Dolls of the Ob-Ugric peoples as a factor of forming ethnic and cultural meanings and competencies

With the growing interest in traditional culture there appears a desire to study the elements that have preserved basic worldviews of peoples. Dolls of the Ob-Ugric peoples are elements of a traditional society which are the primary attribute of children's encultura-tion. As the traditional toy does not exist at present, the paper analyzes the dolls of the largest collections of the Russian Ethnographic Museum and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkammer). The Ob-Ugric peoples had two kinds of dolls: made of beaks and skins of a bird and made of a fabric. In the first type the image of a doll was expressed by birds, reflecting the union of the person and the natural world. The bird's beak became the doll and was given the human value only if it was clothed. All the dolls have a set of adult clothes. The clothes are the embodiment of the external image of the person. The clothes of the dolls showed the gender characteristics, male-female opposition, the special magic status of women. The evolution of manufacturing materials reflected the formation of a new paradigm in human mentality - the separation of the person and nature, the establishment of subject-object relations between them. If we look at the doll in the context of the possible content of a game, we come to a certain conclusion. The demiurge passes the ability to create to the human. Thus, the girl turned into a creator when she made and played with dolls. Another method of playing with a doll in the sphere of ethnic and cultural meanings supposes to address to the concept of the model. Whereas the doll is a model of people, it shall carry essential information about them. All the dolls have no face, so that no "spirit" would enter them. Thus, the doll symbolizes the external shape of the person. It is evidenced by detailing of the traditional costume because clothing is the personification of the material human image. The most ancient material used for making dolls was skins of birds. The bird was a symbol of the soul in the mentality of the Ob-Ugric peoples. So, dolls expressed the idea of the psychosomatic unity of the person in the traditional ideology of the Ob-Ugric peoples. Thus, the dolls of the Ob-Ugric peoples are endowed with a deep philosophical meaning. In the traditional culture they performed the psychological, social function of enculturation. When making and playing with doll girls developed personality traits, work habits, behaviors, learned the gender division of society and conceived the hidden meanings of the mythological picture of the world.

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