Substitute Offering: An Ob Ugrian Ritual Tradition Surviving in the 20th and Early 21st Century
Substitute Offering: An Ob Ugrian Ritual Tradition Surviving in the 20th and Early 21st Century
DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.3.122-128
A.V. Baulo
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia
The substitute offering is a little known ritual practice described by Artturi Kannisto among the northern Khanty and Mansi in the early 1900s, and by the Novosibirsk ethnographers in 1985–2017. Substitution was practiced in case of the offeror’s illness, absence of a requisite domestic animal, or unsuccessful hunt. In such cases, instead of actual animals, their effigies were offered to the guardian spirits—figurines of horses, reindeer, cows, sheep, and cocks cut from birch-bark or cast of lead; alternatively, purchased toys were offered. A substitute could be a pencil drawing on paper, or an embroidered figure of a horse on cloth. The specific substitute was normally prescribed by a shaman; it had to be made only by someone unrelated to and older than the supposed offeror. The effigy and the prayer to the deity, accompanying the offering, are described. Animal effigies were kept in sacral chests, placed into the clothes of guardian spirits, tied into the corners of head cloths and ribbons of blankets to be offered. The combined version of the substitute offering includes hitherto unknown representations of a head cloth, a coat, or a robe, cut from birch-bark.
