ARCHAIC REPRESENTATIONS AND RITUALS RELATED TO ANIMALS IN THE LEGAL AND REGULATORY CULTURE OF THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLES
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2018-4-98-104
Legal and regulatory culture is an important part of the cultural heritage of any people. Mongolian and wider – the Turkic-Mongolian peoples have ancient traditions of legal consciousness, which were formed in the context of the traditional culture of hunters, nomadic pastoralists, warriors. A special layer of the traditional legal and regulatory culture of nomads and hunters, impregnated with shamanistic views are magical devices and sacred objects. The totality of such items is quite wide and diverse – it included meteorites ("celestial arrows"), revered animals and parts of their bodies, different types of weapons. The complex of traditional representations, prohibitions, customs and rituals can be described as measures aimed at combating offenses and contributing to the protection of interests in the dispute of the parties. This article focuses on magic techniques and tools aimed at combating theft in a nomad environment. This offense was the most common in the nomadic tradition. In the cases of unauthorized by an official investigation and a public court of offenses magical methods were often used. Having lost hope for voluntary recognition, the victims publicly announced the performance of the rite. As a rule, fear of supernatural forces, exposed the criminal. Thus, religious beliefs had a significant impact on the current customs of the traditional legal system of the Buryats in the 19th century. The existence of this form of justice could be a consequence of the process of regressive development of law with the fall of the Mongolian empire, when many archaic ideas and rituals came to life. On the other hand, on the periphery of the Mongolian state, the magic in the regulatory and legal system could not lose its significance.
Keywords: customary law, religious beliefs, theft, revered animals, wolf
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Issue: 4, 2018
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY
Pages: 98 — 104
Downloads: 316