Russian Brown Bears

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This is one very interesting article concerning bear mythology in North-East Asia and also a bit other places opening up the status bear has in the boreal zone of the globe. Since mostly these areas are in Russia I put this here. Interesting things also concerning Korea, Northeast China (Manchuria) and Hokkaido etc.

Article of professor Juha Janhunen, University of Helsinki

Some quotes below, but to get overall picture read the whole article: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/publictn...nhunen.pdf


TRACING THE BEAR MYTH IN NORTHEAST ASIA


”All over the northern boreal zone of the globe, the bear is widely respected as the Lord of the Animals, which in some important respects differs from all other wild beasts. ”

”THE BEAR CULT 

The mythological role of the bear is manifested in the complexity of beliefs and practices known as the Circumpolar Bear Cult which has been occasionally traced back to the Palaeolithic hunting societies of the latest glacial period.6 In the Bear Cult, the bear is elevated to the status of a supernatural being which, when treated properly, will grant success to the human community. The Bear Cult may be understood as a conceptual complex aimed at controlling the bear, and, through the bear, the resources of wild game in the boreal environment. This is congruent with the bear’s status as the “Lord of the Animals,” for the bear is thought to have the ability to send not only other bears, but also other species of game to the hunter. ”

”Spevakovsky reports the following taboo from the present-day Ewen reindeer herders in Northeast Siberia: “Recent wolf’s or bear’s footprints or their excrement might influence one’s psychological condition. It is forbidden to talk about them, particularly in a negative way, since it is said that the spirits of these animals, especially the bear’s, understand the human language and might take revenge, by killing domesticated reindeer” (Alexander Spevakovsky, “Rational Role of the Religious World View in the Tundra and Forest-Tundra Zones: A Case of the Even Reindeer Herders,” Proceedings of the 9th International Abashiri Symposium / Dai 9 kai Hoppou Minzoku Bunka Shimpojiumu Houkoku (Abashiri, 1995), p. 93). ”

”Obviously, in the Bear Festival the bear is neither a beast nor a human, but a god. It may be noted that no other beast, not even the tiger, is revered in this way in the boreal zone.11 Moreover, in dualistic systems involving the cult of two animals, the bear is always there, while the other animal may vary from tiger to elk to whale.12 ”


THE BEAR GOD

”From the tales featuring a marriage between a woman and a bear it is evident that there are actually two kinds of bear. On the one hand, there are the ordinary bears, which can be hunted and killed and which form a renewable resource of the boreal environment. On the other hand, there is the Prototypical Bear, which is represented either directly by the bear husband of the human female, as in the Udeghe tale (4), or by his father, as in the Ainu tale (3). In either case, the hunter has a personal (in-law) relationship with the Prototypical Bear.

There are many indications that the Prototypical Bear has supernatural powers, which make it equal to a god. For this reason, it can die only symbolically, only to resurrect later.23 The following Amur Ghilyak tale (5) suggests that the Prototypical Bear is, in fact, the Sky-God. In this tale, the hero’s elder sister ascends to Heaven to marry the Sky-God. Although it is not expressly mentioned, both the Sky-God and the sister are bears, and both of them are ultimately killed by the hero: ”

”On the basis of the presented folkloric material (1-8), the elements of the boreal bear myth may be summarized as follows: The bear is the Lord of the Animals and a male deity, who has the power of regulating the resources of the forest. In order to secure his share of the resources, the human hunter has to establish a relationship with the bear. Since the hunter is typically a man, the relationship is established through his elder sister, who marries the bear and is transformed into a bear herself. In order to approach the bear, the sister has to assume the role of shaman ”

”The tradition concerning the marriage of a woman with a bear, and the birth of bear cubs from this union, is also surprisingly widespread in the boreal zone, extending from Western and Northern Europe to Sakhalin and Hokkaido, and further to North America.35 Even relatively minor details, such as the taboo forbidding women to eat the fore parts of a bear, are attested in an identical form in regions as distant as Lapland and the Amur basin.36 ”

”The Bear Festival is a more clearly localizable phenomenon. Although the ritual killing and eating of the bear is common throughout the Eurasian boreal zone, the Bear Festival seems to be attested as a major ritual in only three relatively restricted regions: among the Finns and Sami of Fennoscandia (Finland and Lapland), among the Ob-Ugrians, Selkup, and Ket of Western Siberia (the Ob-Yenisei region), and among the Amur Tungus, Ghilyak, and Ainu of Eastern Manchuria and Northern Japan (the Amur basin, Sakhalin, and Hokkaido).3 ”

”It is therefore perhaps not a coincidence that female shamans are, indeed, conspicuously common in the Manchurian region, broadly defined, the very same region where the bear myth is also particularly prominent. Most importantly, female shamans predominate in both Korean and Japanese shamanism. The Korean female shaman (mudang) does have a male counterpart (baksu), but the spheres of the two tend to differ and the vast majority of all Korean shamans are females.43 In Japan, all shamans (itako) are females.44 The same seems to be true of the Hokkaido Ainu shamans (tusukur), while among the Sakhalin Ainu and Ghilyak, as well as among all the other Manchurian and Siberian populations, there are also male shamans.45 Even so, some particularly famous shamanic figures, such as the Nishan Shaman of the Manchu, are specifically women.46”

”It may be presumed that the female shamanism of Ancient China was already distanced from the simple context of hunting rites. The Chinese Bear Cult, with the female shaman as the main medium, must have involved an elaborate ritual drama in which it was no longer the primitive hunter, but the earthly ruler – king or prince – who sought a contact with the Sky-God, who may or may not have been conceptualized as the Prototypical Bear. Through the female shaman, clad as a bear, the ruler was able to get the help of celestial powers. Unfortunately, in the absence of preserved documentation, the exact structure of this drama and its position in the Ancient Chinese society remain unknown.55 To a considerable extent, the Chinese shamanistic traditions were distorted by the framework of Taoism.56 ”

”Similarly, the institutionalized Bear Cult of the Amur-Sakhalin region, though supported by a rich folkloric tradition of bears and females, is no longer specifically connected with the institution of female shamanism. However, it is important to note that the institutionalized Bear Cult in this region, like its counterpart in Ancient China, is also rather distant from the rituals of the boreal hunters. The economy of the ethnic groups today embraced by the institutionalized Bear Cult is by no means dominated by hunting. Rather, it involves a complicated combination of hunting, fishing, gathering, and small-scale agriculture, including the rearing of domestic animals. The elaborate Bear Festival documented from the region should therefore also be seen as a “refined” form of a spiritual tradition that has lost its original concrete connection with the boreal subsistence economy. ” Reply