Savar = Bear and Kökede Mergen — Characters from a Cosmogonic Myth of the Heavenly Hunter: Materials of the Kalmyk Folktale / Epic Tradition Analyzed

Introduction. Folklore narratives recorded at the turn of the 20th century contain ideas inherent to the ancient worldview of Kalmyks and dating back to the period of hunting and cosmogonic knowledge. So, insights into folktale / epic heritage abundant in mythoritual experiences of the ethnos can significantly supplement the available ethnographic data. Goals. The article aims at supplementing a reconstruction of the cosmogonic mythical plot of the heavenly hunt and seasonal changes. Materials and methods. The paper employs the structural / semantic, structural / typological, and comparative methods to analyze some Kalmyk folktale and epic texts. Results. The analysis shows an obvious connection between Savar = bear and Kökede Mergen which is consistent with the scheme: myth of a hunter / bear → archaic legend of Savar = hunter / bear → folktale of Kökede Mergen the hunter. The textual implementations attest to that both the characters had evolved from the mythological plot about origins of the constellation Orion. However, the difference is that the story of Savar = hunter / bear has been preserved by Kalmyks in an implicit form and is rather manifested in ethnographic substrates, whereas other Mongolic peoples have independent mythological stories about the heavenly hunter Kökede Mergen. The examined motifs of the hero’s miraculous birth and path, migrations of characters typical for bear-related and funeral rites, as well as the connection with the heavenly mare supplement the previously analyzed motifs of Savar’s travels along the lunar road, brotherhood with the bear, similarity of Savar’s sleep to the bear’s hibernation coupled with prohibitions related to the bear’s ability to hear, and the tradition of performing the epic only in evenings, at night, and in winter time. These cluster together to form a set of motifs derived from the nuclear mythological plot about the heavenly hunt and seasonal changes. The considered connections between Savar = bear and Kökede Mergen confirm the cosmic hunter / bear had been replaced by an anthropomorphic character, and attest to there may have existed an archaic plot with the character Savar = hunter / bear, since the image of Savar the hero in the Kalmyk epic still retains anthropomorphic features of the latter. Perhaps, Savar the hero = bear is a transitional image between the hunter / bear and Kökede Mergen, which coincides with the hypothesis that the bear’s image had been replaced by the anthropomorphic character of celestial hunter Kökede Mergen, and the latter be confirmed by plots and motifs of Kalmyk folktales and epic.

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