OLONKHO
the Yakut Heroic Epos
(Detailed description as it was written in candidate application for the 3rd proclamation of masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of the humanity)
Historical Description
In 1842 Academician A.F. Middendorf (1815-1904) was the first to publish a fragment of the Yakut heroic epos "Eriedel Bergen" ("Puteshestvie Na Seve-ro-Vostok Sibiri"; Travel To Siberia's Northwest 1).
The term "Olonkho" complies the general epic tradition as well as isolated oral narrations written down from hundreds of various authors of the oral tradition. Olonkho poetry and content may to some extent be compared to those of "Odyssey", "Aeneid", and "Chanson de Roland", though differing in size: some Olonkho texts consist of 2,000-3,000 lines, some - of 10,000-15,000 lines. The Olonkho text by R.P. Alexeev from the village of Borogontsy in the Ust-Aldanskyi region has 50,000 lines. "Iliad' is three times shorter. "The Olonkho is a heroic epos, and as the Yakut themselves and numerous research ers, folklorists and translators believe that Olonkho stands along with great folklore monuments of other nations. Some compare it to "Kalevalaa" and even to "Iliad". Moreover, this greatest monument of the Yakut oral folklore has not been widely published as a literary work, it has been existing in the oral form from the times immemorial up to nowadays, being the most charm ing creation of the people". 2
Plots of the Yakut Olonkho can be divided into three main groups (it is generally accepted classification by N.V. Emelianov, the leading epos researcher):
• Olonkho about settling of the Middle World (Earth and further, with lo
calization of the geographic realities, area of the present Yakutia) by Ayii aim-
aga (here an epic ethnonym personifies the whole mankind), - they are out
casts, re-jected by gods;
• About progenitors of the Uraangkhai Sakha tribes (ethnic self-name of the
Yakuts), victims of divine ostracism in fight with powers of evil (as some re
searchers think, may be, here we can see echo of zoroastrism), who became the
progenitors of the Uraangkhai Sakha tribes, founders of tribes and powerful clans.
• Olonkho about defenders of the Ayii aimaga tribe and Uraangkhai Sa
kha. As the title of this group itself shows, it is a question about defense of the
tribes from external enemies.
They distinguish as a separate subgroups Olonkho about bogatyr-women and bogatyrs of the local tribes, which perceived the Sakha people's way of life and language, and as a rule, they become a member of a large epic family.
Concrete plot of Olonkho begins as a rule from:
• determination of the time which is described (or it is the time of creation
of the world; or its division to three "layers", populated by antagonists; or epic
time "kyrgys" - century of slaughter, etc.);
• description of action place - it is detailed enumeration of beauties and pe
culiarities of landscape;
- then there is a description of a character, his portrait, way of life, etc.
After exposition there is a plot - description of a reason of conflict (mainly,
it is attack of a hostile bogatyr).
Then there is the second plot and compositional component - culmination - a detailed description of fight with the main enemy.
Description of peaceful, plentiful and creative life after triumph over evil - apotheosis of "light powers" completes Olonkho.
Like that olonkho fabulas (in our case, the plot structure) consist mainly of two major lines: protection of friends and kinsfolk, home and family; and the so called "hero matchmaking" (i.e. the stage of exogamic marriage).
Now, it is possible to put this Yakut heroic epos into the context of Russian and world humanities and to the wider public due to its nomination for the Third Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity as the climax of the Yakut oral literature. Olonkho texts are smaller in size as compared with the greatest world epos texts, such as Indian "Makhabkharata" and Kirghiz "Manas". The latter is known to have been artifi cially enlarged up to several hundred thousands lines, and later up to the sa cred one million lines due to the highly developed tradition of epos singing and the cult of the Manas performer manaschi in Kirghizia. The names of prominent manaschi are given to central streets of the Kirghiz capital. Such wide support of poetic epos and scientific studies on epos in Kirghizia brought to obviously positive results. Yakutia does not provide such a support, though before October revolution traditional epos performers enjoyed everybody's respect and love.
In 1936 A .N. Samoilovich, a worldwide known specialist in Turkic phi lology, gave the following assessment to the Yakut epos: "Regretfully, I myself have not been to Yakutia yet and have not listened to ancient literary work performance by Yakut traditional performers. But ...comparing them with the similar works by those Turkic nations among whom I traveled and whose folklore literature I studied, I got an impression that the Yakut heroic epos in spite of all unfavorable conditions was preserved in an artistically richer and more specific state than the Kirghiz heroic poem "Manas" in Middle Asia with its well- deserved fame, or the heroic fairy- tales of the Altai Turks". The similar opinions on the Yakut epos were expressed by other researchers. For instance, LA. Khudyakov wrote: "First of all we should bear in mind that Olonkho represents an evident historical truth to the Yakut. Olonkho is the major poetic genre for the Yakut and the main means of education. Olonkho comes along with the Yakut beliefs and customs, interpreting them and serving the key source of explanation of all phenomena in life. Olonkho also is the major means for strengthening the Yakut's belief in shamanism and in prejudices". V.M. Zhirmunsky wrote: "Olonkho like epos of other nations represents the historical reminiscences of the Yakut in the historical idealization, it embodies comprehension and assessment of their past by the people.
The problem of research and preservation of the Olonkho genre was pro posed back in the 1930s. A.N. Samoilovich wrote: "We cannot allow the delay in this issue as currently much of this ancient oral literature is completely lost. With rapid development of the new Soviet culture among the broad masses of working people of Yakutia, it is natural that the remnants of the ancient Yakut literary works will soon fall into oblivion, these works represent one of the main sources of the Yakut society history and after critical revision they may contrib ute to the development of the new Soviet literary language of the Yakut".
The principal difference between Olonkho and the Western European mas terpieces mentioned above is that it does not belong to one author, but created by efforts of several generations of Olonkho performers. Olonkho represents historical and cultural memory of the people, reflecting more or less definite epoch, all vicissitudes of life and perils of history in its images. The well- known epos researcher believed that in Olonkho "one realizes himself as if he were melted into the background of nature, and the images created by him coincide with animistic notions. This phenomenon in corpore occurs only in the epos created at the time of the tribal system (like Olonkho).
The specific public was a co-author of Olonkhos and the demanding judge of their singing and performing. The gradual and steady decline of this favour able epic environment was the major factor of decline of the Olonkho live performing practice. This was noted by the first Olonkho collector: "Listeners correct and add to the text, strictly observing the tradition, and at the same time they encourage good improvisational additions". These additions as a rule are not created by the author, but they are appropriate as they correspond to alliteration, assonance and other stylistic devices. Middendorf wrote: "The audience is listening to with a great tension, they actively participate in the action, every sentence of narration arouses an approving agreement of the public". This once again confirms that without the accordingly prepared epic environment, without consideration of its interests, aesthetic anticipation, spir itual demands the existence of this genre of oral culture is impossible. All these things show that a singer of Olonkho as a performer of living oral tradi tion could not go out of frame of the formed tradition, and his creation had a collective nature.
Disappearance is due to the decline of the public environment that once used to be interested in epos as an integral part of the national culture. Howev er, for the long time before revolution the epic environment has been subject to suppression and unification, starting in particular with first Russian mis sionaries of the XVII century who forcedly spread Russian language and Or thodoxy. In tsar years unified education system was formed, rejecting national languages. Later in the XX century Soviet power went in with its colonial policy melting all USSR diverse ethnic cultures into single "socialist" one. In post-Soviet time globalization tendencies are leading all traditional indige nous cultures to destruction as they are unprepared to live with mass culture of the West, within European standards etc. All these have been a real threat to the oral epic tradition as an extremely vulnerable phenomenon.
On the other hand, we should mention an important factor contributing to Yakut epos preservation: before revolution Olonkho was kept in isolation, happily avoiding the influence of the world religions, unlike the epos of Turkic and Mongolian peoples that underwent the impact of Islam.
It takes time to train and prepare a young Olonkho performer and listener. The young Olonkho performer should suck in the epos nature, all the nuances and niceties of his mother tongue with the milk of his mother, he should be closer to the peoples' everyday life similar to epic performers who come from the common background.
The Olonkho exists thanks to broad variety of its versions where the scale of improvisation is doubtlessly wider, as no patterned texts ever could and would exist. The argument that the time of Olonkho has gone away is ques tionable, especially in view of such examples as famous Japanese theatres retaining their hard archaic form and traditional statics.
Both in distant past and today the epos has been reflecting social and eco nomic way of life of small nation. The Yakut epos reflected the social and eco nomic life of the people in the remote past and in recent times, exhausting struggle for survival on the verge of extinction at the times of political calamities and after, in unfavorable climate and geographic surroundings of the Far North per mafrost. Generations of Yakut have spent their vital energy and power just to settle down in the area. This could not but hinder the nation's development. From this point, it is difficult to overestimate the role of the Word that supported people in their everyday hardships of adaptations to new conditions.
Almost all prominent researchers and enthusiasts of the Olonkho who some how dealt with folklore noted a great moral power of the oral literature. In this respect, today we can openly admit, especially with the end of persecution of shamans and those who call themselves shamans, that the northern epos is closely connected with the shamanistic folklore. These two, once equally coexisting, phenomena that were not supplementary, but rather complementary to each other moved to two different directions of their development as genre. P.T. Stepanov, an amateur philosopher, one of the local Olonkho collectors, wrote in 1944 (at the time of fading and flaring again repressions against sha mans and Olonkho performers): "The religious (shaman's) folklore has already faded or is on the verge of full disappearance. This great phenomenon has not received the due attention, but it possesses the archaic language, specific spontaneous popular philosophy, a fierce struggle against evil forces by means of magical spell. The shaman mystery is an integral poetic drama".
Unlike epos, the shaman's poetry possesses more mythology, archaism and pragmatism explained by their different functions, though the former at first sight has the images with the same names and the same predestinations. Academician P.A. Sleptsov writes: "Here lie the sources of the highly developed cult of the various types of shamans, exorcists, people who possess the power of a word and who are able to heal with the help of words or to damage the people who sincerely believe in the magic power of words. Here also lie love for poetics and passion for eloquence. Traditional poets, folklore singers, famous performers enjoyed a great respect and honor, were surrounded by overall love for their power to grant the public with joy". 12 Among these great Olonkho performers we may enumerate the following people: TV. Zakharov-Cheebyi, E.E. Ivanova from Amginskyi ulus, S.A. Zverev from Suntarskyi ulus, I.I. Burnashev-Tong Suorun and N.A. Abramov-Kynat from Megino- Kangalasskyi ulus, D.M. Govorov from Ust-Aldanskyi ulus, S.V. Petrov from the village of Nyurba and many others. Before the WW2 more than 400 Olonkho performers were known to researchers of the Institute of Language, Literature and History.
Perhaps, under the conditions of informational and sensory hunger, it is owing to this distracting and attracting piece of art that the numerically small Yakut people have been saved from spiritual and moral decline, from cultural and economic degradation in severe Siberian wilderness. One more thing: Yakuts spent long winter nights in their scantily lit yurtas meditating, they leisurely polished the language of folk poetry, perfecting Olonkho images, and exercising in eloquence. Maybe that saved them in tsar Russia, where more than one nation as large as the Yakut was extinct.
Most of all we are interested in the epic time rather than mythological and even more recent. The modern philological methodology allows to define some features of this period judging by the epos content, description of the charac ters' appearance, and other attributes describing human personalities and con flicts. The so called "hero matchmaking" (i.e. the stage of exogamic marriage) cannot be unconditionally ascribed to the stage of either patriarchal tribal re lations or to the primitive society; similar practice was registered among Mongols before Ghenghis Khan (12 th century) and explained by customs prevent ing from incest and later by extraordinary mobility of the nomads comparing to the settled peoples, by the peculiarities of nomadic life and steppe economy that have remained unchanged at least since A.D. for two thousand years.
As regards the oral art of the nomads of Altai and Baikal regions, as well as Mongolia and present Northern China , the prominent Soviet archeologist, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences M.P. Gryaznov wrote: "If recently the age of heroic epos of the peoples of our country has been estimated at some hundred centuries,.. .for the last two years researchers often come to conclusion of its more ancient age, it being established at the age of military democracies, that in our country corresponds to the time of early nomads, i.e. the second half of first millennium B.C." 13
The first complete Olonkho text was published by Sanscritist Academician O.N. Bohtlingk (1815-1904) in 1851. 14
The first moment. Mentioned above are most educated people of their time; their role in perpetuation of the first samples of Yakut epos, their interest in Olonkho contributed to perception of Olonkho significance by Olonkho per formers and people as a whole.
LA. Khudyakov, a professional folklorist who was in exile in Yakutia in the XIX century, collected samples of Yakut folklore including Olonkho. His life in the North resulted in his famous works "Verkhoyanskyi sbornik" ("The Collection of the Olonkho of the Verkhoyanskyi Region") and "Kratkoe opisanie Verkhoyanskogo okruga" ("A Brief Description of the Verkhoyan skyi Region"). His opinion on Olonkho as the main folklore genre is brief and representative: "It is the major source of education for the Yakut, the main means to explain all phenomena of life" ("Kratkoe opisanie...", P.372). Thus, Olonkho is a way to view the world, to comprehend the world, similar to TV and other mass-media of today, including printed books, for the then completely illiterate population.
The second moment. Political exiles of tsar time were obviously more fre quent "guests" in Yakutia than academic researchers making rare scheduled expeditions of Saint-Petersburg Academy of Sciences. High and indisputable authority of Olonkho performers attracted exiles' interest to local oral folk lore. Practically all of the latter understood the need in and the popularity of the former (aside from just amusement and entertainment); besides, for the latter that seemed to be the only point to apply intellectual force to. Many of political exiles have become inventive researchers devoting their lives to col lecting, publishing and popularization of Yakut folklore. Their work in this area of knowledge surely required some comprehension of the language of native speakers. Particularly, a Polish exile E.K. Pekarsky (later Honorary Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences) has been compiling the "Dictionary of the Yakut Language" for about fifty years. Nearly all examples in this three volume, eight parts folio are folklore, including epic, pieces.
We have already mentioned Yakut language connoisseurs' reverential atti tude towards talented folklore performers. The phenomenon is typological, as we think of antique orators and rhetoric as an art of the antique world with all the power of acting upon the audience. However that may be, unlike rhetoricians, Olonkho performers had no need of looking for particular topics or materials, taking care of their composition (as Olonkho texts have always been structurally for centuries with variations conditioned, to greater or lesser extent, only by specificity of particular school of performance) and memorization (in this re gard Olonkho language format has been mnemonic in itself, with all its fixed speech patterns, references, characterizations, scenery description etc.). On the other hand, the exact verbal actualization (we mean the performance in all three known styles of high, medium, and low) has been dependent on the performer himself, his vocal and improvisation skills, natural narrator gifts, unique genetic memory, phantasy, fertile imagination, sense of proportion, and so on and so forth. Take, for example, the choice of words, the manner of pronouncing, of describing characters' appearance all these depended on which character was to be introduced to the audience. Bad heroes were depicted grotesquely, satirically. Those were thought to belong to hostile forces that had attacked Yakuts' ancestors in time immemorial. The oldest of them were of bestial kind Abaahy monstrous creatures of bestial kind dwelling in the Lower World. The world, in our ancestors' look, was divided into rivals Aiayy representing humans, Abaahy weird creatures of the evil and Olonkho booturs (warriors) who represented and protected the humanity KyunAimagha (people of sunny day with reins of the ) in general.
There are two points of view concerning the Olonkho origin and, corre spondingly, the Yakut's ethnogenesis: the southern and northern origin. Most of researchers are inclined to the former one, though the adherents to the last one have almost the same arguments: "The stability of patriarchal traditions with their numerous ceremonies and norms of the common law alongside with the developed ethnic self-consciousness of the community and its members and the sparse coverage of the tremendous area with households favored the rapid development and spread of the Yakut folklore genres". S.E. Malov, Associate of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , who is in favor of the theory of the southern origin wrote: "To a certain extent a clear-cut social stratification predetermined the Yakut epic literature with its strong outside influence via the Mongols of India and Tibet ".
P.A. Oiunskyi also refers the Olonkho origin to almost the same period: "The time of the Olonkho commence in the form of individual tales about the war must be dated back to the time of the Tartar-Mongolian invasion of China ".
The famous historian and folklorist G. V. Ksenofontov stated: "Oof all folk lore genres, we have to put in the first place not the feature folklore literature, but the prosaic narrative". 18 We may summarize his conclusions as follows: first, the Olonkho has the southern origin; second, the Yakut, having skipped the slave-owning system stage, were at the stage of the feudal system. "Obviously, the legendary tradition of the Yakut was formed in the upper circles of the society, who were able to deal with historical facts and to assess them in the historical perspective. 19
The opinion held by other Yakut folklorists and expressed later is currently widely accepted. They mostly considered the so called historically observable time border-line. I. V. Pukhov and G.U. Ergis hypothesized: "Olonkhos may have been created at the time when the ancestors of the Yakut preserved in their mem ory their hostile relationships with the ancient Turks in the 6 - 7 th centuries. It does not necessarily mean that the epos origin must be dated back to the 6 - 7th centuries. But the Olonkho genre could have been created at the time when the ancestors of the Yakut still sang about their fights against Turkic khans". Later these authors were more categorical:" The motives evidence the historically observable time border of the Olonkho creation as the end of the VI-VII centuries. It is possible that the Yakut heroic epos was created about that time". 20 At first sight, there is a discrepancy here: the time gap makes only a few decades. But even if we consider the time of the two Turkic khanates (the First Eastern Khanate 551,552-630 and the Second Khanate 680-745) the time of the Olonkho creation, still this date would not be appropriate. These dates can just serve as the starting point. We may state without exaggeration that the timing by these authors was a landmark in folklore science, as to state this was a coura geous act at their time. G.U. Ergis and I.V. Pukhov based their hypothesis most ly on the only toponymic word "Yutyugan". The epic expression "From the depths of Yutyugan constantly appeared enemies abaahy" evidently reflects the his torical facts of the past. L.N. Gumilev wrote that the Kurykans were the enemies of the Orkhon Turks. The former were known to be forced to send their ambas sadors to funeral feasts of the Turkic khans, and with the establishment of the Second khanate they were among their most vicious enemies".
On the one hand, the number of the numerous peoples who held the major positions in Southern Siberia at different times is not limited to the Orkhon Turks, we can also name the Ancient Uigur, Kirghiz and Seyantossky khan ates etc. in the 9 - 13 th centuries. On the other hand, the historians themselves did not share common opinion that the Kurykans were the only ancestors of the Yakut. Folklorists who work with texts, not being professional historians, depended on the opinion of the latter.
Moreover, the big politics constantly interfered in research of the history of numerically small peoples (in the 1930s above-mentioned P.A. Oiunskyi, G.V. Ksenofontov and others whose opinion differed from the principal prop ositions of the official history were repressed), and it still continues to inter fere. All this justified the aims of colonial invasions and it also was the state ment that the Siberian "tribes" would have exterminated one another without access to "the higher culture". Some historians devoted hundreds of articles to glorifying the advantages and merits of this culture. All this resulted in ne glect of the social and cultural development of all the national minorities, while the issues of their ethnogenesis study by the academic science stay at the level of the 1960s.
Despite all the objective and subjective conditions, the Yakut epos is un dergoing the process of cultural transformation, and we hope that it will be so in the future, as "Everything preserved for centuries owing to the tradi tion alone inevitably contains the truth, similarly, popular songs contain the truth, the real eternal truth and grandeur. And this is not only the grandeur of the physical body, gigantic massiveness, but also the coarse grandeur of the spirit. In the hearts of the ancient people... we can feel the elevated sadness without any tearfulness, and see courageous and independent eyes turned to the innermost of their hearts. These brave ancient people of the North seemed to know where reflections bring people at all times, i.e. that our world if just a form, phenomenon or appearance, but not the reality. All great minds an Indian mythologist, a German philosopher, Shakespeare, and other seri ous thinkers admit this". Today Olonkho, before being favorite and culti vated by the people in all stages of its history, strikes by its scale, generalization of historical and cultural experiences, phenomenon of poetic word, improvisation gift, epic guttural singing kylyhakh, and also by the high level of symbolic mentality. Therefore today in conditions of a real loss of self- identification of the small indigenous people as the Sakha people, olonkho is needed as never before, just from the point of view of the consolidation of the ethnos and its expression as a symbol of community with Turkic and Mongol peoples.
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