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| 1 | Legal and regulatory culture is an important part of the cultural heritage of any people. Mongolian and wider – the Turkic-Mongolian peoples have ancient traditions of legal consciousness, which were formed in the context of the traditional culture of hunters, nomadic pastoralists, warriors. A special layer of the traditional legal and regulatory culture of nomads and hunters, impregnated with shamanistic views are magical devices and sacred objects. The totality of such items is quite wide and diverse – it included meteorites ("celestial arrows"), revered animals and parts of their bodies, different types of weapons. The complex of traditional representations, prohibitions, customs and rituals can be described as measures aimed at combating offenses and contributing to the protection of interests in the dispute of the parties. This article focuses on magic techniques and tools aimed at combating theft in a nomad environment. This offense was the most common in the nomadic tradition. In the cases of unauthorized by an official investigation and a public court of offenses magical methods were often used. Having lost hope for voluntary recognition, the victims publicly announced the performance of the rite. As a rule, fear of supernatural forces, exposed the criminal. Thus, religious beliefs had a significant impact on the current customs of the traditional legal system of the Buryats in the 19th century. The existence of this form of justice could be a consequence of the process of regressive development of law with the fall of the Mongolian empire, when many archaic ideas and rituals came to life. On the other hand, on the periphery of the Mongolian state, the magic in the regulatory and legal system could not lose its significance. Keywords: customary law, religious beliefs, theft, revered animals, wolf | 1257 | ||||
| 2 | The main purpose of human in any culture, including the culture of the nomads of Inner Asia, is procreation. The standard of traditional society was the life of its members in the family, surrounded by children and grandchildren. This article attempts to accumulate known material reflecting the features of the reproductive culture of the Turkic-Mongolic peoples of Inner Asia, representatives of predominantly nomadic culture, its development right up to the beginning of the 20th century. Research interest focused on basic ideas and actions that program the future family well-being of nomadic society young members. Attention was also focused to the problem of extramarital relations of maidens and women among the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Inner Asia, as an important category of reproductive culture. A comparative historical and comparative typological analysis of the worldview, the ritual sphere and the legal culture of nomads revealed a common ideological layer, which formed the idea of the need for marriage and the sinfulness of loneliness. People who did not marry, or those who remained childless, became outcasts of society. They were associated by a number of negative ideas and will accept, including the views of the transformation of unmarried childless women after death into evil spirits that harm women and children. The study of the problem of chastity in the nomadic environment shows the divergence of views and customs of the traditional society with the ethical standards reflected in the legal culture of the Mongolian empire and its successors. The laws of the Mongol Empire differed most rigorously. In the process of further development of the Mongolian law, there is a softening of punishments for illegal sexual relations, along with the growing loyalty of society to extramarital relations and the birth of illegitimate children. The reason for this situation was, in our opinion, a gender imbalance that developed in a nomadic society by the 17th – 19th centuries, a high mortality rate among women of reproductive age and children. In this regard, the scenario of reproductive behavior in the culture of the Mongolic peoples has become focused on the birth of children without any restrictions. Keywords: Inner Asia, Turkic-Mongolian peoples, reproductive culture, traditional worldview, extramarital affairs | 980 | ||||
| 3 | The aim of this work is to analyze the practical and symbolic significance of milk food in the culture of the nomads of Inner Asia. The chronological framework of the work covers the late 19th — mid of 20th centuries. The research is based on historical, ethnographic and folklore materials. Comparative-historical and comparative-typological analysis of the worldview, economic practices, ritual sphere of nomads associated with the food complex, made it possible to identify a general worldview layer that formed the idea of the practical and sacred significance of dairy food, its functions of socio-normative regulation of society. The high importance of milk in the food complex and its white color predetermined the sacredness of milk and substantiated a wide range of its ritual use. The study of the daily practices of obtaining, processing, storing and consuming dairy food among the nomads of Inner Asia on a long chronological cut and in a wide territorial framework shows that dairy food has always had the status of “ritual”, and not only in situations of a sacred order. The sacred status of white food as a symbol of abundance determined the system of special restrictions and prohibitions accompanying the receipt of milk, its processing and storage. Milk food is the closest to the concept of “food norm” is most closely related, embodied in various forms. Unlike other main food of nomads — meat, milk food was intended to unite society, making the rich and the poor, insiders and outsiders equal. It was revealed that in the Buryat culture, one of the types of dairy food, the fermented milk product of kurunga (Buryat. kürenge), is one of the key markers of social community — the clan along with the ancestral fire, tamga, with which ideas about the power of the clan and its well-being are associated. Keywords: Inner Asia, Turkic-Mongol peoples, food complex, milk, ritual, social functions, simbolizm | 1014 | ||||
| 4 | For the Buryats, the concept of the motherland is not abstract but filled with concrete content, the main components of which are the natural elements of the ancestral territory: an ancestral mountain, a river or lake, fields and meadows, forests, individual groves, trees, and stones. These objects also include springs. The relevance of the work arises from the insufficient research into the cult of water in the Buryat tradition in general and mineral springs in particular. The aim of the article is to examine the features of the existence of the water cult and the place of mineral springs in the tradition of the Cis-Baikal Buryats living north of Lake Baikal. The study’s objectives included examining the image of water sources, their status, and their functions in the tradition of the CisBaikal Buryats. The sources of the study were historical and ethnographic, folklore materials, and materials from the author’s field research. A comparative historical method was used in the study, which helps identify commonalities in understanding and appreciating natural phenomena in the culture of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples. The study suggests that the Cis-Baikal Buryats retained ideas about “living” water – the water of some springs and lakes was associated with it. However, the cult of healing springs, the Arshans, did not develop in the CisBaikal Buryat tradition for several reasons: 1. The generic status of a water source, which determines the relevance of ideas about the territorial boundaries of the effectiveness of its therapeutic effect. 2. Spring water acquired magical healing properties in the process of ritual transformation with the active participation of a shaman. Such water could cure any disease. In this regard, the classification of mineral springs according to their medicinal properties may not have been relevant. 3. Moreover, in Transbaikalia, much of the work on the popularization of arshans, including their discovery and the determination of the medicinal properties of water, was done by the Buddhist church, whose influence did not extend to Cis-Baikal Keywords: Pre-Baikal Buryats, water cult, healing springs, Buryat shamans, ritual practices | 138 | ||||