ABOUT ONE PRA-TURKIC MAGIC FORMULA, WHICH BECAME THE REASON FOR THE FORMATION OF THE GENRE “SONG” IN RITUAL FOLKLORE

Vitaliy G. Rodionov

DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2021-2-171-180

Key words

Ritual folklore, incantatory formula, genre, reconstruction of semantics, ancient Turks, path motive, chronology.

Annotation

Historical reconstruction problems of traditional rituals, worldview, language and poetics of folklore, folk art require an integrated approach from a modern researcher of the ethnos spiritual culture. The latter takes into account the achievements of modern related sciences, primarily ethnocultural studies and ethnolinguistics, archeology and folklore studies, comparative and typological ethnology. Using this method, the history of the archaic formula found in a number of genres of Chuvash ritual poetry is successfully restored, and its archaic semantics is also restored. In the Altai and pra-Turkic epochs, the semantics of “singing” (a melodic speech performance of a ritual text) had a number of lexemes, which later became differentiated and acquired complementary meanings. The Chuvash language, due to its early separation from the rest of the Turkic languages, was able to preserve the most archaic incantatory formula. The Chuvash term yora / yura, as a synthesis of a ritual-verbal incantatory text and a musical melody, was formed during the formation of military democracy in the society of the ancient Bulgars and other related tribes. Over time, thanks to an archaic magic formula, this term began to mean not only ritual, but also lyrical melodious speech texts. Thus, in the Chuvash folklore, the term acquired semantics, meaning not only a separate genre, but also a whole group of melodic-speech texts.

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Information about the author

Vitaliy G. Rodionov – Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor of Chuvash Philology and Culture Department, Chuvash State University, Russia, Cheboksary (vitrod1@yandex.ru; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0143-7952).

For citations

Rodionov V.G. ABOUT ONE PRA-TURKIC MAGIC FORMULA,  WHICH BECAME THE REASON FOR THE FORMATION OF THE GENRE “SONG” IN RITUAL FOLKLORE. Vestnik Chuvashskogo universiteta, 2021, no. 2, pp. 171–180. DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2021-2-171-180 (in Russian).

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