The ethnic character of the Kazakh epic Koblandy Batyr

Abstract

The study of the heroic epic of the Kazakh people has been studied by scholars since the early 20th century. Numerous samples were recorded and later published and became the subject of research. There are 29 variants of the main epic tale of the Kazakh people Koblandy Batyr, which were recorded by famous narrators in different parts of Kazakhstan. This is the only tale published in Russian and studied by the most eminent folklorists such as A. Borovkov, B. Putilov etc. Somewhat earlier representatives of the Kazakh folklore studies were M. Auezov, A. Bukeykhanov, M. Gabdullin, K. Zhumaliev, A. Konratbaev, O. Nurmagambetova, etc., who studied this narrative. On the methodological level, almost all of them were considering the epic from the position of historical school and were developing the problems of historicism and poetics of the epic. The relevance of this work is that for the first time in folklore studies there is an attempt to cover differentinformation of ethnic nature reflected in the heroic epic Koblandy Batyr from the position of ethnic history. The aim of the article is to find points of contact between the ethnic data in the epic and real events of ethnic history of Turkic-speaking tribes. In this context, tasks are set such as defining historical and ethnic epoch of the events of the epic, etymological and semantic analysis of onomastic names – ethnonyms, toponyms and anthroponyms. The essence of many ethnic terms transformed by later narrators of the epic is revealed. The ethnic character of the tale was considered in Soviet times from the perspective of the historical process. Almost all researchers have confined themselves to the question: in what era did these events take place and what kind of clashes between medieval ethnic groups are reflected in the heroic epic? It is clear that these problems were posed within the research methodology of the school of history. In this article, however, by delving into the cognitive specificity of certain terms expressed in poetic form, an attempt is made to find and characterise the ethnic nature of certain terms of ethnic order.

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