MILK FOOD OF THE NOMADS OF INNER ASIA: MEANING, FUNCTION AND SYMBOLISM
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2021-1-206-219
The aim of this work is to analyze the practical and symbolic significance of milk food in the culture of the nomads of Inner Asia. The chronological framework of the work covers the late 19th — mid of 20th centuries. The research is based on historical, ethnographic and folklore materials. Comparative-historical and comparative-typological analysis of the worldview, economic practices, ritual sphere of nomads associated with the food complex, made it possible to identify a general worldview layer that formed the idea of the practical and sacred significance of dairy food, its functions of socio-normative regulation of society. The high importance of milk in the food complex and its white color predetermined the sacredness of milk and substantiated a wide range of its ritual use. The study of the daily practices of obtaining, processing, storing and consuming dairy food among the nomads of Inner Asia on a long chronological cut and in a wide territorial framework shows that dairy food has always had the status of “ritual”, and not only in situations of a sacred order. The sacred status of white food as a symbol of abundance determined the system of special restrictions and prohibitions accompanying the receipt of milk, its processing and storage. Milk food is the closest to the concept of “food norm” is most closely related, embodied in various forms. Unlike other main food of nomads — meat, milk food was intended to unite society, making the rich and the poor, insiders and outsiders equal. It was revealed that in the Buryat culture, one of the types of dairy food, the fermented milk product of kurunga (Buryat. kürenge), is one of the key markers of social community — the clan along with the ancestral fire, tamga, with which ideas about the power of the clan and its well-being are associated.
Keywords: Inner Asia, Turkic-Mongol peoples, food complex, milk, ritual, social functions, simbolizm
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Issue: 1, 2021
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY
Pages: 206 — 219
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