EPIC PLOTS OF THE EVENKS AND HAMNIGAN: ON THE ISSUE OF CULTURAL COMMUNITY

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of typological similarity of the folklore traditions of the Evenks and the Hamnigans. Based on the available material of the Eastern Evenk epic and the epic texts of the Onon Hamnigans, the plot and motive composition in the epic traditions of the Evenks and the ethnic group Hamnigans is analyzed. The typological similarity between the epic traditions of the Evenks and the Hamnigans has not yet been investigated. The problem of the ethnogenesis of an ethnic group called the Hamnigans is currently raising a scholar discussion. The authors take as a basis, accepted in the academic community, the most accurate presentation of the ethnic history of the ethnolocal group of Evenk cattle breeders Hamnigan, and which, under the influence of the Mongol-Buryat culture, lost its Evenk ethnic identity. They also pay attention to the name of the ethnonym Hamnigan in the Buryat and Mongolian languages means “Evenk, Tungus”, Hamnigans live in China and Mongolia and retain the dialect of the Evenk language as their mother tongue. The aim of this work is to carry out a comparative analysis of the epic traditions of the Evenks and Hamnigans. The analysis demonstrates a clear similarity of motives in the stories about the lonely hero and the horse hunter, which testifies to the common genesis of the folklore traditions of the Evenks and Hamnigans. The commonality of the plots is manifested in folklore genres, the similarity of characters, for example, the spirit of the forest, the hunter-rescuer of people, the lone hero-demiurge, etc. In addition, some structural parts of the epic are identical: the beginning, the symbolic system of songs is also similar. The main plot about a lonely hero and a horse hunter shows the symbol of the most important cultural tradition of equestrian Evenks – ancient common Evenk hunting and acquired cattle breeding ones. The structure and motivational composition of the plots about the lonely hero-first ancestor in the epic traditions of the Evenks and the Hamnigans has a clear similarity, indicating a single genesis of the plot at the early historical stages of the development of the ethnos. The results obtained, in turn, confirm the hypothesis about the complex ethnogenesis of the Hamnigans as a Tungus group, whose ethnographic complex was historically formed under the strong influence of the cultural traditions of the Mongolian peoples. The article is published in accordance with the research plan of the Institute of Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch.

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