Birch snuffs of the Khanty as a mythological text

The paper analyzes the bark snuff of Khanty, the indigenous people of Western Siberia, as a specific set of coding and transmission of information, expressing ethnic picture world, i.e., the essential ideas of the peoples of the world. The general theoretical approaches to the reconstruction of the semantic field of things set out, based on the specifics of the primitive mind, and above all its imagery. The design features of birch snuff and history of their penetration into the culture of the people is described briefly. The semantics of snuff is reconstructed on the basis of the analysis of the mythological, ritual, artistic and social aspects of traditional culture of the Khanty, with the content of the plan which identifies four thing-marks associated with its different manifestations. The first set of birch symbolism is the basis for object-snuff. Birch has a special place in sacral symbolism of traditional Khanty culture and is associated with the Upper world and is associated with - white, light, goodness and prosperity. The second plan of symbolic content of the snuff defines material production - bark, designed to delineate, to limit the middle world, a world of people from other worlds and forms of existence and to protect it from the unpredictable and dangerous outside influence. This plan is well reflected in folklore and ritual practice of Khanty. The third layer of content is associated with ornaments which are running on the walls of birch snuff stamp, as well as with images appearing on the bottom of things. Ornamental motifs are associated with traces of animals, and the images resemble tamgas. Overall decor carries out the information about the Middle World, giving it an industrial and social characteristics: the economic activities of man, his social organization. The fourth plan of snuff determines semantics of the content -tobacco. Consideration of the traditional ways of its use (sniffing, chewing, smoke swallowing, smoking) and technology of preparation showed that the ritual provides a trespassing of a person in another state and thus contributes to the creation of conditions for communication with the spirits, and snuff becomes a symbol of overcoming the boundaries between possible and impossible, a sign of initiation to other forms and dimensions of existence. In general, multi-layered symbolism of birch snuff circle embraces the fundamental questions of existence: the structure of the universe, visible and invisible worlds, and place them in person, including his posthumous existence, and can be regarded as a religious-ideological or mythological text.

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