Buryat Traditional Bow in the Collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography (According to Documents on Receipt before the 1930s)

Abstract

Purpose. The Russian Museum of Ethnography (St. Petersburg) is today one of the largest specialized ethnographic museums in Russia. Many weapons, including traditional bows, are stored in its funds. The source base of the study was 11 traditional bows collected in the territory of the Buryats (Baikal and Transbaikalia) or interpreted as Buryat and entered the museum before the 1930s.
Results. The studied museum exhibits can be divided into two groups: compound bows and children’s toys. Compound bows (collections of Ts. Zhamtsarano, Lektsokom Zhabe, A. P. Barannikov) were damaged as a result of contact with moisture (flood in St. Petersburg in 1924) or dismantled into parts: horn plates and tendons detached, birch bark was removed, their geometry was violated. Three bows have the same wooden base, the same size of functional sections (handle, elastic shoulders, end stiffness zones), but a different set of overlays: two bows were strengthened along the front to the middle of the transition zones, one bow is additionally equipped with long end frontal overlays and side shoulder overlays. Similar morphometric parameters are observed on most objects from the museum collections of the Baikal region, are found in ancient images of bows and are associated with Buryat masters. The details of different bows are stored under the same number and cannot be used to characterize the traditional Buryat bow. Two bows are represented by children’s toys (assembled by S. I. Rudenko), one of which is additionally equipped with end stiffness zones and a double bowstring cutout.
Conclusion. The described objects have direct analogies among the Buryat bows and reflect the local original weapon tradition of the 19^th – early 20^th centuries. Such products differ from the most popular Manchurian bows in Central Asia in the proportions of functional zones and technological techniques. These products confirm the fact that the solid wood base was one of the main distinguishing features of the Buryat tradition.