Soul replacement ceremony in shamanic practice of the Buryats

The paper deals with the new field materials on the soul replacement ceremony, having both mythological and practical value. The research goal is to reveal the function and structure of the soul replacement ceremony in shamanic ritual practices by defining the role of myth in shaman’s ceremonial actions and establishing the transformation of ritual actions on soul replacement and adaptation of this ceremony to the Buddhist environment. Of great interest is the comparative analysis of archival and published ceremonial material on soul replacement with new data recorded from the Shenekhen Buryats of China. Also, of importance is the contextual description of ceremonial and ritual materials relying on modern achievements of a structural and semiotic method. Belief in the magic abilities of human soul transformation caused numerous ceremonies of soul replacement to appear. The authors consider three types of shamanic ceremonies of the replacement of the sick person’s soul with the souls of a healthy person, animal, or things. In the ceremony of human soul exchange, the mystical mythological components of the shamanic ceremony are significant. The conclusion is made that all three types of exchange practiced in shamanic tradition have similar semantic and structural elements. In Buddhist practice, the main idea and structure of the shamanic ceremony are used, with the subject of a replacement being changed. Shamanic ceremonies of soul exchange of two persons are found to preserve the archaic tradition. The subsequent transformations of ceremonial actions on replacement of the person by animals and objects are defined. The research results allow revealing mythological and pragmatic aspects of shamanic ceremonial actions. The preserved mythological components of a Buddhist practice ceremony adopted from the centuries-old tradition of shamanic ceremonial actions are also considered. In general, it should be stressed that ceremonies on the protection of human life, having ancient roots, are still in demand in the folk environment.

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