Article

Author

PP.

Manchu Shamanic Dance

Guo Shuyun

57-62

Musical Instruments, Manchurian

Liu Gui-teng

103-22

Nanai Shaman Chant

Tatyana Bulgakova

135-44

Shaman in Myths & Tales

Oake Hultkrantz

145-58

Poe:try of Shamanism

Marjorie Balzer

171-88

Performing Shamanism

Miha`ly Hoppa`l

273-80

"The main spirit of the willow worship is Foduo Mama and ... she is the real incarnation of the celestial tree and she is the divinity who gave birth to the humanity at the origin of the world : she is considered the Mother of things and human beings."

"The main spirit of the Sea worship is the female divinity Deligeaimu Mama : she is the goddess ... with the head of a fish and body of a woman."

p.

#

dance

58

1^st

"half-naked dance : tree leaves ... covered the private parts of shaman."

2^nd

"blood worship dance ... inside the sea worship ceremony ... : ...

59

Shamans ... climb up a pole to place ... a cup full of whale’s blood."

3^rd

" ‘breast dance’ ... . Keeping with hands the breast and moving it up and down".

4^th

"dance with final sexual intercourse, ... women and men got together and made love and the babies were considered children of the divinities."

"The shamanic drum is called shengu in the Manchu language. The drums used for Manchu shamanistic rituals can be classified into two categories : zhuangu and dangu."

zhuangu

dangu

area

Hei-lon-Jian

Liao-don

frame

wood

iron

grip

rings for gripping

handle at its side

p. 106

"zhuangu can be classified into two categories : elliptic ones and round ones."

p. 107

"elliptic ... drums ... used by the Manchu-Tungus Hezhen" : "this magic drum ... among Hezhens living near the Songhuajiang River, ... had a narrow frame ... . Paintings decorate the drum."

"the round zhuangu" : "The zhuangu used in the Manchu court ... rightly belonged to this category. ... it had a ring in the center of its back, which was attached to the frame by twelve cords".

"Metal jingles ... clash in the course of performance ... . The jingles of zhuangu ... can be classified into two categories ..., namely ring-shaped ones or coin-shaped ones. ... Such coins are flat round pieces, with a hole in the centre ... . Usually several such coins stringed {strung} together with a wire

p. 108

make a set of drum jingles ... . The zhuangu of the Fucha clan in Ningan county, Heilongjiang province has ... Inside its frame, ... an iron bar on which are stringed eight copper coins."

"before performance, shamans have to heat the magic drum to make the drum head tense, so that it may produce melodious music."

p. 109

"Zhuangu is played with the help of drumsticks and this distinguishes it from the dapu (a kind of instrument similar to zhuangu) in Xiniang province, which is played directly with the hands. ... drumsticks ... are covered with skin of bears, otters and roe deers".

"The basic rule of drumbeats of zhuangu is that ... three beats for a unit."

p. 110

"Another magic drum is called dangu, or taipinggu.

p. 111

The shaman ... beats a drum with his hands. The drum is iron-framed, covered with animal skin on one side, and carrying several rings at its handle."

"Zaitao and Yunbaohui ... related in The Aristocratic Life of the Late Qing Dysnasty ... :
The shaman wears a magic cap, ties to his body waistbells, and beats a skin-covered drum which has a handle at its lower part".

p. 112

"The paper drum (zhi gu) and the large pigu (da pi gu) belong to the category of dangu and the category of zhuangu respectively, for some dangus are covered with paper and some zhuangus are sometimes called pigu."

"in Xinbin county of Liaoning province ... people use dangu in their sacrificial rituals. It is the same case with the Mongols ... . To illustrate, the bo (shaman of the Mongols) in Kerqin area use this kind of magic drums".

Different from the zhuangu, the horizontal diameter of dangu is longer than its vertical diameter ... . The head of dangu is made of animal skin ... . Before being used as cover on a dangu, the animal skin must be immersed in water for some time to make it soft".

"The frame is made of flat and thin iron bar and is about one cm wide, much narrower that the frame of a zhuangu." {This ingredient may be of Manchu origin, inasmuch as iron mines occur in Manchuria.}

p. 113

"Larger dangus have longer and thicker drumbeaters, which are often twined with cloth strips."

"As dangus are smaller and lighters, and have handles; they can be manipulated more easily and thus are capable of producing more divermentos than zhuangus."

p. 114

waistbells, ... etc."

p. 115

"two shaman ladies ... wear embroidered ropes, jewelleries, embroidered thick-soled shoes. One of them begins to play sanxian, another ties bunches of copperbells to her waist".

"Waistbells are conic or tubular, and are made of iron or copper. ... A set of conic bells of the Xu family in Kuandian Manchu autonomous county of Liaoning province has 24 bells ... . The set of conic bells of the Fucha family in Ningan county of Heilongjiang province has 40 bells".

Shamans give directions in the identity of a god, and their assistants (called zailizi in Chinese) explain these direction to others".

"in Chinese ancient documents : the painter pictures thunder like two drums stacked together." "What is more, the ancient Chinese character lei (thunder) is just like two drums stacked together".

"Shengjiangs (counterpart of shamans) use magic drums and waistbells to invite gods to come down, to eulogize gods, to see gods off and to drive demons away. Though shengjiangs do not go through the stage of becoming gods incarante, they are ... in the process of pao wang hun quan zi (descent to the underworld) and pao tian men quan zi (ascent to heaven), due to the influence of magic drums and waistbells."

p. 135

"Spirits do not take in a usual speech, but they hear incantation and chanting and melodious speech well. The shaman recitative chanting yayaory reaches them most easily. It is so reliable a means to attract the spirits[’] attention ... that shamans are fearful to use it in vain."

p. 136

"Lamenting intonation is the means of talking with a soul of a dead person."

Thus, wishing to prevent ... a rain some Nanais capable of it performed the rite pulediury. A performer appealed to the animated clouds, constantly interrupting his speech with melodiously pronounced word puaeh that was accompanied by gestures as if dispersing the clouds with alternating movements of the arms. ...

p. 137

Performing the tsecteriury rite a person feeds some spirit (for example, the owner of hunting forest Podza placed in the flame of the fire). H throws into the fire a pinch of [food]. Every throwing gesture is accompanied with the word-tune tseah." {cf. [Strong’s 6627] /s.a>ah/ ‘excrement’ (dry turds being the usual fuel for fire amongst, e.g., tbe Beduin)}

p. 138

Where could all these words come from? The seven (spirit) utters them himself. But for him, I would never chant so much and well."

p. 139

"Not knowing other languages at all, the shaman can chant for a long time in Manchurian or in Udekhe or in some other tongue. ... Even being weak because of old age and diseases, the shaman feels a burst of energy by alter[ation;] he begins shamanising and for a long time chants, dances and surprises a stranger by his power."

p. 139

"According to Nanai ideas, the spirits like to regale themselves on ... spider’s web, rare roots and some other quite material substances. One can pass such food to them only by introducing them into the material world. Some of the spirits involved ..., are placed at a small laid table as their images (carved out of wood and decorated with shavings). Other ones move by turns into the shaman[’s] body and receive food at the moment an assistant puts a pinch of food into the shaman’s mouth. Such alternating incarnation of spirits in the shaman[’s] body is quite obvious for the people around, for each of them {the incarnating spirits} behaves so differently. One of them champs greedily and with relish, another one is not able to keep on his legs because of old age ... . ...

The most noticeable musically is the appearance of Manchurian spirits who bring ethnically original ... rhythm along with them. The other spirits’ tunes are ... individual ones as well. For example, the spirit ngewen, dwelling in the mountains comes with the specific exclamation hogogo-hogogo, {cf. {Strong’s 1901] /hagig/ ‘meditation’ – ascetics commonly go to mountains for meditating} inherent in him alone. Having come into the shaman’s body and approached the laid

p. 140

table, some spirits ... chant out the word-tune hey."

"Such a rite travel through the spirits’ world is the rite taochiory. During it the spirit of the shaman, who chants in a dark room, with assistance of spirits gets to ... the sphere of the patient’s dreams ... . He searches out the being, who has taken the sick person’s soul, in his corresponding dream. Then the shaman follows the tracks of this being farther through the space of the patient’s dreams, through the different events of this [patient’s] various dreams. {This would be a variety of "mutual dreaming".} Having found the lost soul the shaman[’s] {helping-}spirits run with it from the pursuit {by the soul’s erstwhile captors} and places it in a special safe refuge.

The ningmachiory fortune telling belongs to the rites of this type, with the shaman continuing himself to making a ‘diagnosis’, identifying the whereabout of that soul of a lost or a sick person.

Some episodes of the big shaman kasa ceremony (sending the souls of the deceased to the world of death buni), namely searching for the souls of the deceased or travel with them along the road to the buni, a[p]pertain to rite-travels as well."

"For example some shaman could materialise a hawk of a spirit. Curing patients with festaring {festering} wounds he called this spirit by means of a drum and chant. ... Then the fish skin stretched over the window instead of glass broke with noice {noise} and the hawk [did] suck the pus out of the wound".

p. 142

At a certain point on his path to the world of the dead buni[,] the shaman stopped chanting and went to sleep ... . Without a drum and chant he overcame in his dream the next difficult stretch of the road. ... The people around him understood it as the ringing of the bell on the neck of one of the dogs (or one of the reindeers) that was working that moment and carrying the sledge loaded with the souls of the deceased and with their goods and chattelled {chattels} further to the buni. ... One could count all the nine bells this way and all this time the shaman was conveying the souls by a dog team (or by reindeers) in his dream at will."

"Such a performance of a ritual task in a dream ... is one of the basic kin[d]s of tudin practice. According to ... dates {data}, tudins excell shamans in power, and there were considerably fewer tudins than shamans among the Nanais ... . {Another definition for /tudin/ is "person similar to shaman who diagnoses illness and acts as control on shaman’s trance" (FT, p. xxi)}. Tudins ... were able "to see the road along which the shaman went while shamanising" ... . And ..., he could go along the roads of the other world of his own."

p. 143

"At the beginning of her dream [a female tudin] called her mother (that is[,] her [mother’s] spirit) to help. Then together with this mother she left for [a vanished dead man]’s house ... . Having been carried into the November night ..., she saw four men binding [the dead man]’s hands and feet and carrying him along the Naikhin channel ice ... . After that [the female tudin] and her mother[’s] spirit followed the dead-body movements under the ice up to the place where it got frozen into the ice and stopped. ... [Later] the body was found. It was just in the place and posture [the female tudin] had described."

"Sometimes it was enough for tudin to think a little and he (his soul) was transferred to the point of the other world he needed. ... [A certain man], who had a tudin’s gift ... told me that in his dreams he had often looked down on the world from somewhere above, and observed for example how some times a shamaness, dancing, beating the drum and chanting[,] slowly moved along the curves of channels and small rivers. {I likewise have in a dreams looked down, from the sky above, on a body of water (the sea, in my case).} Seeing her road as a whole, realising that it would be better to straighten it, and feeling himself capable of making this travel considerably quicker, [the male tudin] looked ... hard".

"And it is important that the travel in a dream is often accompanied with certain musical sounds. ... Such a specific phenomenon as the chanting of sleeping tudins, travelling about in their dreams ... helps to achieve some magical purpose, ... just at the moment when ... he is in need of some means that can support him."

"When a shaman of the Yurak Samoyed dies, a manlike doll is made ... to represent him. The family gives this doll food for five or six years and then places it beside the coffin. Some of these dolls have their own little hut. Now and then people visit the doll, make offerings to it and ask it to counsel them on important matters of daily life (Lehtisalo 1924:141 ff)."

"Among the Buryat, ... both male and female shamans were worshipped after their death. Their images, or ongon, were placed on the heights where they were buried. They were thought to be protective spirits (Holmberg 1927:499)."

p.

shaman-tale

152

[Tungus] "To escape a cannibal who had devoured his brothers and sisters, ... the young man hid in a sack. Peeking out of, after a while, he found that he was in the sky where Thunder lived. ... Only when he lay down beside Thunder’s beautiful daughter did she see him. She recognized him

153

as being a great shaman ... . The girl gave him a horse on which he could ride back to earth. Alas, the cannibal, in disguise was awaiting him ... (Suslove and Menges 1983:85 ff)."

154

[Yakut] "Before he became a shaman, Bu:ka:sh U:lla:ya:n and his fellow traveller were in a boat ... . ... However, a frightful burst of thunder suddenly exploded, and Bu:ka:sh U:lla:ya:n was torn apart. His companion collected the strewn pieces and went to call the others ... . Some time later, he returned ..., ... found the dead man alive and well ... . ... The Thunder god had come down from the sky and ... had then put him together again and made him a shaman (Friedrich and Buddruss eds. 1955:175 ff; Findeisen 1970:339 ff)."

p. 176

One shaman "had acquired his guardian spirit from having accidentally camped at the burial of a deceased Tungus (Evenk) shaman. Thus, during his seances, ...

p. 177

the Tungus shamanic spirit "took possession" ... . This particular shaman also had a ‘Russian devil’ and two very bawdy male and female ‘demons’ as helpers who could both terrify and titillate his audiences."

p. 179, fn. 14

"Discussion of sexual symbolism in Siberian shamanism is far rarer than its occurrence. ... See also Austerlitz (1984)."

p. 182

"A few ... literate practicing shamans ... even joke about their sexual shamanic metaphors."

my body stretches ..." (Ko``halmi 1973:107 ...)."