The relicts of hunting and fishing in the folk tradition of the Kalmyks and peoples of cross-border cultures. Article 1

The research topic is connected with the problem of cultural and social adaptation of man in nature and society. Within the framework of these problems, a circle of questions is drawn up associated with the relationship between man and nature, the degree of its dependence on nature, economic activities and lifestyle, popular knowledge about nature and the animal world, worldview and spiritual culture. The fairy-tale epic folklore of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples is plentiful and rich in ethnographic details of the description of hunting, which allows you to reconstruct the hunting structure, its philosophical, ideological aspects, to trace historical development and transformation. The analysis showed that the relics of the hunting structure are quite abundant in the folk tradition of the peoples of Central Asia, reflecting the ancient era of the settlement of the ancestors of the Turkic-Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu peoples in Southern Siberia in the neighborhood of the Ugric-Samoyed tribes; hunting themes have a decisive role in the archaic epos, and ancient characters stand out in fairy-tale and fairy-tale prose - the foot hunter Jovgn Mergen, the hunter Erhiy-Mergen, whose image is associated with the solar myth. The ancient hunting life, hunting ideas are expressed in archaic fairy-tale-epic motifs and plots. The archaic motif of “deer and deer hunting”, preserved in the Kalmyk folk tradition, is evidence of the specificity of hunting among the ancestors of the Kalmyks Oirats who used to live in the expanses of Central Asia and Southern Siberia. In the Oirat folklore, there are survivals of clan relations associated with hunting and the rite of initiation, which existed before social phenomena and institutions, the socialization of men in “male unions”. The study revealed that hunting played a significant role in the life of a nomad, which was both an entertainment of the nobility, and a way to train soldiers, as well as a means of obtaining additional food. The methods and types of hunting for the Kalmyks were identified: individual and collective hunting, foot and horse hunting, hunting with hunting birds. The hunt by the Mongolian peoples retained the most archaic features until the beginning of the 20th century and contained elements of an ancient ideology, which is a well-developed public institution with a developed system of social relations. Folk materials, on the one hand, reflect the real scenes of hunting life, and on the other, ancient mythological views related to taboos and totemistic cults, veneration of animals, beliefs in spirits, rituals and rituals aimed at successful hunting. The reflection of the hunting structure and fishing in folklore is an archaic layer, preserved in the form of relict phenomena.