Бурятские волшебные сказки - 1993

SUMMARY Buryat tales, the richest section within the oral po e tic heritage of the people, p l ay a major role in their spiritual culture. At all times this ancient type of folk arts remained young and vivid. In the past there was a custom among the Buryats to arrange parties, especially in the winter time, at which the story-tellers were reciting tales competing in their skill. This was a real one-actor theatre, an attractive spectacle satisfying people’s spiritual needs. This genuine tradition furthered the herfection of the performers’ mastery and the broadening of their repertoir, which, in its turn, enriched the theasury of the Buryat fairy tales. Other aspects also favoured the development of the fairy tales genre. Unlike uligers, the Buryat heroic ballads whose performance was accompanied by rather complex rites known only to a master, fairy tales were shorter and more democratic and hence they could be recounted by an amateur. It should be noted than the Buryats had no restrictions in the per­ formance of tales, which also promoted the development of this genre encorporating everyday life tales, fairy tales, tales of bogatyrs Bogatyr’ (or batyr) — an epic athlete hero, and tales of animals. Despite the objective conditions leading to the decline of the larger forms of the Buryat folklore including fairy tales, due to the in depth traditions the mastery of the native story-tellers has not been lost. Scholars have long been interested in the Buryat folk tales. Already the first travellers and explorers of Siberia (G.F. Miller, I. Fisher, A. Castren and others) were fascinated by the Byryat myths and tales, which is testified by their evidence. Th e 19th century saw a more systematic and scientific inter e st in the Buryat tales. Among the first to collect and publish them were represen­ tatives of the Russian revolutionary thought N.A. Bestuzhev, a Decembrist, and A.P. Shchapov, a revolutionary democrat, as well as Russian scientists * Bogatyr’ (or batyr) —an epic athlete hero.