The horse by the Yakut hunters and herders: from the mount to the cultural symbol

• Main Author: Maj, Emilie
• Other Authors: Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL), École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Ecole pratique des hautes études - EPHE PARIS, Roberte Hamayon([e-mail]), collaboration France-Hongrie (reponsable Virginie Vaté)
• Format: Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2007
• Subjects: horse; domestication; religion; shamanism; Yakut; Siberia; beliefs; breeding; hunting; chamanisme; croyances; Sibérie; Iakoute; élevage; chasse; cheval; phil; litt; Alaas; Evelyne; iakoute; iakoutes; lena river; taiga; Yakuts
• Online Access: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00311117/file/THESE_Emilie_Maj_THESE_Cheval_chez_les_Iakoute.pdf; https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00311117

In the North-East of Siberia, the Yakuts, who arrived from the Baikal region less than seven centuries ago, raise horses and cattle in the alaas, in the valleys and the taiga on the lower course of the Lena river. The bibliography in Russian language concerning this people is rich and includes narratives by travellers, accounts by administrators as well as analyses and descriptions by ethnographers prior to 1917, but dating as well of the communist period and of the post-soviet years. The theoretical analysis was fed by Western sources, including the works of Evelyne Lot-Falck, Laurence Delaby and Roberte Hamayon about the peoples of Siberia as well as those of Jean-Pierre Digard about the horse and its domestication. Cousins of the horse-riding Turkic and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia, the Yakuts are aware of their belonging to that ensemble while putting forward their originality. Conceiving their horse more like an animal of the forest than like ordinary cattle, they breed it while preserving its “wild” character. Inside a domestication system that does not try to submit the animal, this one finds a place, as well in the facts as through the symbols, between the domesticated animal and the wild beast. For the Yakuts, who have a binary economy, the equilibrium of which between hunting and cattle breeding has fluctuated according to the history of the society and the natural restraints, the horse is representative of a significant animal. In a system of thinking articulated between hunting and breeding shamanism, the stallion chief of the herd, with its fiery and independent temperament, represents for the shaman as well a way of transportation as a symbolic double during the rituals. It is as well the best exchanging object in the relation that the humans think to have with the horse giving spirits, specially during the kyjdaa ritual that began in the eighteenth century according to narratives. It was a historical period of troubles during which rich peoples legitimated their status thanks to the ...