Saitin Gods in Buryat Shamanism:
Semantics of Images and Functions

N. B. Dashieva

List of issues > «Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series». 2023. Vol 46

Saitin Gods in Buryat Shamanism: Semantics of Images and Functions

Full text (russian)

Author(s)

N. B. Dashieva

Abstract

The article examines the semantics and functions of the deities known in the Buryat shaman pantheon of the Baikal region as “Saitani Burhad” (Saitin gods). The chronological framework of the study covers the period from the last quarter of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. The research is based on historical, ethnographic, ethnolinguistic, folkloristic, mythological and archaeological materials. Structural-functional and cultural-semantic analyses used to identify the semantics of the image of each Saitin deity in the pantheon showed their conditionality by the process of personification, which correlates with one of the structural components of the white shamanism of the Buryats, defined by its origin as female shamanism. They include shamanic trance, silver as a sacred metal in the sphere of white shamanism, the process of invoking gods and ancestral spirits with the help of chants, the ritual attire of the shaman, as well as the rite of sacrifice and its attributes. The study of the image and functions of the mythological ancestors of the Buryats of the Hori tribe, represented in the pantheon of the Saitin gods with the functions of intermediary spirits between earthly people and the White heavenly gods of the “Western Tengri”, reveals their commonality with the worldview, cosmogonic myths and cosmological representations of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Southern Siberia, Central Asia and the Yakuts. The origins of this community go back to the culture of the Iranian-speaking peoples of the Eurasian steppes of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, who revered the creator God, whose name is formed from the root aar/aya. The analysis of the ethnogonic myth of the Khori-Buryats as the plot of the cosmogonic myth correlated with the seasonal rituals of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples showed that historically the bearers of these beliefs were a social community with the totemic cult of the Scythian Deer-Sun and Swan-Sun Bird. Taking into account the correlation of images and events in the Khori myth with petroglyphs in the Sagan-Zaba Bay and Aya Bay on the northern shore of Lake Baikal, the origin of the Saitin gods among the population of the Baikal region can be correlated with the tile graves on Olkhon Island and the northern coast of Lake Baikal.

About the Authors

Dashieva Nadezhda Bazarzhapovna, Doctor of Sciences (History), Professor, Head of the Research Laboratory of History and Theory of Culture, East Siberian State Institute of Culture; 1, Tereshkovoi st., Ulan-Ude, 670031, Russian Federation, e-mail: dashieva-n@yandex.ru

For citation

Dashieva N. B. Saitin Gods in Buryat Shamanism: Semantics of Images and Functions. Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University. Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series. 2023, Vol. 46, pp. 55–64. https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2023.46.55 (in Russ.)

Keywords

white shamanism, Turkic-Mongolian peoples, Iranian lexical source, Scythian-Siberian cultural unity.

UDC

39(=512.31)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2023.46.55

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