Types of tombs and some funeral rites as sources for the study of the Daurs ethnogenesis

The article is devoted to the study of the graves in the ground, cremation graves and air burials of the Daurs. The author has studied special verbs denoting the death of a person. In the middle and modern ages, the Daurs dead were buried in the ground. Husband and wife were buried in one grave. These graves are very similar to Khitan burial. However, these graves could appear later, when the Daurs began to collaborate with the Chinese. When a man died, the cock was also sacrificed. The use of the cock and millet in a funeral ceremony shows ancient relation with agriculture and sedentary culture. As it has been discovered, that the Daurs usually didn’t cremate their dead. Cremation of certain categories of people was caused by particular notions of the afterlife and the fear of the spread of epidemic diseases. A memorial rite «yasu baribai» (to keep the bone) shows forgotten traditions of secondary burials and associated with Mongolian-speaking peoples. The mourning of the Daurs and medieval Shiveys had similarities. Air children’s burials are associated with the burial rite of the Tungus-Manchu peoples. The subsequent burial of the remains probably dates to the Khitan tradition.