The unique shamanic rituals of the Buryat people have evolved in response to the colonization, displacement, and marginalization that their people have endured. The Buryats preserved their heritage through the practice of shamans who were decked with various artifacts. A people’s history is not always portable just because they are nomadic. Just about every aspect of the Buryats’ shamanic history—the spirits, the stories, the shamans, the artifacts, and the audiences—are malleable in their own unique manner. Their mobility was a combination of mechanical and intellectual aspects, albeit the two typically worked hand in hand. The many social terrains covered by the components of this shamanism-evoked past provide the highest level of protection against forgetting.
Hii biyet, or ancestor spirits, are believed by the Buryats to be able to move more quickly than the human mind can process information. That is why a spirit’s house, the spot it passed away, and any other locations it visits after death may all serve as homes for the spirit, both on Earth and in the heavenly realm. The living are reminded of the names of their ancestral homelands that have been forgotten while a shaman pronounces the names of spirits’ houses.
When shamans are visited by ancestral spirits, they adopt the mannerisms, body language, and narratives typical of that era to reenact the cultural clichés of that time. Even under socialism, few Buryats from Mongolia ventured back to their native homelands in Russia. Although the government no longer regulates international travel, financial constraints have limited mobility since its collapse. So, ancestral spirits are still the living embodiments of our collective memories.
Travel is the only way to learn the talents needed to harness the origin spirits; they are not handed to you instantly. The shamans need to visit their teachers for advice, get their tools from blacksmiths and seamstresses, and establish and maintain connections both within and outside of their communities. Anywhere they go, they bring their accoutrements. An enchanted shaman, with all their regalia imbued with the powers of the ancestral spirits, is a compressed, mobile, and participatory history. In order to advance in the shaman hierarchy and attain the highest rank, duurisah for women and zaarin for males, one must complete the shanar, or degree ceremonies. There are eleven for men and seven for women.
It is equally important for clients to be able to move about while using shamanism to keep their personal and communal histories alive. One thing that customers do is compile and arrange all the information that different shamans have given them. Following a shaman’s revelation of previously repressed or forgotten spirits, clients construct connections between them in order to establish a chain of events that spans generations. This is due to the fact that shamans typically perform rituals with the intention of connecting with a specific ancestral spirit rather than compiling a linear narrative of past events.
Also, since customers can’t tell whether shamans or spirits are telling the truth, they often hold many rituals to gather different perspectives, which only serves to increase the need for shamans. New information is created and disseminated via this pursuit of authenticity and legitimacy, which in turn helps to shape history. Although customers may not be fully cognizant of their involvement, they play a significant part in shaping history by their actions, the organization of knowledge they acquire, and the creation of new knowledge.
Knowledge is movable on several levels in the context of shamanism. It is a transported artifact that originates in the shaman’s dynamic (i.e., thinking) mind and undergoes continual metamorphosis; it is also transportable internally. The majority of shaman-mediated knowledge is, empirically speaking, the result of selective recall, improvisation in response to client demands, and other forms of memory work. As a shaman transmits knowledge, he or she must also persuade the listeners that the information is relevant to everyone, not only the “children” of the original spirits. Shamans need to evoke strong feelings in their listeners to pull this off.
They use a wide range of performance, language, and psychological strategies to bring the audience’s past into the present. Cole cites the Betsimisaraka of Madagascar as an example of a culture that places a premium on the influence of emotion in social memory formation. She argues that the Betsimisaraka are able to construct and sustain a worldview because of these memories, not because they allow them to know the past or remember details. Emotional movement is also a part of remembering for the Buryats.
In order to make long-forgotten events feel more like cherished memories, a shaman has to evoke strong emotions in the listeners. While the original spirit (and the stories of them) may remain a private relic for the descendants of that spirit, to the rest of us, they represent a significant historical artifact. Crucially, the connection is fluid, not static; some people may emotionally attach themselves to the specters of long-lost ancestors and think of them as an integral part of their memories, while others may have grown emotionally distanced from their family history and see this information more as history. More information about a person’s sad existence might evoke enough emotion to bring that life into the domain of memory as well.
There are many facets to the wisdom that a shaman imparts. Not only does the shaman’s creation of the narrative serve as a service to the client, but it also serves as historical evidence of the shaman’s expertise in preserving a connection between a community and its heritage. As a result, the connection between a person and their past provides the foundation for the difference between memory and history. Contrary to popular belief, it does not prove the presence of two distinct but connected bodies of information. One person’s past may be another’s recollection. Calling something “history” or “memory” on its own assumes that the people who possess that information are all the same.
For example, according to Nora (1989), history is the dispassionate and logical product of outsiders drawing from archives and other sources, whereas memory assumes firsthand observation of an event. Although there are cases when this holds true, the traditions of Buryat shamanism also demonstrate that the line separating memory from history is porous and ever-changing. Problematically, both the nature of the ties between people and their knowledge and the significance that people ascribe to those interactions are always evolving.
Shamans often aim to amass as many followers as possible by leaving an indelible mark on the lives of their direct customers and, by extension, on society at large. On the other hand, shamans are primarily concerned with bringing in clientele, not only passing audiences, by creating memories out of history for the greatest number of people. Therefore, teaching shamans also entails molding people’s connection with information and shifting the purported borders between memory and history.
At last, the tales’ substance and organization are the most important factors in their memorability and general applicability. Some of the tales I told in this chapter had inconsistencies that make it impossible for things to flow smoothly and have only one meaning for some people, which means that other people can’t understand them. On the contrary, there is usually a period of retreat, a semi-betrayal, and what appears to be the mainstreaming of an exclusion into the story.
The paradoxical nature of Hoimorin Högshin a symbol of defiance against Russian colonization. It is possible that many Buryats have come to accept the Russian way of life by attributing colonial powers to the god. And such is the resistance story’s hidden backstory.
Tragically, Chödör and his fiancée—a member of the feuding Khamnigan clan—died in the narrative, which contains yet another inconsistency. The question that still needs answering is how the well-known and revered shaman Chödör has come to be romantically involved with a woman from a rival faction. Although interethnic animosity is the central theme of the novel, the couple’s connection implies that marriages between Buryats and Khamnigans occurred both before and after the colonial struggle.
Another intricate scenario from which there is no simple escape is shown in Bud’s account of the altercation with the Tibetan teacher Sangasva. Although it was foolish of Bud to vanquish the lama, the latter would have murdered him if he hadn’t. His terrible resistance is all the more heartbreaking since he would lose in any case. From whatever ideological or philosophical vantage point, the tale falls short. The story delves into shamanic opposition to Buddhism, but that’s not all: Bud’s family chastises him, establishing boundaries for his resistance.
Conversely, it touches on the topic of embracing Buddhism, albeit not totally, since Sangasva passes away. These articles aim for a wider audience because of the leaks, diversions, and incorporation of excluded elements from the mainstream narratives. Despite the fact that Hoimorin Högshin, Chödör, and Bud’s stories portray defiance in the face of oppression, they also hint at hidden tales of a different type: the acce.