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DOI 10.24411/2223-0564-2019-10110 F.A. Nadrshina (Ф.А. Надршина) УДК [398.22:392](=512.141):598.2
BIRD CULTS IN THE LEGENDS AND RITES OF THE BASHKIRS (КУЛЬТ ПТИЦ В ЛЕГЕНДАХ И ОБРЯДАХ БАШКИР)1
Аннотация
В статье рассматриваются легенды и некоторые обряды, в основе которых сохранены мотивы мифологического характера.
Мотивы: 1. Птицы-демиурги: утка (Землю сотворили утки, вынося ил со дна моря); журавль (Кош юлы ‘Млечный путь’ - звездная дорога, образовавшаяся из рассыпанных во время бури журавлиных перьев);
1 Translated from Bashkir by Z.A. Rakhimova.
Надршина Фануза Аитбаевна, доктор филологических наук, главный научный сотрудник отдела фольклористики Института истории, языка и литературы Уфимского федерального исследовательского центра РАН (Уфа), e-mail: [email protected]
Fanuza A. Nadrshina, Dr. Sc. (Philology), Chief Researcher, Department of Folklore Studies, Institute of History, Language and Literature, Ufa Federal Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences (Ufa), e-mail: [email protected]
ворона (суша образовалась от помета вороны. Она же достает огонь для людей). 2. Птицы - зооморфные хозяева - духи местности: утка и селезень. Мотив об утке - зооморфном духе является дальнейшим развитием древних воззрений об утке-демиурге. 3. Птицы-родоначальники: лебедь (происхождение племени юрматы связывается с женитьбой героя на девушке-лебеди); журавль, орел/беркут, ворона (башкиры племени усерган считают журавля своим первопредком; наличие в этнонимической системе башкир племени мин родового подразделения «меркет»; вороны в составе кубаляк-тилявцев, тамьянцев, а также праздников «Каргатуй», «'Карга буткакы» («Грачиная каша»). 4. Птицы - чудесные покровители людей: журавль (поющие журавли - сыцрау торна - своим появлением, криком некогда во время боя обратили в бегство врагов башкир); грач (оставленного на поле брани новорожденного ребенка вскормил грач). Этот мотив примыкает к мотиву «птицы-чудесные родоначальники». 5. Птицы-вещуны: звенящий (поющий) журавль (мелодичное курлыканье и игра журавлей вблизи от мест обитания людей - предзнаменование беды: войны, засухи. Примечательно бытование в прошлом среди юго-восточных башкир ритуальных журавлиных плясок как средства отвода беды, отпугивания врага); кукушка (птица, способная предсказывать продолжительность жизни человека; одновременное кукование двух кукушек вблизи человеческого жилья - предзнаменование беды, войны, смерти). Первая кукушка -девушка (женщина), разлученная с возлюбленным и превратившаяся в силу магического действия слова в птицу. Отголоски архаических воззрений о «возможности» превращения человека в птицу (животное, растение) сохранены в песенных строках легенды «Балакарга» («Грачонок»). Птицы в легендах опоэтизированы. Обрядовые праздники «Грачиная каша», «Кэкук сэйе» («Кукушкин чай») сопровождались трапезой, песнями, плясками, играми.
Легенды, поверья, обрядовые танцы, праздники донесли до нас на фоне поздних напластований отголоски древнейших воззрений (культ тотемистических предков, идею умирающей и воскресающей природы). Сходство, созвучность мотивов башкирских легенд с мифологическими мотивами фольклора народов мира свидетельствует о том, что духовная культура далеких предков башкир возникла в глубокой древности в русле общечеловеческой культуры.
Ключевые слова: легенда, мотив, обряд, культ, утка, звенящий журавль, лебедь, ворона, кукушка
Fanuza A. Nadrshina
BIRD CULTS IN THE LEGENDS AND RITES OF THE BASHKIRS
Abstract
The article deals with the legends and rites based on the motifs of mythological character. Motifs: 1. Birds-demiurges: duck, crane, crow. 2. Birds-zoomorphic hosts - terrain spirits: duck and drake. 3. Birds-progenitors: swan, crane, eagle, crow. 4. Birds-miraculous patrons of people: crane, rook. 5. Birds-soothsayers: crane, cuckoo. The birds in the legends are poeticized. It is clear from the genre peculiarities of the plot, in most cases, their compositional structure is based on the organic unity of the song text, melody and legend, folk story: Syngrau Torna (calling crane), Balakarga (baby rook). The ritual holidays: Rook’s Porridge, Cuckoo’s Tea - are accompanied by meals, songs, dances and games. The legends, popular beliefs, ritual dances and holidays have conveyed to us, against a background of later features, the echoes of the most ancient views (cults of totemic ancestors, an idea of dying and resurrecting nature). The similarity and consonance of the motifs of Bashkir legends with the mythological motifs of the world folklore indicate that the spiritual culture of the Bashkirs’ ancestors originated in deep antiquity in the mainstream of human culture.
Key words: legend, motif, ritual, cult, duck, calling crane, swan, crow, cuckoo
In the folklore of Bashkorts (Bashkirs), one of the ancient Turkic peoples living in the South Urals, legends occupy a prominent place. In this article we are interested in the legends that can be traced back to the mythological notions and the cults connected with them. Out of a wide range of material we chose the plots that involved the worship of birds. Such birds in the legends are: a duck, a crane, a swan, a rook, a cuckoo and an eagle. The images of these
true life species of birds are presented in the light of mythological notions of the ancient people.
The myth about ducks-demiurges is known to the Bashkir and many other peoples of the world. According to the legend, they created the earth by fetching silt from the sea bottom [2, p. 30-31]. Besides this, there is another image in the folklore of Bashkirs: a duck and a drake that appear as zoomor-phic patron spirits of a hilltop lake (Yogamash Taueh)
[2, p. 38-39]. The ‘duck-zoomorphic spirit’ motif is a further development of the archaic notions about ducks-demiurges. Alongside these legends, there also exist fairy-tales about a miraculous wife who is able to transform herself into a duck (a goose, a dove, etc.) (M.Kh. Mingazhetdinov). The symbolic meaning of this image is bound by the researchers to the totemistic notions of the Bashkirs’ ancestors.
It came to be known recently that there is another mythological legend about the creation of the earth, by a crow. According to the informant M. Gizzatullina’s story, the myth spread among the Bashkirs of the Kubalak (butterfly), Kubalak-Tilau and Tamyan tribes. The motif is conveyed in an original and concise way. “The fire host and the water host used to live in constant fights. The crow wanted to conciliate them, but in vain. Being annoyed and angry, the crow let her droppings fall on them. That is how was created our earth-soil”.
Another piece of information given by M. Giz-zatullina is also of interest. The crow was Homafs twin, i.e. it is depicted as a mythic bird. The stories about the miraculous bird are full of interwoven cosmogonic and ethnogenetic motifs. “In Kathakkol and some other villages there are tribal subdivisions bearing the name Karga (crow). The crow became black because its feathers burnt when it was getting the sun for people”. So the crow is the host of fire?2
Ancient origin and singularity of the plot mark Bashkir legends about cranes-demiurges and cranes-miraculous patrons of people. The ‘crane-demiurge’ motif is reflected in the legend Kosh Yuleh (birds’ way) [2, p. 39], the Bashkir name for the Milky Way.
The legend is depicted as follows: in the year one, when the cranes were flying to warm countries, suddenly a strong wind began blowing and a storm broke, so the young cranes went astray. In order to save their younglings the adult birds dropped their feathers during the flight. The feathers turned into stars, thus enabling the stray young cranes to find their way. The track then turned into the Birds ’ Way. The motif of the cranes, flying in the wind and heavenly tempest, unintentionally reminds us of another motif recorded in the ancient writings: the cranes, flying through shade and mist in order to escape from the winter. Among them there are notes left by Herodotus about the cranes, flying southwards from the Scythian lands [16, p. 242]. It is evident that according to the motifs preserved in the legends, to the information derived from the folklore of various peoples the ‘crane’ plots had been created on the ba-
2 Vatandash - Compatriot Journal. 2002. No. 6. P. 165.
sis of mythological concepts. The fragments of the beliefs of various kinds that arose from those views still continue their existence nowadays.
Another motif, the motif of cranes-miraculous patrons of people is also archaic. The written variant of the legend can be traced back to the tenth century (922) when it was recorded (Ibn Fadlan). The legend narrates the beginning of a battle. When the position of Bashkir warriors grew worse, all of a sudden there appeared some cranes. Frightened by their sight and sonorous cries the enemies had to turn back and took to flight [4, p. 131]. After that cranes began to be regarded by the Bashkirs as their patrons, as sacred, deified birds. It is evident in the following lines of Ibn Fadlan’s notes. “The cranes are our Rabby (deity). They made our enemies flee, the Bashkorts say. That is why they worship cranes” [4]. In his time S.I. Rudenko characterized the beliefs of the Bashkorts recorded in Ibn Fadlan’s writings as vestigial forms of totemistic notions [12, p. 315], for in the legend there was no motif clearly indicating the kinship of man and crane. However, we know from the scientific literature that the roots of the bird/animal-patron motif are also entwined with totemistic views. For example, in Australia there are some tribes that believe in the totem animal’s power to predict events. There is a popular belief among those tribes that if they wished to do harm to some clan or a member of it, they needed just to kill their totem [14, p. 49].
In Ibn Fadlan’s notes there is another piece of information that attracts our attention, that is, the invaders’ flight at the sight of the cranes, for fear of their possible onset when the birds appeared so unexpectedly. Why are the cranes fearful creatures for the alien invaders? Turning to the scientific literature gives a partial answer to this question. It stands to reason, at first attention is drawn to the information recorded in the writings of the antique authors (Homer, Pausanias, Ovid, Juvenile) - the hostility motif between short people and cranes (variant -Stymphalian birds) [16, p. 57-65]. As it follows from the myths, cranes were the birds which affected crops. As for the Stymphalian birds, those malicious creatures could even devour people. Scholars, however, do not bind the image of cranes, their actions to reality. They regard them from the point of view of fiction. Proceeding from the hypothesis of I.V. Shtal, for instance, cranes are regarded as deceased people, or rather their souls incarnated in birds. That is the reason why their appearance caused fear and anxiety. Taking this into consideration, we can as-
sume that the legend recorded by Ibn Fadlan had been knitted together of the views stemming from various grounds in different periods. on the other hand, it may be supposed that the same archaic motif in the course of time might have developed in different ways.
A variant of the Bashkir legend Syngrau Torna recorded in the 20-ies of the twentieth century also reflects two interwoven parallel motifs: the motif of protection and that of portending disaster. Being orderly in plot and expressive in the subject matter the Syngrau Torna legend was meant to explain the origin of the Syngrau Torna song. It begins with a very memorable event in the life of a legendary hero -his coming across calling and dancing cranes. Being deeply impressed, the young man memorized the cranes’ song and turned it to the kurai3 tune. However, it was not a chance meeting: the akhakals (elders) regarded the appearance of the cranes as an omen of danger. The young hero’s father confirmed the words of the akhakals:
- It is true, my son, the place where calling cranes danced would become a battlefield, and the land would be devastated. I have grown old and I am handing down my weapon to you. Start at once gathering an army of the most faithful people [2,
p. 99]. Further it is told in the legend that soon a battle swept the land, but the people ‘warned’ by the cranes had prepared for it and won.
In other variants of the legend about the calling cranes the motif of worshipping the bird remains the principal one. The belief emerging from these notions still exists among the Bashkirs to this day, forbidding them to kill cranes. It is noted that the south-eastern Bashkirs had ritual crane dances as a means of ‘scaring away’ enemies and averting disaster. Male dancers arranged in a circle or a semicircle held thin plates of wood bark (usually lime) in their hands with which they clapped their hands in imitation of the bird’s rattling sounds. According to another variant such thin wooden plates were tied up to the dancers’ thumbs and forefingers. Their lifted arm and slightly bent wrist resembled the bird’s neck and head. Those rather interesting details remind us of the oldest legends of African tribes that fought with ferocious cranes, using special rattles and ritual masks [16]. The traces of an analogous motif can be found in the mythic epical tradition of Antique Greece. If we take into consideration every detail of the myths about the cranes the region will be ex-
panded still more (Asia Minor, the Black Sea area, the Caucasus, India, China).
Ethnographical material reveals that the crane was a worshipped bird. For example, all the four subdivisions of the Uthargan tribe regarded the crane as their progenitor. Killing cranes was totally prohibited [6, p. 79-80].
Among Bashkir mythological legends there are some narratives about the swan as well. Some of them, being of ethno-genetic character, narrate the origin of the Yurmaty tribe [2, p. 117]. The motif of the legend is traditional: the marriage of a hunter to a bird that in an extreme situation turned into a beautiful girl accounts for the origin of the tribe. However, the name of the tribe is derived from the hunter’s name (the only son of Yurmi Khan). The crane being an omen of war, disaster, the swan was known to be able to portend famine, starvation. The idea is reflected in the popular belief: ‘If a swan flies across a village there will be famine there’ [9, p. 100]. The fact that the Bashkirs attributed to the swan an ability to originate a tribe, to warn about an impending danger proves that in the distant past they regarded it as a sacred bird. That is why shooting a swan was and still is considered by the Bashkirs a grave sin.
It should also be mentioned that the motifs of Bashkir legends about the swan are of the same type as those of Turkic-Mongolian peoples. The Buryat tribes Khorin and Khanghin consider swan to be their progenitor (M.A. Ulanov, I.A. Manzhigeev). Those Buryat legends match the Bashkir ones even in the subject matter - the origin of a tribe as a result of the hunter’s marriage to a swan.
According to the beliefs of the Derbutes, a Mongolian-speaking people, killing a swan was considered a deadly sin. They believed that the man who killed a swan would die himself [10, p. 132]. The swan was considered sacred by the Yakuts and the Siberian Tatars. Among them it was strictly banned to kill it (I.S. Gurevich, Z.K. Loseva, N.A. Tomi-lov). Popular beliefs that a swan-killer brings trouble upon himself and his family are spread among the Kirghiz people too3 4. The Chuvash people compared killing a swan to killing a mother [11, p. 19]. The above-mentioned examples prove that the beliefs concerning swan have very ancient grounds and that the legends of different peoples based on them have common roots.
According to the legends, customs and popular beliefs it can be assumed that among the Bashkirs
3 Kurai - a Bashkir wind folk musical instrument.
4 Kirghiz-Russian Dictionary. Compiled by K.K. Yudakhin. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopaedia, 1965. Book 1. 503 p.; Book 2. 475 p.
there also existed the cults of rook and cuckoo. The ancient image of the rook is vividly expressed in the Balakarga song that widely spread among the members of the Tungauer tribe. The concise plot of this original legend is: a Bashkir found himself on a battlefield together with his pregnant wife, when their tribe was at war with another tribe. on their way home the woman gave birth to a child. unable to carry the baby any more, the parents put it in a rook’s nest and left it there. Later they came to the rook’s nest to bury the remains of their child. The rooks were flying above the tree, and the child was sitting in the nest, crooning a tune. His father turned his child’s song into the kurai tune and called his child Balakarga. The rooks in the legend are depicted as protectors of human offspring, as the baby’s substitute parents, miraculous nurses (nannies).
In another variant of the legend the rooks tried to hold the baby back from its parents. The parents somehow managed to get the baby in their arms and started on their way. For a long while the worried rooks flew croaking after them. The baby was also crying loudly and looking up at the rooks. Some details in the third variant of the legend are very significant: the crying baby becomes quiet at the sight of a rook flying towards the nest, feed in beak; a bird starts flying above the nest alarmed by the woman’s attempts to reach for her child. In its origin the legend is of the same type as the legends about infants nursed by a wolf/dog. The motif of the rook nourishing and saving the baby abandoned in the plain is not limited to the Ural region only. As it is clear from the scientific literature, this archaic motif has been preserved in the Chinese legends too. In the clashes between the Usuns (wusuns in Chinese) and the Huns the king of the Usuns was killed. The leader of the Huns showed ‘mercy’ to the son of the dead king: he did not kill the baby but ordered his people to leave it in the plain. First a rook fed the baby (fetching meat to it in its beak), then a she-wolf saved it from death feeding it with her milk. This motif is known from the Iranian mythology too. The rescue of Rustam, the hero of the epic, from death by Samregosh (the bird Simurg) is consonant with the above legends. K.G. Korogly adheres to the hypothesis that these are echoes of the ancient Iranian-Turkic cultural intercommunication. He considers the motif of the bird nursing an abandoned baby to have Iranian roots and the ‘wolf-mother’ motif to be of the Turkic origin [5, p. 87].
Further researches may show that the network of intercommunication is still broader. In this respect, first of all Ancient Roman legends about Romulus
and Remus come to mind. In one of the variants of these legends it is told about the participation of a woodpecker (along with a wolf) in nourishing the infants [8, p. 349].
The antiquity of the Bashkir legend Balakarga is not restricted to the bird-mother motif only. There is also another old motif that occurs in mythological legends of many peoples, that is - placing the baby in a nest at the top of a tree. For example, a Yakut myth tells about magic things: in a green sunny glade there grew three trees: a red larch, a hornbeam and a beech tree. An eagle mother laid an egg in the nest. After some time a human baby was born out of the egg, it climbed down into a cradle hanging on a branch below and grew up in it [5, p. 94]. In myths the nest and the cradle are images bearing the same semantic meaning. The trees that housed sacred birds on their tops were considered by the ancient not to be ordinary trees but the place where living beings could be conceived, a birthplace, sacred abode. This phenomenon is reflected in myths of many peoples, including Bashkir mythological legends, pedigrees. Mythological legends about the origin of the name of the Kypsak tribe are the echoes of ancient beliefs: the progenitor of the tribe was born in a tree hollow. In the Turkic languages the tree with a hollow in it is called kypсhаk [1, p. 93].
As it has been best preserved in the lines of verses (less subject to change) ancient people saw little difference between themselves and wild nature, themselves and animals. The verses reflect another motif characteristic of totemistic views - an ability of human beings to transform themselves into an animal/bird and vice versa.
Oh, my baby, oh my dear,
You have been a baby-rook... [2, p. 102].
That is where the secret of the legend lies. The fact that a newly born baby could live through long enough in the nest of a rook is ascribed to its ability to be transformed into a rook. The idea may be supported by the existence of the holiday, widely spread in the past, Kargatuy or Karga Butkahy (rook’s holiday, rook’s porridge). The occurrence of the ethnonym Rook among the Bashkir tribes and tribal subdivisions undoubtedly accounts for the existence of the rook’s cult. It should also be taken into consideration that there is Rook and Raven ethnonymy among the Shor, Yakut, Tyva, the Irtysh side Tatars and other Turkic-Mongolian peoples (Z.K. Loseva, N.A. Tomilov). The scholars, studying legends, fairy tales and archeological relics related to the rook/ crow, assume that it might have been the totem bird of Turkic-Mongolian peoples [15, p. 53-54].
Being so different from other birds in its mournful calling, in leaving its eggs without hatching, the cuckoo has long drawn people’s attention to itself and given rise to various legends, beliefs and omens. Cuckoo is a bird of human nature - this idea is common to the legends of very many peoples [3, p. 129]. According to the legend, a cuckoo is a human being, female (a woman/girl turned into a bird). The woman who had been parted from her beloved man Kakuk expressed her wish to see him in an agony of suspense (‘Oh, I wish I were a bird to fly to your place’). The dramatic consequences of the fulfilment of her wish are depicted in the legend with great psychological power. The etiological motif is given in the light of a tragic event - the death of the beloved person. The Bashkirs regarded cuckoo as a sad, unhappy bird. Its cuckooing in some cases (if it flew near people’s habitation or above someone’s head) was regarded as an omen of death. If two cuckoos called close to each other, there would be some trouble. If a cuckoo called at the top of the house it was an omen of death for the owner. Such popular beliefs can still be heard from the old people nowadays. To avert the trouble or disaster there was a rite to pour milk or katyk (sour milk) on the tree (post) where the cuckoo had perched. This undoubtedly must be a very old ritual, descending from the popular beliefs and views such as worshipping the cuckoo, offering tributes and sacrifices to it.
Among the south-eastern Bashkirs there existed until quite recently, ritual dances dedicated to the cuckoo. The manner is as follows: a group of female participants begin dancing to the Bashkir folk song Kakuk, imitating the movements of a cuckoo. After a while one of the dancers sings a long drawn song, addressing the cuckoo as though asking the bird what trouble awaits her:
Do not call, oh cuckoo, above my head,
Do call above the tree...
Simultaneous calling of two cuckoos instills still greater fear in people’s hearts and the singer, apprehensive of the danger, begins singing like this:
Two cuckoos are calling side by side At the top of a dry pine tree...
The singer asks the bird if the warriors who went to battle will return home safe, riding along the very road they had left. After the song the dance is resumed. The singer now ‘kills’ herself and ‘throws out’ the parts of her body to the participants of the dance (who are playing the part of the cuckoo) saying, ‘Here is my leg to you, my arm to you, my breast to you... Eat them!’ [9, p. 100]. This ritual, imitating self-sacrifice, is meant to calm down the person who
got a ‘warning’ of evil fortune from the cuckoo and feels alarmed.
Among south-eastern Bashkirs there had existed until recently a women’s holiday called Kakuk Saieh (cuckoo’s tea). Just like in Karga Butkahy holiday the participants were only women. After cuckoos returned in spring, women went to the fields to make merry: to have tea, to eat eggs, to dance and sing. Those who know the original implication of the holiday are very few now. In the performance of the ritual there may have occurred many changes. Anyway, the roots of these rituals are very ancient, they ascend to the system of pagan notions, the dancing part of it being especially old [9; 3].
It is known from the scientific sources that in the past animal dances were widely spread all over the world [13, p. 38]. The following detail vividly shows that ancient Bashkirs worshipped cuckoo and ascribed mental power to it. If they wished to know their remaining lifetime, people would ask, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long am I to live?’. The number of the calls that followed was supposed to be an answer. Unlike the calling crane that foretells a devastating war to the whole of the tribe or land, the cuckoo, for the most part, ‘warns’ about individual tragedies.
The eagle, as ancient Bashkirs perceived it, was a symbol of manliness and bravery. From time immemorial the bird had been worshipped and sanctified. ‘Wearing eagle’s talons, protects from evil spirits’ - the belief is a plain manifestation of those ancient concepts.
In Bashkir folklore legends about eagle are not numerous. The White Shoulder-Bladed Grey Eagle is one of them. Probably, in this legend ancient views do not express themselves distinctly, nevertheless it would not be fair to regard the legend as an ordinary everyday genre composition with no other implication than the hunting trade. The main part of the plot is the motif of the hero’s death. The hunter took away with him a nestling of an eagle - this meaningful detail suggests an idea of the antiquity of the plot. According to the old beliefs, doing harm to a totem or sacred animal/bird was strictly forbidden. It was believed that killing a totem bird or animal would doom the person to a tragedy. This phenomenon has already been vividly illustrated by the legends and other related ethnographical material about the swan.
The information for supporting the idea that eagle was a totem bird can be received from the names-ethnonyms of some tribes. From this point of view the Merket subdivision of the Bashkir tribe
of Meng deserves consideration. The meaning of the word merket which is not well-known to modern informants can be found in the folklore of the Turkic peoples. For example, in the legends of the Altai Te-leuts merket is a sacred heavenly bird that can cover the Moon with its left wing and the Sun with its right one. The Teleuts worshipped it. one of their tribes bears the name Merket/Berket (eagle) [5, p. 95]. It accounts for the antiquity of both the tribe and the name. The existence of the Merket ethnonym in the tribal systems of the Mongolians, South Altaians, Kirghiz, uzbek, Nogai, Turkmen-salors [7, p. 311] (salor-eagle), confirms the idea.
The studies of mythologocal legends of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples reveal that eagle was considered to be capable of forming a conjugal union with a woman and originating a tribe. The motif of an eagle-husband is represented in different ways. For example, an eagle gets in a dream of a woman as if flying about her sleeping place, which results in her pregnancy (Kirghiz legend); in another case, a baby (prospective shaman) is born out of an eagle’s egg (Yakut myth). According to the Buryat legends the eagle is a sacred bird sent to the Earth by Tengri (Deity) to safeguard people from evil spirits. It can teach shamans the language of birds [5, p. 96-97].
Similar motifs exist in the Finno-ugric mythology, namely in the Magyar myths [5, p. 97]. Birds in the legends are poeticised. The idea is confirmed by the genre peculiarities of the plot: the composition system in most cases is based on the organic unity of the song text, melody and legend. The song Syngrau Torna that has had a long way of development is now a masterpiece of modern Bashkort musical culture. The ballet Crane Song was composed on the motif of the legend (libretto by F.A. Gaskarov, music by L.B. Stepanov). In some places the ritual holidays Kargatuy or Karga Butkahy, Kakuk Saieh are still held nowadays with sharing meals, singing, dancing and playing in the meadows. All this material: legends, popular beliefs, ritual dances, holidays - are of great historic, ethnographic, and artistic value. They echo the notions of ancient Bashkirs (the cult of totemic ancestors, the idea of nature that dies and rises again). The similarity and concordance of the motifs of Bashkir legends with those of the peoples of the world prove the fact that the spiritual culture of the remote ancestors of the Bashkirs originated in deep antiquity and was formed along with the evolution of the universal human culture.
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DOI 10.24411/2223-0564-2019-10111 F.S. Fazylova (Ф.С. Фазылова) УДК 82 (470. 57) - 1
THE MODERN BASHKIR AMOROUS LYRICS (the Second Half of the XX - Early XXI Century)1 (СОВРЕМЕННАЯ БАШКИРСКАЯ ЛЮБОВНАЯ ЛИРИКА (вторая половина ХХ - начало XXI века)
Аннотация
Статья посвящена актуальному вопросу башкирского литературоведения - проблеме любовной лирики в современной башкирской поэзии. Любовь и пробуждаемые ей чувства являются темой, пронизывающей всю
1 Translated into English by L.R. Bikbaeva.
Фазылова Флорида Салимовна, кандидат филологических наук, старший научный сотрудник отдела литературоведения Института истории, языка и литературы Уфимского федерального исследовательского центра РАН (Уфа), e-mail: [email protected]
Florida S. Fazylova, Cand. Sc. (Philology), Senior Researcher of the Department of Literature, Institute of History, Language and Literature, Ufa Federal Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences (Ufa), e-mail: [email protected].
