Khakases - one of the Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia - inhabit steppes and mountains in the upper reaches of the Yenisei. Most of the 80,000-strong Khakass people live in the Republic of Khakassia. The Khakas live in neighboring Tuva, as well as in the southern regions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The economic activities of the Khakas for many centuries have been and to a large extent still remain the breeding of cattle, sheep, horses, the cultivation of grain and, of course, hunting. The traditional way of life in many ways determined the peculiarity of the customs and festivals of this ancient people.
The rite of praying to the forces of nature
Until the beginning of the XX century, the Khakass, like their distant ancestors, made collective prayers to the sky, mountains, water. The sky is usually asked for a good harvest of herbs for livestock and grain crops for people. A ceremony was held on a mountain peak. The sacrifice of the sky brought from 5 to 15 lambs. They were all white, but necessarily with a black head. It was not shamans who guided the prayer, but elected elderly people. This fact is of great importance. He speaks of the antiquity of the rite, that it originated in an era when the inhabitants of Khakassia did not yet have priest-shamans, intermediaries between people and deities. In the prayer for the mountains, whose purpose was to beg for rain, the shamans already took part, but without a special suit and a tambourine. The same applies to the rite of praying for water, which was to protect people from death on river crossings. Probably no less ancient was the custom to seek help from the birch tree. Formally, this ceremony was arranged at the behest of a shaman, when someone was ill for a long time in the family. But, most likely, the praying of the birch was an echo of that distant time, when people considered their ancestors trees, when their main cult was the cult of nature. Many Khakass families had in the past "their birch" - all revered generic tree. In process of destruction of a family layer at хакасов there were "family birches", that is the trees considered as patrons of small groups of relatives. If a person was struck by a serious illness, his relatives chose a young birch in the taiga, tied colorful ribbons to her branches, and she was considered from that moment to be a shrine, a spirit-guardian of this family.
Horse for Izyh Khan
And for many centuries cattle breeding was the main occupation of Khakassians. According to the old traditions of the steppe nomads of the upper Yenisei, the "master of cattle" was a powerful spirit - Izykh Khan. In order to propitiate him, that "the cattle kept well and no one in the family was ill," Izykh-khan was offered a horse as a gift. The head of the family invited the shaman, who in full vestments and with a tambourine performed kamlaniya. After the praying, the horse with the colored ribbon interwoven into the mane was released to freedom. It was now called "exquisite". It was only the head of the family who had the right to go to the gig. Every year in spring and autumn he washed milk with mane and tail, and changed tapes. Each Khakass race once chose as a kind of exquisite animal of a certain color: in the Kask they were brown, in the genus Kyrgyz - gray and gray, the genus Ara gave Izykh-khan the red horses.
Bon Appetit!
If you, my reader, managed to visit the Khakass yurt, you would certainly be treated to traditional dishes. Among the Kachin people (one of the largest territorial groups of the Khakass), it would be sour milk - ayran, - cheese-hurut and a special cheesy mass - archa. Hurut and archa, due to the fact that they are also made of sour milk, can be stored for a long time, and usually Khakas store these products for future use. You would try fresh, cream, sour cream, butter. Kachintsy probably would offer you horse meat, because it is they who consider it the most delicious and nutritious meat. After visiting the Khakas-Kyzylts in the upper reaches of the Chulym River, you would have plenty of fish-fried, boiled, salted and dried. At Khakas-Sagays, guests are treated to a local dish - frozen koloboks from finely chopped meat and onions, as well as tortillas from peony roots crushed in flour and frozen berries of bird cherry or hawthorn mixed with honey. Khakas-Beltirtsy and koibals, who borrowed many traditions from Russian peasants who settled in the southern regions of Siberia in the 18th and 19th centuries, would put on the table the bread of their baking, pies, pel'menis and, of course, porridge.
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