416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



Tunguse who, with the exception of the Manchus, are all Shaman- 

 ists. It is also to some extent in vogue among the Buryats living 

 west of Lake Baikal (those living on the east and south of that 

 lake having adopted Buddhism in its Lamaistic form), a few 

 Tartar tribes living among the Sajan and Altai Mountains (the 

 so-called Mountain Kalmuks, the Blackforest Tartars, and Shores), 

 and among some Samoyed tribes. On the other hand, Shamanism, 

 in turn, reacted on the new faiths. The Islam of the Siberian 

 Tartars and the Lamaism of the Buryats is gi"eatly mixed up with 

 Shamanistic practices, while the Russian orthodoxy, forced upon 

 the Yakuts and other native tribes of northern Siberia, forms only 

 a very thin veneer over a full-blooded Shamanism. Indeed, old 

 Rusian settlers in those far-off regions have to a high degree become 

 " Shamanized." ^ 



COSMOGONY AND WORLD VIEW OF SHAMANISM' 



Shamanism has its root in a cosmogony and world view, which is 

 substantially common to all Shamanists. According to these the 

 world consists of three spiritual realms — an upper one, a lower, and 

 a middle one. The upper world is composed of seventeen strata or 

 heavens, and constitutes the realm of light, the dwelling of the gods 

 and good spirits who protect and preserve the weak race of man; 

 the lower, composed of seven or nine strata or hells, is the realm 

 of darkness, the abode of fiends, demons, and the damned. Between 

 heaven and the netherw^orld is the surface of the earth, the habita- 

 tion of the human race, so that this middle realm is under the influ- 

 ence of both the realms named above.^ The cause of such a world 

 order was the fall of man as related in the legends of creation : In 

 the beginning all was water, neither earth nor heaven nor sun and 

 moon existed. Then Kaira Kan, the highest god, created first a be- 

 ing which was like himself and called it man (kishi). Kaira Kan 

 and the man were quietly floating over the water like two black 

 geese. But man was not contented with this blissful state, he wanted 



' " Shamanism se<>ms to be such a natural product of the continental climate with its 

 extremes of cold and heat, of the violent burgas and burans (wind- and snow-storms), 

 of the hunger and fear which attend the long winters, that not only the Talaeo-Siberians 

 and the more highly cultivated Neo-Sil)erians, but even Europeans have sometimes fallen 

 under the influence of certain Shamanistic superstitions. Such is the case with the 

 Russian peasants and officials who settle in Siberia and with the Russian, Creoles." 

 M. A. Czaplicka, Alwriginal Siberia. A study in social anthropology. Oxford, 1914, 

 p. 168. 



''Mainly abridged from Wilhelm Radlofif, Aus Sibirion, Leipzig, 1884, Vol. II, pp. 1 ff. 



» Radlofif, op. cit., p. o, would derive the conception of a world composed of strata from 

 the layers of the mountains, which the dwellers in the mountainous regions have ob- 

 served. But this, as in fact the whole rather lofty and elaborate cosmogony of the 

 Siberians, may lye due in part to the influence of Mohammedanism with its seven 

 heavens and seven hells (comp. Holmes anniversary volume, Washington, 1916, i>. 49), 

 and of Buddhi.sm with its still more numerous heavens and hells. 



