Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2020 number

The work is devoted to identification and analysis of the set of the Buryat traditional representations of the horse. The research source base is made up of literary sources containing ethnographic, linguistic and folklore data. The paper uses a structural-semiotic method that identifies symbols associated with a horse. The study allows us to state that the horse image was ambiguous and characterized by an ambivalence of a connotation in the Buryat traditional worldview. The horse was a revered animal, a totem of a Buryat ethnic division. The Buryat mythological representations attributed to it some human qualities, in addition, they contain the motif of a horse’s soul relationship with a human one. The Buryat traditional worldview characterizes this animal with a multi-valued symbolism. It bears an aerial, more widely celestial symbolism, which, in particular, determines ornithomorphic features of its image. Horse ornitho-morphisity was reflected by existence of images of horse-bird, Khulan horse and shaman’s eight-legged horse Zagalmai in the Buryat folklore. Fire and solar symbols are associated with this animal. It was revealed that the horse served as a conductor of the supreme beings’ will and mediator between the worlds, as well as a visionary function in Buryat folklore and ritual. The author determines that the Buryats attached special importance to the horse color symbolism: it was believed that the color reflects the animal’s belonging to the Upper or Lower world in their shamanic poetics. Finally, the horse was a sign of male fertility in Buryat representations. The research reveals that some horse morphological features (head, mane, tail, urine) have supernatural properties in the Buryats’ mind. In the Buryat folklore, a horse was likened to a bear and a jerboa, and compared with a squirrel. In shamanic rites and poetics, this animal is associated with the idea of the shaman’s shapeshifting, and the sacrifice and initiation topic. The study shows that the horse image reflected in the Buryat mythological views and rituals is related to the Eurasian peoples’ cultures.