O Father of the Seven Skies –
I too have been a God-spirit,
descendant of the bright
ancestor,
descendant of the all-hearing
ancestor,
though set upon the firmament
of the Earth!
But the Son of the Master of
Towns –
is he your Father’s heir?
the son of the Master of the
Hamlets –
is he your Mother’s heir?
O Father of the Seven Skies?
Please send down
ten mighty animals
from the abundant celestial
pastures!
And ten mighty animals
did descend.
I hear the Son of the Master
of Towns
went into the woods.
Like the crack of the briar
nut
on strong teeth
he slew the celestial
messengers.
Like the crack of the cherry
nut
on strong teeth
he slew the celestial
messengers.
And into his sable nest
onto his downy seat
he fell like a
broad-shouldered pine.
I too have been a God-spirit.
O Mother, hear me!
O Father, hear me!
Please send down
twenty mighty animals from
the abundant celestial
pastures.
As soon as
twenty mighty animals
were set upon the firmament
of the Earth
the piercing cries
of the forest giants
rose again
in the woods near the house.
But they died out again
with a crack of the cherry nut
on the strong teeth
of the Son of the Towns.
They died out again
with a crack of the briar nut
on the strong teeth
of the Son of the Hamlets.
I hear
he fell again
into his sable nest
onto his downy seat
like a broad-shouldered pine
tree.
O Father of the Seven Skies,
my forefather, hear me!
O Mother of the Seven Skies,
my foremother, hear me!
The Son of the Master of Towns
–
is he your Father’s heir?
The Son of the Master of
Hamlets –
is he your Mother’s heir?
Please send down
the leader of the hundred
animals,
my mother the White-Neck!
In the woods by the house
the piercing cries
of the forest giants
rise again.
The Son of the Master of Towns
goes into the woods.
The crack of the cherry nut
on strong teeth
is all I hear.
The crack of the briar nut
on strong teeth
is all I hear.
Yet by the White-necked Deer
by my White-Necked Mother
by the eight-layered bow
he is brought to the ground.
O Son of the Master of Towns,
O Son of the Master of
Hamlets,
you have slaughtered
my offspring,
the mighty animals,
with the crack of a briar nut
on strong teeth –
with the crack of a cherry nut
on strong teeth.
But the sacred clan-mother,
the great White-Neck
you cannot destroy!
Now,
since you have overthrown
at daybreak
that poor son of mine
sent from the skies,
you shall spread the
sacred happy news of him
to the towns and the hamlets,
including your own sinful
town.
You shall raise
a sacred house
higher than the highest
beautiful houses.
You shall make
a broad flooring of three planks
in the western corner.
You shall encircle
this bright home
with sacred smoke.
You shall humbly rest
the head of the good son
on that fresh flooring
with a bowl of hot food
behind.
Only when this is done
at the man-dance
may the children of the three tribes
come together.
Only when this is done
may you hear
the five songs of the taiga
from five open-hearted sons.
And only after this
may you call for the
hump-backed
merry pranksters.
And in the future
when the lovely woman-faced
happy world
shall come to pass,
when the hunting tracks
of the blood-children
shall blaze without fear –
children of the eternal tree,
dwellers of the Lower World,
children of the severed navel
cord –
you shall remember
my testament.
(Khanty,Siberia )
commentary
Source : Translation from Khanty & Russian
by Alexander Vaschenko & Claude Clayton Smith, in The Way of Kinship, An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature
(University of Minnesota Press, 2010), pp. 213-217.
(1) What continues into the present is the Khanty Bear Feast, still practiced on native grounds while entering into a new poetry that keeps alive the old images & powers. Of Taragupta’s connection to this his translators write: “Born in 1945 in the village of Poslovy in the Yama-Nenets autonomous region ... Taragupta devotes his time to restoring the ancient Khanty Bear Feast epic and native philosophy as well as restoring the art of making native musical instruments. ... In ‘The Prayer of the Bear” the son of the master of towns and hamlets is the ancient Khanty hunter who kills the Bear. The Son of the Sky is the Sacred Bear himself, son of Nurni Torum, the supreme god of the Khanty, Father of the Skies. The forest giants are powerful spirits, malevolent toward men, but often stupid. The White-Neck Mother is the ancient She-Deer. ... Bear worship is known through virtually the whole of Siberia, from the Komi people west of theUral Mountains to the Ainu of Sakhalin Island.”
(2) As a witness to the Khanty Bear Feast, the Kiowa Indian novelist N. Scott Momaday writes: “In the Khanty bear ceremony, one of the principal participants is a singer. He carries a stick on which there are a hundred notches. Each notch represents a song. The singer sings these hundred songs during the ceremony, which lasts four or five days. The songs are committed to the singer’s memory. This is a remarkable feat of memorization and indicates beyond doubt that the oral tradition of the Khanty people is as vital as was the oral tradition of the Anglo-Saxons who recited Beowulf in the ninth century or of the Navajo singer who sings the Night Chant in the twenty-first century. Words are the keys, language is the repository of culture.” (in The Way of Kinship, p. x)
(1) What continues into the present is the Khanty Bear Feast, still practiced on native grounds while entering into a new poetry that keeps alive the old images & powers. Of Taragupta’s connection to this his translators write: “Born in 1945 in the village of Poslovy in the Yama-Nenets autonomous region ... Taragupta devotes his time to restoring the ancient Khanty Bear Feast epic and native philosophy as well as restoring the art of making native musical instruments. ... In ‘The Prayer of the Bear” the son of the master of towns and hamlets is the ancient Khanty hunter who kills the Bear. The Son of the Sky is the Sacred Bear himself, son of Nurni Torum, the supreme god of the Khanty, Father of the Skies. The forest giants are powerful spirits, malevolent toward men, but often stupid. The White-Neck Mother is the ancient She-Deer. ... Bear worship is known through virtually the whole of Siberia, from the Komi people west of the
(2) As a witness to the Khanty Bear Feast, the Kiowa Indian novelist N. Scott Momaday writes: “In the Khanty bear ceremony, one of the principal participants is a singer. He carries a stick on which there are a hundred notches. Each notch represents a song. The singer sings these hundred songs during the ceremony, which lasts four or five days. The songs are committed to the singer’s memory. This is a remarkable feat of memorization and indicates beyond doubt that the oral tradition of the Khanty people is as vital as was the oral tradition of the Anglo-Saxons who recited Beowulf in the ninth century or of the Navajo singer who sings the Night Chant in the twenty-first century. Words are the keys, language is the repository of culture.” (in The Way of Kinship, p. x)
(3) A Plains Indian “death song,” calling into question the singer’s own bear totem as guardian power:
Big
Bear you
deceive me
A view of the world, in short, open enough to put questions above
answers as the mark of a truly human life.
Or a Crow Indian song
as a further accounting:
we want what is
real
we want what is
real
don’t deceive us!
(translation
by Lewis Henry Morgan)
and again:
can this be real
can this be real
this life I am
living?
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