The Cult of the Scribes of the Pre-Baikal Buryats

Abstract

Purpose. As a result of joining the Russian Empire, the Buryats formed certain beliefs and cults associated with the administrative service and organically associated with the worldview of Buryat shamanism, which became the basis for the emergence of specific ritual activities. In this case, of particular interest is the cult of mythological scribe-servants of the Lord of the underworld Erlen Khan. This cult had a wide practical application among the Pre-Baikal Buryats until the 20^th Century. Results. It is determined that the new types of social organization among the Buryats, formed in the process of Siberia’s accession to the Russian state in the 17^th-18^th centuries, are reflected in religious and mythological ideas, in particular in the sacred concept of the other world, ideas about the afterlife and beliefs about the terrible punishers in the face of the Eastern gods. It is revealed that many aspects of archaic shamanistic ideas about the soul and its afterlife were harmoniously incorporated into the views of the complex bureaucratic structure of the underworld. Conclusion. The formation and development of the administrative service in connection with the entry of the Buryats into the Russian state led to the sacralization of the rank, and rank served as the basis for the formation of new religious and mythological aspects in the spiritual culture of the Buryats. Such ideological aspects related to the historical realities of ethnic and cultural development of the Buryats are specific motives in the mythology of the population of the Pre-Baikal region which allows examine the development and formation of traditional beliefs.