The horse as a Chthonic Being in Khakass Beliefs and Folklore (late XIX–XX century)

Since its domestication, the horse has played an important role in human life. It has contributed to making people extremely mobile. By covering great distances relatively quickly, they managed to dominate large areas. People actively involved the horse in economic, military, religious, ceremonial, and other activities. Its importance was so great that it became an obligatory part of funeral rites. Horses were buried with their deceased owners, so they became signposts to the "other world" for them and continued to serve them even after death. Archaic consciousness often attributed the use of a horse as a mount to the inhabitants of the subterranean world of non-human nature. Similar ideological ideas were definitely present among the Khakass. This work aims to characterize the horse as a religious and mythological figure of the Khakass, having a chthonic nature. The work's chronological framework is limited to the late XIX–XX century framework. The source material on the research topic determines the choice of this time frame. Ethnographic and folkloric materials, published and put into scientific circulation, served as a source base. Among the folk sources, the heroic stories (Alyptyg Nymakhtar) are widely used, from which excerpts in the author's translation are presented in Russian for the first time. Guiding the study is the principle of historicism, in which each cultural phenomenon is considered in its development, considering a specific situation. The research methodology uses historical and ethnographic methods: Vestiges (relics), folklore, and semantic analysis. The results of the study suggest that the image of the horse in the Khakass culture was endowed with extensive and diverse symbolism. It was a sacred animal and directly related to traditional ideas about death and the other world. The horse is a signpost to the other world and also an attribute of lower mythological beings. As a chthonic being, it is endowed with a number of specific characteristics: various physical anomalies, polymorphism, size, supernatural abilities, and connection with the element of water.

Khakass, traditional worldview, myth, ritual, horse, chthonism, underworld, demon