Semantics of Childhood Rites among the Buryats of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
D. A. Nikolaeva
Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University Geoarchaeology Ethnology and Anthropology Series 2025 DOI: 10.26516/2227-2380.2025.53.43 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
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| Key points | Argues that the cycle of traditional Buryat childhood rites preserves archaic traces of a Mother-ancestress cult, with the midwife as its embodiment. The rites are said to transfer the newborn from another world into this one, establish gender identity and a personal 'kut', integrate the child into family and tribal society, and magically stimulate fertility and happiness for the community. The prohibition on shaman participation and the sacred role of midwives, birthing women, children, and the elderly are presented as evidence of the cycle's antiquity. |
Abstract
A study of the cycle of childhood rites in traditional Buryat culture reveals surviving archaic traces of maternal worship. An analysis of folklore and ethnographic sources revealed the following stages included in childhood rites: “Laying in the Cradle”, “Name-giving”, “Cutting the Prenatal Hair”, “Eating Sacred Food Together”, and “Invoking Tribal Happiness”. They represent a well-developed complex of large-scale paradigm shifts, both in relation to the newborn and to the tribal community itself. The most sacred age and gender group, denoting their belonging to the border zone, was involved in organizing and conducting this process. These included midwives, women who had given birth successfully (they can go “there and back”, i.e., give birth), children (who came “from there”), and the elderly (who will go “there”). The antiquity of the childhood rites cycle is evidenced by the prohibition of the shaman's participation in the ceremony, while the midwife, as the embodiment of the Mother-ancestress image, and this sacred group, acted as regulators of relations between the newborn, nature, and society. Thus, the analysis of the cycle of childhood rites revealed the semantics of their main functions, which consisted, firstly, in transferring the newborn from another world to this one, establishing him or her as a living person with a gender identity, and introducing the newborn into various spheres of this world: into the family, society, and the corresponding age and gender group of the tribal society, endowing him or her with “culturally defined” characteristics, attributes, and a personal “kut” (name, tools, clothing, etc.). In addition, they performed a magical and protective function in relation to the members of the tribal society, endowing them with the main benefit associated with the concept of fertility, namely, stimulating happiness, both “childish” and “general tribal”. Since the basis of the sacred content of the cycle of childhood rites is the cult of the Mother-ancestress, the merriment, jokes, and laughter of the women testified to their altered state of consciousness due to the presence of the female deity of fertility within them. Thus, the participants in the ritual act initially laid down the life program for the new person.