E-mail: shuiyuzl07@163.com Tel.: +7 (426) 223-45-14
21, Ignatyevskoe Hwy., Blagoveshchensk, 675027, Russian Federation
Postgraduate student, Department of Religious Studies and History; Assistant, Department of Literature and World Artistic Culture, Amur State University
The study was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-18-00807, https://rscf.ru/project/24-18-00807/
This article presents the results of а folklore and ethnographic expedition to the Greater Khingan region, to the densely populated territory of the Orochon people of northeastern China. The Orochons (or Oroqen; Russ. Orchi) belong to the Evenki group, most of which are represented by Manegrams who migrated to these territories from the Zeya area of the Amur region. During the expedition, the author and a group of researchers collected a cycle of “bear folklore” consisting of six mythological stories in which a bear acts as the first ancestor, a human helper, and possesses shapeshifting abilities. Some of the plots reveal similarities with mythological stories of the Russians of Baikal and Transbaikal, as well as those from the “Three Rivers” region. Some of the stories attest to the influence of Chinese narratives and fairy-tale prose. Orochon informants also manifest a mythological consciousness that preserves a taboo associated with the image of a bear. In general, the “bear cult” reflected in Orochon folklore is a valuable source for reconstructing the religious consciousness of the Tunguska population of China, shamanism, and features of the folklore of the Far Eastern borderlands.
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