N.P. Ostroumov as a Collector of Uzbek Folk Songs (Based on the Materials of the Central State Archives)

At the end of the 19th century, a certain amount of work was done to record, collect and popularize Uzbek folklore, including scholars studying oriental studies, local history, geography, archeology and other areas in Turkestan, as well as educational work. They translated folk legends, legends, fairy tales, proverbs and sayings, the songs they heard or wrote, often translated them into Russian and published them in periodicals, including them in their studies, literary and journalistic works, and travel notes. One of the specialists who contributed to the collection of folk art, in particular fairy tales, proverbs and songs, is the famous orientalist, ethnographer Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov. The article analyzes the folkloristic activities of the orientalist N.P. Ostroumov based on the recordings of Uzbek folk ritual songs stored in the Central State Archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

TRANSFORMATION OF WESTERN PODILLIA TRADITIONAL DANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF REGIONAL FESTIVAL MOVEMENT

The article covers the issue of transformation of traditional dance in the context of festival movement in the particular region and Ukraine as a whole. The research article analyses the functioning of art folklore festivals on the territory of Western Podillia. The study investigates the organization of art festivals of the region in historical and chronological perspective and presents the key tasks for their holding. The article partially covers the activities of some dance and folk-ritual groups of Western Podillia, which are active participants and popularisers of folk art, in particular of local traditional dances. The study reveals the issues related to the functioning and development of traditional dance in terms of folklorism, which is implemented during the «Ternopil talismans», regional festival of folk crafts, folklore and choreography, which hosts the «Ternopil Polka», festival of authentic dance (Ternopil); «Red guilder-rose», folk dance festival (Ternopil); «Bells of Lemko region», All-Ukrainian festival of Lemko culture (Bychova tract of Monastyryskyi district); «Embroidery blossoms in Borshchiv region», annual All-Ukrainian Folklore and Art Festival (Borshchiv) and other local festivals. The article highlights the importance of organizing and holding regional local holidays and folklore and art festivals in the context of the revival of the national and cultural identity of Western Podillia as an integral part of Ukraine.

The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond in the “Telling Scriptures” Tradition in Changshu, Jiangsu, China

The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond is a newly discovered manuscript (copied ca. 1993), used in the “telling scriptures” tradition in Changshu, which represents ritualized storytelling based on the vernacular narrative texts called “precious scrolls” (baojuan). The local tradition of “telling scriptures” can be traced back to the 19th century, though it may have even earlier origins. While it has been generally accepted that precious scrolls had ritual functions in the late imperial period, little research has been done on the local varieties of this type of storytelling in connection with ritual practices. The material of the Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond from Changshu demonstrates how the Mulian story, widely known in China, has been adapted to the folk ritual of the afterlife salvation of a female soul through repentance of her sin of physiological impurity. While the related ritual in the neighboring Jingjiang on the northern bank of the Yangtze River has been thoroughly studied, the Changshu practice has received little attention of scholars so far. The Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond from Changshu demonstrates that the Mulian narrative was also associated with the ritual of “breaking the Blood Pond” in the Jiangnan areas, which also provides a new angle of evaluation of the Jingjiang tradition of “telling scriptures”. This article discusses relations between modern ritual practices and several variants of the Precious Scroll of the Blood Pond, mainly using fieldwork materials collected by the author in Changshu and adjacent areas in 2011–2018.

‘Communal Hellenism’ and ancient tragedy performances in Greece (1975–95): The ritual quest

For the better part of the twentieth century, the quest for a ‘Greek’ continuity in the so-called revival of ancient drama in Greece was inextricably linked to what is termed and studied in this paper as a Ritual Quest. Rituality was understood in two forms: one was aesthetic and neoclassicist in its hermeneutic and performative codes, which were established and recycled – and as such: ritualized – in ancient tragedy productions of the National Theatre of Greece from the 1930s to the 1970s; the other, cultivated mainly during the 1980s, was cultural and centred around the idea that continuity can be traced and explored through the direct employment of Byzantine and folk ritual elements. Both aimed at eliciting the cohesive collective response of their spectators: their turning into a liminal ritual community. This was a community tied together under an ethnocentric identity, that of Greeks participating in a Greek (theatrical) phenomenon. At first through neoclassicism, then through folklore, this artistic phenomenon was seen as documenting a diachronic and essentially political modern Greek desideratum: continuity with the ancient past. Such developments were in tune with broader cultural movements in the period under study, which were reflected on the common imaginings of Antiquity in the modern Greek collective – consciousness – a sort of ‘Communal Hellenism’. The press reception of performances, apart from being a productive vehicle for the study of the productions as such, provides indispensable indexes to audience reception. Through the study of theatre reviews, we propose to explore the crucial shifts registered in the definition of Greekness and its dynamic connections to Antiquity.

Tradition in Conditions of Military Extremeness: Folk Ways of Understanding and “Overcoming” the Great Patriotic War

Introduction. In the study the authors consider the ways of understanding and overcoming the extreme conditions of the Great Patriotic The task is to define the forms and ways of “overcoming” the war conditions and its traumatizing consequences developed by Russians and to identify their connection with traditional types of worldview and folk ritual practices. Methods and materials. The analysis of folk stories recorded among different generations and rural Russian areas as well as memories about the wartime and the period after the Great Patriotic War compose the base of the article. According to the main task the authors use the method widely used in the Russian Ethnography which is called the “inside the tradition” view, or analysis from the position of its bearers. Analysis. The natural alternation of periods of prosperity and crises explains the inevitability of war, but according to popular beliefs, the impoverishment of the sacred sphere of life is the main factor of a tragedy. On the contrary, human turning to God and his / her repentance determine the possibility of overcoming a tragedy. The concept of “a rule” (and its violation) as well as the concept of “a destiny” (a shared fate) which must be restored and redistributed under the crisis according to popular beliefs play an important role in the mechanism of developing ways to “overcome” the war among the Russians during the wartime. Wartime ritual practices including baking and cutting bread, redistributing it to the front line, organizing joint meals, etc. confirm the statement. The process of the revival of religious (Orthodox) practices, and the formation of a collective memory of the war and the fallen heroes was inspired from below, from the masses. This initiative included folk forms of veneration and remembrance of the dead, the creation of sacred places associated with the war and the memory about it. Women, who became the main keepers of the tradition, who took upon themselves the functions of harmonizing the socio-psychological situation in rural areas during the difficult war and postwar years, were especially active in these processes. Results. The authors confirm the particular role of traditional types of worldview influencing the modern collective memory as well as social practices during both extreme conditions and everyday life. Ordinary people preferred to turn to centuries-old spiritual traditions of overcoming war traumas and to use the experience of preserving collective memory of them formed in the pre-revolutionary time within the peasant and Cossack communities.

Karaha Pujan

This article brings to light a kind of worship of lord Krsna practised especially by the communities of Ahir (cowherds), and Gadariya (shepherds) of eastern Uttar Pradesh, called Karaha pujan. It involves life-threatening practices performed, in a state of possession, by a bhagat, a man with charismatic authority. Besides Krsna, two forms of the goddess Sakti, namely Durga and Vansakti, are also invoked. The bhagat comes only from the Ahir or the Gadariya community. It is mostly performed under the scorching sun in summer, where the bhagat, praying to the deities, bathes in boiling hot khir (a sweet rice pudding cooked in milk), and fries puris (flat bread) dipping his hands into the boiling ghee. People come from surrounding places to witness it, feel awe for the bhagat, and believe that he is unharmed because he has been possessed by the deity or deities being worshipped. The bhagat makes predictions about the climatic conditions of the region, and about the future of the devotees, and provides solutions to their problems. This article traces similarities and parallelisms between this folk ritual performance and folk Tantric ways of worship.

СARVERS OF GINGERBREAD BOARDS: TRADITIONS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

This article is devoted to the traditions and features of the craft of gingerbread boards' carvers of Tver. As known, the history of the emergence and the development of the printed gingerbread is inextricably linked with the folk cultural tradition. From the first steps, the gingerbread started to be actively introduced into the folk ritual practice, not only in the calendar agrarian ritual zone, but also in the family household ritual circle, often replacing other forms of ceremonial baking. The whole process of making gingerbread was sacred, including the manufacture of a carved board, the preparation of the gingerbread and its functioning in the ceremony. That is what explains the high status of the printed gingerbread, which it acquired in the social life of our compatriots, although its meanings have partly changed nowadays. The importance of making a gingerbread board was due not only to the sacred nature and patterns that the carver applied, but also to the price of work and material. However, the value of gingerbread was provided primarily by the magical role of dough ingredients, such as flour (obtained from grain), honey, floral spices, but at the same time it was largely determined by the cost of gingerbread. Unfortunately, the cultural zones of the folk gingerbread tradition are poorly and unevenly understood. One of the little-studied pages in the history of printed gingerbread is the work of masters-carvers of gingerbread boards, who largely determined the plan for expressing the mythological and poetic sacred meanings of the traditional gingerbread.

Dance and Hinduism

Dance is a central practice in Hinduism across a variety of contexts, mythological narratives, and time periods. Gods such as Śiva and Kṛṣṇa are dancers, and humans also dance, often embodying these gods as part of bhakti, or devotion. Dance is a rich area for exploring the ways categories are created and negotiated: classical and folk, local and global, male and female, East and West, text and practice, colonial and postcolonial, and India and its diaspora. Coursing through these dynamic categories are questions of identity: gender, nationality, politics, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and immigrant experience—all experienced through the embodiment of devotional dance forms that continue to undergo many iterations as new populations, venues, and intentions emerge. This bibliography provides resources for the history and practices of dances that range from folk/ritual to classical. Folk dance forms are devotional and cultural, such as popular garba and raas dancing. Other ritual dances invite a god to be embodied in the devotee through possession or depicted theatrically in solos and dance-dramas. The emphasis of the majority of the scholarship is weighted toward the formation and practice of eight classical dance forms. These have been constructed out of a hybridization of preexisting regional temple, court, and folk styles in collaboration with the ancient textual authority of the Nāṭyaśāstra, “Science of Dance-Drama,” during the early 20th century. This Sanskrit compendium infused technical vocabulary, movement grammars, a sacred origin story, and rasa, an audience-receptivity theory of aesthetic mood experienced by audience members as created by dancers through their physical expressions, or bhāvas. In the early 1900s, social welfare movements converged on an opportunity to respond to the ills of society and build an awareness of arts that could support an emerging nationalism. “Reformers” and “revivalists” claimed to undo systems of oppression of women, such as preventing dedication of devadāsīs who danced in Hindu temples, and “rescue” dances with ties to ancient and religious origins from the hands of these hereditary dancers, whose loss of patronage and misunderstood social systems led to them being labeled prostitutes under the British Raj. One of the first ongoing waves of critical scholarship reveals the erased histories and consequences of these changes. A second strand seeks to situate dance within transnational Hindu contexts. A third trajectory validates contemporary experiments that reframe the interpretive possibilities of religious and gendered themes across hybridized movement grammars within the bodies of dancers and across diasporic geographies.