A Tuvan hero tale, with commentary, morphemic analysis, and translation.

• Author: Harrison, K. David

INTRODUCTION

Tuvan is a Turkic language spoken by both nomadic and sedentary populations in South Siberia, Western Mongolia, and the People's Republic of China. The Tuvan epic tale represents a living but endangered oral genre of considerable antiquity. In the example tale presented here, the heroine, a girl named Bora-Seelei, must conceal her sex, assume her dead brother's identity, and embark on a difficult quest with the ultimate goal of restoring her brother (Boktu-Kiris) to life. She sets out, armed only with her own wits, her magical powers, a bow and arrows, and clever talking horse. In the course of the tale, she overcomes challenges and works feats of deception, prowess, and magic needed to bring about the happy ending. The text presented here is a phonemic transcription, with annotation and translation, of a short version of the tale told in 1998 by a prominent Tuvan storyteller, Mr. Sojdak-ool Xapilakovic Xovalig (born 1929). The tale and accompanying analysis afford insights into Tuvan grammatical structures, performativity, oral genres, and the culture of Inner Asian nomads. It is prefaced with a commentary describing the cultural context of epic tales, the social context of this endangered genre, and structural (linguistic) aspects of the tale itself. A video recording to accompany this article may be downloaded at http://tuvan.swarthmore.edu. The video shows the tale told in its natural setting at a nomadic camp, to a Tuvan audience, with domestic animals and ambient sounds. (1)

TUVAN MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CULTURE

Tuvans are linguistically a Turkic people (Castren 1857, Katanov 1903, Menges 1955), residing in what is considered to be the ancient Siberian homeland of the Turks, the Altai mountain region extending across South Siberia and Western Mongolia. According to a 1989 census (cited in Mongus 1996), there are over 198,000 Tuvans in the titular republic, and a few thousand more outside its borders, including some just to the north in the Krasnoyarsk district, several thousand in Western Mongolia, and a few hundred in Xinjiang, China.

Though Tuvans have been traditionally transhumant pastoralists and hunters, most are now sedentary, residing in villages and towns. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate of the numbers of Tuvans who still live as nomads, but knowledgeable estimates put that number at approximately one-quarter of the current Tuvan population, perhaps under 70,000 people. Nomadic Tuvans migrate with their animals four to five times a year to long-established seasonal campsites. A typical nomadic camp (aal) will have from two to five yurts housing from two to eight people, usually all members of an extended kin group. Yurt camps vary in composition and membership depending on the season, location, resources, and other factors. The basic dwelling is the yurt (og), made of a collapsible wooden lattice frame covered with a thick layer of handmade felt. Tuvan nomads herd (subject to local conditions) domesticated yaks, cows (or yak-cow hybrids), camels, horses, sheep, and goats. Hunting of birds, marmots, bears, wild pig, wild deer, squirrels, and mountain goats supplements their diet and provides fur. Traditional technologies central to nomadic life include the processing of milk products, production of leather and felt, blacksmithing, making of wooden household implements, sewing, hunting, and animal domestication (Vainshtein 1980). The nomads' material culture and transhumant, pastoralist life figure prominently in this and all Tuvan stories.

Spiritual culture also figures prominently in Tuvan oral tradition. Tuvans are animists who believe in the presence of local or "earth" spirits (cer eezi) residing in significant topographical features (e.g., springs, mountain passes, caves) and animals (especially the bear). The Tuvan cosmology also includes a large number of supernatural beings (demons, devils) inhabiting the lower world and a similar number in the upper world or "nine heavens" (tos deer). Inspirational practitioners known as xam ("shamans") were and remain a traditional accompaniment (though not an essential element) to the practice of animism. Tuvans are also, since the seventeenth century, Lamaist Buddhists, and they have long practiced Buddhism and animism in parallel and to a significant degree in syncretism (Mongus 1994). It is the pre-Buddhist Tuvan animist cosmology that appears in epic tales. In fact, such tales, along with shamans' songs (Kenin-Lopsan 1994) and other sacred texts, provide the primary source for knowledge about this belief system.

THE TUVAN EPIC TALE

Storytelling was once a profession in Tuva, as well as an avocation practiced by both men and women living as nomadic herders. An itinerant storyteller (tooldzu) might visit a nomadic encampment for an extended period, telling a single epic story in installments over a succession of evenings. A story would typically begin at evening teatime, after the day's major outdoor chores had been completed and the animals were in the stockade. With the opening words sijaan am, formulaic speech roughly translatable as "once upon a time," a story would begin. Listeners might from time to time call out sijaan, intended to urge on the teller in his or her performance. Many older Tuvans, when interviewed, could recall storytelling sessions from their childhood that would extend late into the night and continue for several evenings. A tale could be accompanied by playing the igil, a bowed horse-head fiddle made of wood, or bizaanci, a bowed two-stringed instrument with a skin-covered resonator, but instrumental accompaniment was not essential.

The tale presented here, Boktu-Kiris Bora-Seelei, is a hero tale (Grebnev 1960), the continuation of an ancient oral tradition. The Turkic epic tale has survived as a living, spoken genre in a number of Turkic daughter languages (Chadwick and Zhirmunsky 1969, Reichl 1992, Shoolbraid 1997). The most celebrated of these is the Kyrgyz epic Manas, said to comprise over half a million lines. A number of motifs common to folktales the world over appear in Boktu-Kiris. These include the arming of the warrior; wrestling; disguised identity, cross-dressing, and gender play; a talking horse that gives advice; magical objects (e.g., a ring); magical powers (e.g., divination, shape-changing ability); successions of three (e.g., competitions, beasts, circumambulations); the use of a cave as a hiding place; animals symbolizing specific traits (e.g., hare = swiftness), and use of symbolic numbers (e.g., three, four, nine). Other motifs more specific to the Tuvan context include references to animal organs (e.g., fat, liver, intestines); the "taiga" (mountain forest); Tuvan-style wrestling; images of meat piled high to denote abundance; a metaphor of the future as being located behind and the past out in front; frequent reference to cardinal directions.

The Tuvan epic tale, called a tool, has two recognized subgenres: maadirlig tool, 'hero tale', and simply tool (all other types) (Orus-ool 1997). The longest Tuvan epic tale in print is a version of Boktu-Kiris in Tuvan numbering 9,654 lines and consisting of portions told by various storytellers edited into a single, amalgamated tale (Orus-ool 1995). A shorter version numbering 5,060 lines with parallel free translation into Russian was published in 1997 by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Orus-ool 1997). Though a few Tuvan texts have been translated into Russian (Taube 1994, Orus-ool 1997), German (Taube 1978, 1980), and English (Kenin-Lopsan 1997), no Tuvan epic tale has been translated into English. Linguists have been audio-recording Tuvan oral genres since at least 1962 (Orus-ool 1997). Recordings from the 1960s and later are effectively unavailable, existing only on reel-to-reel and other legacy format tapes in the archives of the Tuvan Institute for Humanitarian Researches (TIGI) located in Tuva's capital city of Kyzyl. Making new recordings in digital video should be an urgent priority, given the perilous status of the genre.

Tuvan epic storytelling is now a seriously endangered genre. In expeditions undertaken in Tuvan and Mongolia in 1995, 1998, 2000, and 2003, the author found no competent storytellers under the age of forty-five. By contrast, it is still easy to locate speakers of all ages who can recite some other oral genres including praise songs (maktal), blessing songs (joreel), tongue-twisters (durgen cugaa), shamanic chants (algis), stories (cugaa), metered verse (suluk), Buddhist prayers (morgul), songs (ir), aphorisms (uleger sos), and riddles (tivizik). There are hopeful signs, however, that within some families the epic tradition is indeed being passed on. In western Mongolia in 2000, the author recorded a female storyteller, age fifty-two, whose nineteen-year-old son sat next to her and lip-synched many of her lines as she told the story, but would not himself consent to tell a story solo. The demise of epic storytelling can be attributed to many factors. Among these are the invasion of pop culture, which diminishes the attraction of oral tales, the decrease in the nomadic lifestyle which is the most natural setting for tale-telling, and the advent of widespread literacy, which diminishes the perceived need to memorize long tales. Unlike "throat-singing," the immensely popular Tuvan cultural export (Levin and Edgerton 1999, Levin and Suzukei 2006), epic storytelling has not yet attracted a foreign audience. Nor is it likely to, given its relative lack of theatrics and demanding linguistic complexity. Tuvan youth with talent are increasingly drawn exclusively to throat-singing and its promise of a lucrative stage career, leading to a neglect of epic genres. This neglect was most evident in a Tuva-wide story-telling competition held in 2003, in which master storyteller Sojdak-ool Xovalig took first prize in the epic genre category. He wistfully recounted that his reward was "twelve tea bowls and an...