Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 6.-7. 1965-1966 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1966)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Makkay János: Some ancient sources to the Shamanism. VI–VII, 1965–66. p. 27–42. t. XV.

An Avam-Samoyede relates the way that he became a shaman. In the course of this process he had to wander. Once he reached that part of the country of his shaman-ancestors which contained nine lakes. There was an island in the middle of one of them. In its interior there had grown a birch-tree reaching up to the sky. The candidate continued his journey but he heard voices in his way : „Es ist dir vorausbestimmt, eine Trommel (den Reifen einer Trommel) aus Zweigen dieses Baumes zu haben." As the candidate wanted to go further, the spirit of the tree called him back and told him: now a branch of mine will fall down, take it up and make a drum of its wood for yourself. Really, a branch fell down, dividing into three twigs. The spirit of the tree spoke again: make three drums of the three twigs! On the top of the tree there sat the shaman candidates of various related peoples. Each has received a part of the tree from the shamanancestor, in order to manufacture a drum for himself. Now the spirit of the tree became visible in the trunk to the waist, telling them the following : „Einen Zweig werde ich nicht den Schamanen geben, ich lasse ihn für gewöhnliche Menschen zurück. Mögen sie sich aus ihm Wohnungen bauen und alles Nötige machen. Ich bin der Baum, der alle Menschen zum Leben fähig macht."

59 The text doubtlessly wants to express that the same mythical age-old tree serves as the material of the shaman's drum and drumstick and also as that of the dwelling and its furnishment, evidently simple furniture in the first place. The occurrence of this motive is no coincidence. The idea itself may have a very long past. This is the only explanation for the fact that quite similar opinions have found their way into the epic of the Estonians, the Kalevipoeg. Unnecessary to emphasize that the original religious background of the ancient songs, the composing parts of the Estonian heroic poem, was equally the Shamanism. According to the detail of the Kalevipoeg the origin of Shamonism is connected to a mythical oak. This tree is felled by a hero, created by 59. T. LEHTISALO: JSFOu 48 (1936—37) p. 5. 60. H. NACHTIGALL: ZfE 77 (1952) pp. 105—196. 61. L. STERNBERG: AfR 28 (1936) p. 135; W. F. KIREY: The Hero of Estonia (London 1895) I, p. 48. €2. B. MUNKÁCSI: Vogul Népköltési Gyűjtemény H/2. (Budapest Ш2) p. 291. the eagle, and it is used in Creation. The remaining parts of the tree are used to build the house of the hero; he himself is the first being possessing magical powers.

60 He is the first minstrel, i. e. the first, mythical shaman.

61 Further details of epics or heroic poems might be adduced as analogies. Naturally not all Siberian or even Finno-Ugrian peoples have kept this ancient idea in their memory as clearly. But it suffers no doubt that the same has been bequeathed to a Mansi hymn (the „Hymn of the Prince of the Devils"). In the course of his wanderings, Kul'atér comes to a deserted sandy island. Then a ,,silver-mouthed cuckoo", ,,his aunt", sings to him as follows: ,,Are you going to lie for a long or for a short time yet? Get up! Throw shavings split from a pine-tree over your head. A square log-hut will rise."

62 Even without citing further similar details we.may state that both in the beliefs of the shamanistic peoples and in the Sumerian story one finds the mythical first tree, growing immediately after the creation of the world. Uprooted, it becomes transplanted to the spot where it is destined to fall by the axe of a legendary hero or shaman. The circumstance that the wood yields a drum and a drumstick, its remaining parts a house or furnishment, respectively, i. e. the furniture of Inanna, represents the closest parallel possible. For the rest, we have a statement which relates that Gilgamesh and Enkidu produce a door for the Nippur shrine of Enlil from the wood of the cedar tree, hewn by them.

63 Also other details show some parallels. Inanna brings the tree to Uruk at the direct command of Anu and Enlil. A fitting analogy may be quoted from the popular poetry of the Mansi. The legend of the Creation relates the following : As the Earth grew up, it became big, the woman left the house on the tundra mound. Entering the house again, she tells her husband, her „old man": „Old one, some shrub has grown behind the house." Her husband answers: „Fetch the root as it was, the twig as it was! His wife has dug out that tree, she has brought it in, the old one recognizes it: it is a cembra pine.'"*

4 63. R. RANOSZEK: ZDMG 88 (1934) p. ail. For the rest, he accepts the „ptikku" and the .,mikku" for a drum and a drumstick too, p. 210. 64. B. MUNKÁCSI: Vogul Népköltési Gyűjtemény I. (Budapest 1902) p. l. 34