The Role of Dogs in Nanai Cults

Abstract

The Nanai people belong to the Tungus-Manchurian language family. Their use of dogs in hunting and fishing activities has great importance in their traditional culture. Its economic role is well reflected through its images in their worldview, ceremonies, and folklore. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the system of Nanai beliefs was represented by a synthesis of traditional views (shamanism and more ancient animistic beliefs) and borrowed religions such as Buddhism and Christianity. In particular, we can identify evidence of these cultural contacts in ceremonial practice. Through interaction with other cultures their belief system was exposed to certain changes over a long time period in the same way as other aspects of traditional life. This fact is also well reflected in various multi-structural ceremonies, in which dogs play a significant role. The essential part of the ceremony for negotiation with gods and spirits was the sacrificial ritual. People usually offered sacrifices to ask the gods and spirits to be friendly and help them. The same kind of sacrifice was also practiced during funeral rituals. At the same time, some elements of real productive activities can be observed in the funeral ceremony. The spiritual world and real life were thus closely interwoven in the worldview of the Nanai. We can see this fact not only in actual ceremonial practice but also in the worldview that forms its basis. Their representation of the next world, for example, clearly indicates their complex worldview. It is well known that the Nanai, like the other peoples on the Amur basin, considered that the world of dead was a mirror reflection of the world of the living, and that the souls of the dead would go to the next world to live as if they were alive. Mythology and ceremonial practices concerning death reveal the special role of dogs, which differs among the different subgroups of the Nanai. This indicates that dogs played an extremely significant role that was characteristic to each regional or linguistic subgroup of the ethnos. Each of the hunter-gatherer ethnic groups of the Russian Far East had its own specific funeral ceremony, but it may be assumed that they all shared a common root. Some rituals and elements of these ceremonies even exhibit similarities with those of the Chinese and Manchurian peoples. Such common roots and the similarity of funeral rituals indicate close cultural and genetic contacts within a huge region. One of the analogies between the funeral ceremonies of the Nanai and Chinese-Manchurian people can be particularly clearly seen in the ceremony to be carried out immediately after the burial. Among the Chinese and Manchurians, relatives of the deceased burnt paper images of money, animals, birds, dogs