Image of the Deer-Sun and Ethnonym of the Khori Buryats

Abstract

Introduction. The article examines the ethnonym of the largest Buryat tribe — Khori. The absence of universally accepted etymology thereof in Buryat ethnography significantly complicates ethnogenetic studies dealing with earliest ethnic history. Goals. The work seeks to reveal linguistic, historical, and cultural etymology-related properties of the term ‘Khori’ in Buryat ethnonymic discourse. Materials and Methods. The article analyzes texts of Khori Buryat shamanic invocations, data from Mongolian written sources, and petroglyphs from the northern shore of Lake Baikal. The materials have been studied using the methods of historical comparative, historical contrastivecomparative, cultural semantic and linguistic analyses, reference data being similar facts from cultures of Turko-Mongols inhabiting Central Asia and Southern Siberia. Results. The image of the Mother Deer described in shamanic texts of Khori clans settled in the mouth of the Selenga River can be traced to the Scytho-Siberian canonical tradition of depicting animals on stone slabs that accompany burial mounds containing Caucasoid remains in the mountainous regions of Western and Northwestern Mongolia, similar to Pazyryk mounds of the Altai and Uyuk mounds of Northern Tuva. Historical, cultural and linguistic ethnic indicators allow for the possibility the ethnonym ‘Khori’ may derive from the word ‘khor’ used to denote the Sun and its symbol — Deer — among the Bronze and Early Iron Age nomadic Iranian-speaking tribes of Central Asia and Southern Siberia. A comparative insight into common traditions of worshipping the Swan — maternal totem bird of the Khori Buryats, Western Mongols, and Teleuts — makes it possible to determine ethnic and cultural ties between ethnic ancestors of the Khori and Turkic tribes with the Swan cult through the ethnic union referred to as ‘Toumat’ and geographically connected with the Sayan-Altai. The research shows that the origins of the ethnonym ‘Khori’ is closely related to the history and culture of Central Asian nomads — representatives of the stone grave culture characterized by the solar cult and that of the Mother Deer.