Фольклор удэгейцев: Ниманку, тэлунгу, ехэ. - 1998. (Т. 18.)

SUMM ARY The Udehe are the people of Manchu-Tungusic group living in the South of the Far East (Primorsky territory and the southern parts of the Khabarovsk region). At the beginning of the 20th century they were a half nomadic people in their way of life in the mountaineous taiga down the slopes of the Sikhote- Alin’, along the upper and middle reaches of the Ussuri tributaries and the shores of the Japanese sea. This was a sort of an ecological niche for the Udehe, which determined their traditional economy: hunting and fishery, including the laying in of salmon for winter. Their hunting equipment included a spear, a bow, a cross-bow with metal points and nets for catching the sable. They employed nets and harpoons for fishing. In winter they used dog-teams as a means of transportation. The Udehe used to build both permanent and temporary lodgings, i.e. summer and winter booths or tree-houses in which a hunter spent a night wandering in the taiga in seach of animals. As for their religious beliefs, the Udehe were shamanists. In the 30s, during the period of collectivisation, all the Udehe were forcibly made to settle, as it was supposed to improve their life. As a result, by the beginning of the 40s they had lost their ethnic territory and occupied only nine major settlements. According to the cencus of 1989 there are only 1,9 thousand Udehe. Regrettably, only a few of them, mostly people over 50 or 60 still know their language and culture rather well. Along with the Nanai, Ulcha, Orok and Oroch languages the Udehe belongs to the southern branch of the Manchu-Tungusic languages. It was in the middle of the 19th century that the collectors of the Udehe folklore began recording it. One can distinguish four types of folklore records. 1. Short renderings in Russian or some other European language. One can see them in ethnographer’s diaries or in expedition records of the explorers such as short reproductions of the Udehe tales in Polish in the field diaries by S. Poniatowski (1914), the reproduction of an improvised song by M. Ven’ukoy (1868) and a shaman practice written down by S.N. Brailovski (1898).