424 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



other hand, among the Ostyaks when a shaman dies the ordinary 

 custom of offering divine honors to the dead changes in his favor 

 into a complete and decided canonization.^* Among the Buryats 

 soon after a shaman dies one of his friends falls in a trance — struck 

 by invisible thunderbolt, launched by gods — and when he recovers 

 announces that the dead shaman's spirit has confided to him the 

 spot in which he wishes to rest. The body is cremated and the ashes 

 are placed in a hole cut in one of the largest trees in the appointed 

 part of the forest. The spot then becomes sacred.^^ 



The grave of a black shaman is usually shaded with aspens, and 

 the body is fastened to the earth with a stake taken from that tree.^® 



THE SHAMAN— APPEARANCE AND OUTFIT 



"In general," says Sieroshevski (1. c, p. 102), "there is in the 

 appearance of a shaman something peculiar, which enabled the 

 author after some practice to distinguish him with great certainty 

 in the midst of a number of persons. He is distinguished by a cer- 

 tain energy and mobility of the muscles of the face, which generally 

 among the Yakuts are immobile. There is also in his movements a 

 noticeable spryness." Add to this that the shaman is sometimes 

 mentally abnormal, an epileptic or afflicted with some milder neu- 

 rosis, which is aggravated by the practice of his calling and further 

 reinforced when, as is the case among some tribes, the office is 

 hereditary or runs in families, and that primitives everywhere re- 

 gard the physically, and more so the mentally, abnormal as due to 

 spirit possession. 



Besides these peculiar personal physical and psychical traits, the 

 shaman as mediator in dealings with the spirit world bears during 

 his functions outward signs to inspire the people with feelings of 

 mystery and awe, and to b(itoken his separateness from the rest of 

 the population. So the shaman at his ceremonies dons a special 

 dress — a coat {kaftan) made of cloth or bearskins, hung with pieces 

 of iron — rattles, rings, and representations of animals, or twisted 

 handkerchiefs representing snakes. All these have a definite mean- 

 ing and purpose and often a mystic character. The Yakut shamans 

 adorn their coats with a representation of the sun with holes in it, 

 and half moon, indicating the twilight that reigns in the spirit land. 

 The mythical animals on the dress signify the monsters in the spirit 

 world which the shaman tias to combat, while the iron plates are 

 to protect him against the blows of malevolent spirits. The great 



'* Landtman, op. cit., p. 46. 



'SBassett Digby, "Forefathers of the Red Indian," Nineteenth Century and After, 

 February, 192;?, p. 251. 



^«Czaplicka, op. cit., p. 201. For the description of the elaborate funeral of a Buryat 

 shaman, see Mikhailovskii, 1. c, p. 134 f. 



