Spring as an Element of a Small Homeland in the Tradition of the Cis-Baikal Buryats: Image, Status, Functions

For the Buryats, the concept of the motherland is not abstract but filled with concrete content, the main components of which are the natural elements of the ancestral territory: an ancestral mountain, a river or lake, fields and meadows, forests, individual groves, trees, and stones. These objects also include springs. The relevance of the work arises from the insufficient research into the cult of water in the Buryat tradition in general and mineral springs in particular. The aim of the article is to examine the features of the existence of the water cult and the place of mineral springs in the tradition of the Cis-Baikal Buryats living north of Lake Baikal. The study’s objectives included examining the image of water sources, their status, and their functions in the tradition of the CisBaikal Buryats. The sources of the study were historical and ethnographic, folklore materials, and materials from the author’s field research. A comparative historical method was used in the study, which helps identify commonalities in understanding and appreciating natural phenomena in the culture of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples. The study suggests that the Cis-Baikal Buryats retained ideas about “living” water – the water of some springs and lakes was associated with it. However, the cult of healing springs, the Arshans, did not develop in the CisBaikal Buryat tradition for several reasons: 1. The generic status of a water source, which determines the relevance of ideas about the territorial boundaries of the effectiveness of its therapeutic effect. 2. Spring water acquired magical healing properties in the process of ritual transformation with the active participation of a shaman. Such water could cure any disease. In this regard, the classification of mineral springs according to their medicinal properties may not have been relevant. 3. Moreover, in Transbaikalia, much of the work on the popularization of arshans, including their discovery and the determination of the medicinal properties of water, was done by the Buddhist church, whose influence did not extend to Cis-Baikal

Pre-Baikal Buryats, water cult, healing springs, Buryat shamans, ritual practices