Symbolic Meaning of Some Household Items in the Traditional Teleut Culture

This article explores the symbolic meaning of certain household items in the traditional Teleuts culture - indigenous minority of South Siberian Turkic peoples, on the basis of participant observation (Bekovsky rural settlement, 2015-2016), as well as scientific publications. The phenomenon of granting household items and tools specific symbolic meaning in the traditional Teleut culture has not been sufficiently studied so far. Ethnographers have done a huge amount of work collecting the Teleut folklore, describing various rituals, forms of subsistence activities etc. The authors relied on published materials by V.I. Verbitsky, N.P. Dyrenkova, L.E. Karunovskaya and other scientists while carrying out the study. Researchers, who worked in the framework of a structural-semiotic approach, contributed greatly to the understanding of the essence of the thing as a symbol and method of transmission of cultural meanings. For instance, the authors cite works by A.K. Bayburina and D.M. Segal. The thing as a symbol in the traditional Turkic culture was studied by E.L. Lvova, I.V. Oktyabrskaya, A.M. Sagalaev, M.S. Usmanova, P.K. Dashkovskiy, S.M. Karymova and others. The study revealed that the Teleuts traditionally associated household items, such as utensils and tools, mostly with fertility. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, the object's shape was important. Concave items such as pot, ladle, wooden cup, mortar represented the feminine principle. It is worth noting that, when objects were turned over or broken, they were associated with death and misfortune. Convex objects like pestle, whisk, knife handle and so on, respectively, represented the masculine principle. Another important characteristic of objects associated with fertility in the traditional Teleut culture was their dyad, when the use of one item is impossible without the other, such as mortar and pestle, pot and ladle. The same applies for composite objects, the convex part of which (handle, haft) correlated with the masculine, and the other part - with the feminine. Such ideas are reflected in Teleut language, folklore, customs and rituals. Thus, the allegorical names of different objects may be associated with birth or death. For example, in Teleut language a mortar and pestle are called soky (mortar) and soky balazy ("mortar's child," pestle). Shamanic rituals include a cauldron in which the body of a future shaman is created anew. A divination by a wooden bowl could predict whether a year will be favorable or not. There are other examples confirming the conclusions made by the authors. The article shows the extent to which such ideas are preserved in the Teleut culture to this day. These findings could be useful in the development of museum festivals and museum lessons, which help to preserve the intangible cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.

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