living in isolation for more than thirty years in the mountainous forest-tundra of Magadan oblast, were headed by eight authoritative shamans, one of whom was called by the honorific Amanža (Amaka). But, in spite of their forced settlement, these Evens (Berezovka village, north-east of Yakutia) preserved their religious beliefs and behavior. Thus at the beginning of October 2000, to cause a fall of snow waited so much by the reindeers herders and the hunters of the village, a woman left her house with a bear skin, shook it vigorously, then suspended it outside. People of the village while arriving in the taiga after the snowfall, achieved the following ritual: Men sacrificed a reindeer and a woman copiously coated three selected larches with the blood of the animal. Then they threw in fire some drops of vodka and pieces of meat. Thus they wanted to thank the spirits of the forest and to be ensured of their benevolence.

See Also

Bears; Shamanism.

Bibliography

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Boris Chichlo (1987 and 2005)

Translated from Russian by Demitri B. Shimkim