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Tending the Gate: The Lore of Siberian Shamans
| Article
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20616 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
4,303 Words |
| Author
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Jan Knappert
Jan Knappert is a folklorist and specialist in African and
Oriental languages who is based in Belgium. |
The word shaman became known in Western Europe only after 1800, when, very gradually, the first ethnographic data from Siberia and the Far East began to be studied and appreciated. However, the word does not originally derive from Tungus or other Siberian or Manchurian languages, as many scholars believe. It comes from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit.
Shramana is the Sanskrit word for a Buddhist monk or mendicant. The original meaning was "one who exerts himself, an ascetic," a reference to Tantric Buddhist preachers from India who spread their religious ideas the principles throughout central and northern Asia. In ancient India, these monks and other religious persons had indulged in certain ritualistic and magical practices that were not part of orthodox Buddhism. The purest shamanism perhaps can be found among the Chukchi and other peoples of northeastern Siberia, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island, and the islands of the North Pacific. Many peoples are or have been known for their belief in shamans and their practices. The Tungusic tribes, of which there are many, inhabit the regions of the Ussuri and Amur rivers, which form part of Russia's eastern border with China, and as far west as the Yenisei River, near Russia's border with Mongolia. Further west live Turkic-speaking peoples such as the Yakut and Tatars; along the Ob and the eastern Urals there are the Ugrian-speaking Vogul, or Mansi, and the Khanty, previously known as the Ostyak or Yurga. These are only a few of the well over one hundred distinct tribal regions of Siberia.
The world shaman currently is used only in the Tungus language. In the Yakut and Buryat languages, male shamans are called boe, and female shamans are known as utigan or odegob. Altaic-speaking peoples use the word kam.
The first shaman
The Buryat of southern Siberia say that the first shaman was an eagle the gods sent to earth to protect humans against evil spirits. People did not understand the language of the celestials, however, so the gods decreed that the eagle must marry a woman. From that union the first human shaman was born. The Yakut of northern Siberia hold that a female eagle devoured the soul of a child whom the gods had predestined to become a shaman. Then she flew toward the Land of Sunrise, where she nested in a birch tree and laid an egg. The egg hatched and out came a human child, whom the eagle placed beneath the tree. There it was found by wild animals, which looked after the child until it was fully
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