Мифы, легенды, предания тувинцев. - 2010. ([Т. 28.)

also stories about lunar and solar eclipses and evergreen trees (texts 1 to 7), which contain elements of worship of the sky, sun, moon, all stars. The etymologies of names of stars frequently derive from hunting rites. Myths narrating the origin of humans are represented in the book by the texts «Why people do not eat grass» (text 8), «How people ate craftiness» (text 9), which fit into the cycle of myths about the creation of the world shared among Siberian Turkic peoples. A large number of Tuvan etiological myths describe the characteristic traits of animals, birds or fish. Zoomorphic myths are not clearly sepa­ rable from stories about domestic or wild animals. It is quite obvious that the basic of narratives about external qualities of animals derives from animistic beliefs of ancient people who identified the lives of animals with those of people. These myths, which preserve extremely archaic Tuvan beliefs, tu rn out to be rather stable, insofar as their origin and occurrence derive from hunting and stockbreeding activities in Tuvan economic activity. They include the myths, «About the bat» (text 18), «How the sheep cried her eyes out» (text 27), «The ram and the sheep» (text 28) and «Why the cow’s kidneys are lumpy» (text 29). ^ The texts «How snakes got their poison» (text 11), «The grey cuckoo bird asbigas a horse’s head» (text 17) display noticeable influence from Buddhist mythology. During the initial stage in the formation of various ethnic groups, there seems to have arisen myths about various clan and tribal grou­ pings. For example, ancient Tuvan totemistic notions about the swan as ancestor to the Kuular and about how this group settled in the area of Bayan Tala, are contained in the myth «The origin of the Kuular» (text 40). At the same time, Tuva possesses myths about the unteraction of the Tuvans with heighboring peoples: Chinese, Mongols (Derbet, Kalga, Oolet), Altai Turks, and Shor (see, for example, text 43, «How the Shor came to be»). The volume includes myths about the origin of implements and other elements of human culture such as fire or dwellings (texts 31, 32), about the origin of musical instruments such as the igil, cbadagan, and shoor (texts 34, 35), and about the appearance of different forms of fortune telling, such as divination involving the use of a ram’s shoul­ der blade (text 33).