Textological aspect of studying works on Yakut folklore in the context of studying materials of the Sibiryakov expedition (1894-1896)

Rufova Elena Stepanovna ORCID: 0000-0002-1276-7087 PhD in Philology Head of the Department; Department of Oriental Languages and Regional Studies; North-Eastern Federal University 677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, ul. Belinsky, 58, office 704 rufl2003@yandex.ru

Afanasyeva Alena Andrianovna student; Department of Oriental Languages; North-Eastern Federal University 677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, ul. Belinsky, 58, office 704 rufl2003@yandex.ru

The study of the epic traditions of the peoples of the Russian Federation plays an important role in preserving the diversity of cultures of the peoples inhabiting our country ^[1-4]. But it is even more important for the preservation of the language and culture of the ethnic group itself, for the preservation and transmission of the ethno-cultural code for future generations ^[5-9].

In the study of Yakut folklore, researcher V.V. Illarionov attaches great importance to pre-revolutionary scientific works, which laid the foundation for further fundamental research ^[10-11]. As the first records of folk legends on the early history of the Yakuts, the work of Jacob Lindenau (about 1700-1795), a participant in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733-1743), is singled out, which contains historical and ethnographic information and is a valuable source of the XVIII century on the ethnography of the Yakuts ^[12]. In addition, the work of academician A.D. Middendorf, which presents recordings of samples of Yakut folklore, is of particular importance for researchers of Yakut folklore ^[13].

It is an undoubted fact that the first researchers of Yakut folklore, as well as the Yakut language, were participants in historical and ethnographic expeditions to study Siberia initiated by the Russian Academy of Sciences ^[14-16]. The Sibiryakovskaya Historical and Ethnographic expedition of the VSOIRGO is the first comprehensive stationary expedition to study the indigenous peoples of Eastern Siberia, the main task of which was the practical collection of reliable information on geology, geography, statistics, economics, history, ethnography, etc. Such a major expedition at the turn of the late XIX – early XX centuries with ambitious tasks initially assumed a more applied nature, but it was absolutely innovative and brought unique and fundamental results. In this regard, the published materials on Yakut folklore by I.A. Khudyakov, E.K. Pekarsky and S.V. Yastremsky, prepared or published at the expense of I.M. Sibiryakov, are updated and specially considered. Special attention is paid to the study of scientific works on Yakut folklore in the textual aspect, which laid the fundamental foundation for the development of the literature of the Sakha people. In this perspective, special importance is given to the study of the role of political exiles who became participants in this expedition, which, undoubtedly, was a mutually beneficial circumstance.

Among the researchers of Yakut folklore, a special role is assigned to the first researcher of Verkhoyansk folklore – Ivan Alexandrovich Khudyakov (1842-1876), who stood at the origins of Russian folklore ^[13]. In 1867-1874, I.A. Khudyakov served exile in Verkhoyansk, leaving behind not only the collected folklore material, but also a significant contribution to meteorological observations ^[17]. I.A. Khudyakov himself is not directly related to the Sibiryak (Yakut) expedition, but his handwritten collection after the author's death was published at the expense of I.M. Sibiryakov, thereby preserving not only the authorship of I.A. Khudyakov, but also witnessing for the first time voluminous Yakut folklore material.

The history of the publication of the Verkhoyansk Collection is quite interesting. Researchers of I.A. Khudyakov's life and work note that his manuscript, received from the Verkhoyansk philistine Khresia Gorokhova, was transferred through the Balagan police officer G. Bubyakin to the Irkutsk Governor-General A.P. Ignatiev, who in turn transferred it to the Siberian Department of the Geographical Society ^[17]. The authorship of I.A. Khudyakov was recognized by his handwriting; data confirming acquaintance with H. Gorokhova; as well as by the hypothesis expressed by the author in the manuscript about the "celestial theory", when Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya seemed to I.A. Khudyakov to be deities, the sky, the sun" ^[17]. Researcher V.V. Illarionov suggests that the publication of the collection was helped by I.A. Khudyakov's friend at Kazan University, G.N. Potanin, "who later became a prominent historian and ethnographer" ^[11].

Russian Russian folk tales and songs recorded in the Verkhoyansk district by I. A. Khudyakov were published in a separate imprint "Verkhoyansk collection: Yakut fairy tales, songs, riddles and proverbs, as well as Russian fairy tales and songs recorded in the Verkhoyansk district by I. A. Khudyakov" in the Notes of the East Siberian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society for Ethnography in Irkutsk, 1890. The collection is preceded by an editorial preface, however, not signed and not highlighted with a special title and date, but presented in the contents of the collection. Presumably, this may belong to the authorship of the editorial staff of the "Notes", namely N. V., N. Pripuzov and D. Klemenz, who at that time were engaged in the study of general information and beliefs of the Yakuts, and have publications in the second volume of the "Notes" of the same 1890. In the text of the preface itself, the narration is conducted from the personal pronoun in the plural "we": "The manuscript containing a collection of samples of Yakut oral literature, placed in this issue of the "Notes" of the East Siberian Department, we attributed to Ivan Alexander. Khudyakov; although we do not have an exact indication of the affiliation of this work to him, but we think that we were not mistaken" ^{[18, p.6]}, thereby the authors of the preface emphasize the collective decision to confirm the authorship of the manuscript of the collection by I.A. Khudyakov. The preface describes the way of transferring the manuscript of the collection, lists convincing evidence of the authorship of I.A. Khudyakov. An unresolved question for the authors of the preface remains the question of the entire legacy of I.A. Khudyakov: "... On page 231 of this issue there is a reference to some kind of T.1; it is clear that another volume is meant here, and not this printed one…All this leads to the assumption that in addition to the found volume, something else remained from Khudyakov and that the manuscript that was searched for in 1880 may have been filled with completely different material, and if not destroyed, then maybe one day there will be more." ^{[18, p.6]}. Moreover In the preface, the authors emphasize that I.A. Khudyakov kept a double entry in the manuscript, that is, all the material is written in the Yakut language and translated into Russian, "with the exception of a few, which are said to be written without the Yakut text" ^{[18, p.7]}. The published collection itself presents only translations of I.A. Khudyakov.A. Khudyakova, the material in the Yakut language was not published due to lack of funds. The publication of the collection provoked a response from another researcher of the Yakut language and folklore, E.K. Pekarsky, who immediately published a "Note on the editorial board of the Verkhoyansk Collection" in the same year. In it, the author provides a convincing and evidentiary basis for the fact that the editor of the Verkhoyansk Collection "allowed himself to put superfluous hard signs in the Yakut language and rejected by Khudyakov, but also attributed to Khudyakov, without any reservation, a foreign and incorrect translation" ^{[19, p.8]}. E.K. Pekarsky emphasizes that he studied Comparing the published collection with the original manuscript by I.A. Khudyakov, thereby found missing words in the Russian text, as well as untranslated both individual words and whole expressions. Based on the analysis, E.K. Pekarsky concludes that the published collection has no scientific significance, due to editorial errors, he proposes to publish the verified text of the Russian language together with the collected Yakut material, which undoubtedly determines the scientific significance of the material collected by I.A. Khudyakov. Subsequently, E.K. Pekarsky will publish some materials in the collection "Samples of Yakut folk literature" (1907-1911).

The structure of the published Verkhoyansk Collection is a well-structured model presented in eight sections: Russian Russian fairy tales 1. Proverbs and sayings (pp. 1-10); 2. Songs (pp. 10-21); 3. Yakut riddles (pp. 21-47); 4. Sagas (pp. 47-68); 5. Fairy tales (pp. 69-253); 6. Russian fairy tales among the Yakuts of the Verkhoyansk district (pp. 254-288); 7. Russian fairy tales Russian Russians (pp. 288-303); 8. Songs (Russian) (pp. 303-310). According to the contents of the collection, it can be assumed that I.A. Khudyakov tried to present all the main folklore genres.

The section "Proverbs and sayings" consists of 123 units of translations of Yakut sayings and proverbs. The collected material is presented in a general list without division into thematic groups or phraseological components. Most of the phraseological units characterize a person through a description of appearance or physical description, character traits and social status. Some proverbs and sayings are accompanied by author's comments that explain their origin or provide clarifying details, such as the saying about a man who does not eat raw meat, accompanied by the author's explanation that "Yakuts, both big and small, generally love to eat raw meat, both horse and cow, and deer" ^{[18, p.10]}.

The section "Riddles" is interesting, which consists of 432 units of translations of Yakut riddles, distributed by the author according to thematic classification: "Nature and Magic", "Animals", "Man", "House", "Clothes", "Crafts", "Household accessories". The riddles collected by I.A. Khudyakov represent a rich source of culturally significant information correlated with the picture of the world of the Sakha people.

The most voluminous in terms of the amount of material presented is the section "Fairy Tales", which includes not only Yakut fairy tales, but also the oldest epic art of the Yakuts – olonkho. I.A. Khudyakov includes in this section the texts of olonkho "Old Man Uranikan", "Ber Hara", "Old Man with an old woman", "Haan Dyargystai", not singling them out into a separate genre. Nevertheless, I.A. Khudyakov emphasizes the specifics of the epic text, highlights the system of images of the Upper and Lower Worlds, notes the pagan beliefs of the Sakha people. I.A. Khudyakov, who initially had experience working with folklore texts, published "Great Russian Fairy Tales", a collection of Great Russian folk historical songs, "Great Russian Riddles", "Russian book", stories about ancient people, "Stories about great people of the Middle and Modern times", "Ancient Russia", "Self-help guide for beginners to learn to read and write" ^[11] being in exile, he is undoubtedly interested in Yakut folklore, thereby being one of the first to collect a fairly impressive corpus of Yakut folklore texts. The professional interest of the folklorist I.A. Khudyakov is manifested in his collecting experience, fixing the source material in the Yakut language, the first experience of classifying the richest archaic folklore of the Sakha people.

Another significant work for Yakut folklore is E.K. Pekarsky's collection "Samples of Yakut Folk Literature", published in 1907-1918. The collection is a corpus of folklore texts in the Yakut language, collected over the years by I.A. Khudyakov, E.K. Pekarsky, S.V. Yastremsky, V.N. Vasiliev. Unlike the Verkhoyansk Collection, the collection of E.K. Pekarsky contains original texts without translation into Russian, thereby representing one of the first largest Yakut folklore collections. Moreover, E.K. Pekarsky, highlighting the special style of olonkho, publishes texts of Yakut epics separately from other narrative genres. Ethnographer and folklorist S.V. Yastremsky, who prepared the first large collection of translated texts of the Yakut olonkho, highlights the structural originality of the syntax of the Olonkho texts, which, according to his remark, "is devoid of subordinate conjunctions, almost does not resort to relative pronouns", and "expresses subordinate clauses of other languages by indirect cases of abstract verbs of action names" ^{[20, p. 6]}.

Thus, the "Verkhoyansk Collection" by I.A. Khudyakov, "Samples of Yakut folk Literature" by E.K. Pekarsky and S.V. Yastremsky are of great importance for Yakut folklore, and represent the most valuable material for scientific study. The material studied during the short time in exile, published after the death of I.A. Khudyakov; the large volume of collected material and E.K. Pekarsky prepared for publication in the Yakut language allow us to once again emphasize the importance of the results of the Sibiryak (Yakut) expedition. The identification of the historical conditions of the emergence and publication of the Verkhoyansk Collection, the use of materials collected by I.A. Khudyakov and his authorship in the subsequent publication by E.K. Pekarsky of "Samples of Yakut Folk Literature" (1907-1911) not only confirms the importance of historical and literary contacts and contexts, but also convincingly reveals the role and significance of the Sibiryak (Yakut) expedition in the history of national culture in general.