From 'Technicians of the Sacred Expanded' (a work in progress): 'The Khanty Prayer of the Bear' by Leonty Taragupta, poem, & commentary

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.  OfTaragupta’sconnection 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 Ural 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)

     (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?