몽골의 유목문화 속의 세시풍속 고찰

The Study of Mongolian Annual Customs in Nomadic Culture

Mongolia is one of the last places on earth where various nomadic cultures are still active and alive today. There has been a great effort to investigate nomadic cultures from various points of view, e.g. historical anthropological or folkloric studies. Nevertheless, annual customs inside nomadic cultures are far from being fully analysed yet. For this reason, in this paper, I will look into annual customs in Mongolia. There are three main aspects: Firstly, I discuss annual customs in historical texts like the Secret History of Mongolia. From this document, I excerpted some historical descriptions on annual customs in medieval Mongolia. Secondly, I scrutinize Mongolian literature and folk paintings. Annual customs are used as either the motif or the theme inside these works of art. According to these Mongolian literature texts and folk paintings the summer festival like naadam is the most popular among the annual customs. Also in some folk paintings rituals for making airag (fermented mare s milk) can be found. The point is that the naadam festival and rituals for making airag occur in the middle of summer when livestock are getting fat and grasses in the steppe are fresh. Lastly, I examine the everyday practice of annual customs. In general, Mongolians in the nomadic environment regularly practise bitüün (rituals for the last day of the year), tsagaan sar (the new year festival), naadam, some rituals for making felt, etc. To some extent, these annual customs reflect nomadic livelihood where livestock is highly valued. In other words, every division of time is well mirrored in nomadic ecology and the growth of livestock.