몽골인의 ‘소 신앙’ 연구

The study on Mongolian s cow worship

This paper observed on the symbolic meaning and the recognition of cow, which Mongolian had within from the ancient. To look through the characteristics of cow s sacredness based on the totem, this paper focused on the understanding about the meaning of cow in Mongolian s life and their culture. Generally speaking, although the majority believes there is close correlation between a cow and cultivation, from the ancient, not only in agrarian society but also in the other cultural area, cow used to worshiped as holy animal which has great power and also globally worshiped over a regional sphere. In Mongolia, cow is an animal have its origin in the heaven, recognized as god, god s guardian, vehicle of god, or the founder of a race. A bull indicated as the external spirit or guardian of a king, this has generally related with the totem. Similar to the other countries, cow has the characteristic of god of the heaven or god of the weather, it is related to the myth symbol containing both principles of the sun and the moon. Bull has a character to supervising weather such as the sun, rain, lightning and thunder. Also a cow also symbolically recognized as the earth, namely called Godmother. The death of a cow has regarded as that accelerate the restoration of the earth and assure the prosperity of livestock farming and rich harvest. In Mongolia, the symbol of a cow very approached to the symbolic form of a cow which the ancient race has, is believed as it originate to conservative characteristics of culture which result from shamanism and Mongolian s nomadic life.