The contemporary peoples of Siberia preserve, in a certain form, the archaic form of the Northern culture of the adaptive type, which is characterised by the elements of a religious-mythical world view and the cult practice of shamanism, as well as rituals related to hunting, family-tribal, seasonal-calendar and life cycle. The strategy of cultural adaptation, which serves as a basis for the culture of physical life, has been elaborated by researchers in the sphere of cultural and social anthropology, ethnology, and ethno-psychology, and is based on the theory of adaptation to four environments: natural-geographical, cultural-economical, socio-regulative and ethnical, as well as the prevalence of socio-cultural and ethnical basis over the natural (above all, the normative-evaluative and ideological, ethno-psychological ones) (Shirokogoroff 1923; Krupnik 1989; Lurye 1998; Lebedeva 1999). At present the development of the native peoples of the North is closely connected to the international policy of the preservation of ethnic and cultural peculiarities, and it is taken into account in adopting legislation. When drafting and discussing federal laws and regional concepts for the developing of the regions inhabited by the peoples of the North, particularly the Khanty-Mansi, Novosibirsk, Taimyr, Far East, Yakutia, and Evenk regions, a special attitude was fixed towards land as something alive, the sacred territory of the ancestors, the preservation of holy places, places of sacrifice, burial grounds, the right to observe national holidays, rituals, and also the peculiarities of the artistic-mythical world view and the necessity to consider the aforementioned in the educational process were mentioned. As a special task in the preservation and interpretation of the traditional culture of the North the necessity for preserving the language, the spiritual culture, folklore, and the customs and traditions characterising the national mentality of the people was emphasised (Sokolova 1988; Kontseptsiya… 1996).

The meeting of the Tungus Association of the Republic of Sakha, participated also by the representatives of other regions inhabited by the Evenkis (Evenkia, the Amur Oblast, the Okhotsk coast), which took place simultaneously with the international conference of musical culture of the Tungus-Manchus in Yakutsk in August 2000, acutely pointed out the problems and tasks in extending language teaching, collecting national folklore (songs, dances, music), and propagating the traditional customs and traditions, including shamanism.

The Tungus traditional life concept is based on the understanding of the archaic mutual influence between the Universe and Man (Sem 1997a). S. Shirokogoroff, the renowned researcher of the Tungus people, has treated the peculiarities of the Tungus psycho-mental complex as psychical and mental (language, self-confidence, thinking) reactions to their different living environments. As the basis for the Tungus psycho-mental complex he regarded shamanism, which was closely connected to the family-tribal psychology in an individual, the ethnic entirety, even a regional group, and determined to regulate the mental life of society. S. Shirokogoroff held that the ethnocultural specifics of the Tungus shamanism were conditioned by the historical-cultural contacts and were formed as a result of a long-term assimilation and adaptation of the psycho-mental complex of the Tungus' forefathers to the new Buddhism culture of the Jurchen epoch of the 12th century, and was similar to the Daur-Solon-Kidan shamanistic complex. In the treating of the different aspects of the world view, the pantheon, the ritual practice of the Southern Evenkis and Manchus, the scientist revealed the basis of the national mentality of the Tungus peoples in Siberia and the Far East, also giving a comparison between them (Shirokogoroff 1923; 1935). Mentality serves as a foundation for the ethnic identity and hereditability of traditions, the formation of the model of futurity on the basis of priority and prevailing values in society. It forms the basic needs, values and notions of national culture and the ethno-social integrity. Mentality as an undivided entirety of ideas, beliefs, and perceptive skills of the spirit, creates the world view and strengthens the integrity of the people's cultural tradition (Gurevich 1999). The world view as a form of world perception influences the behavioural activities in social culture. The world view models the individual's psyche. The brightest symbol of the world view is the traditional world model with either a graphical or figurative expression. In mythical-poetical and mythical-ritual tradition the world model encoded the basic information of the Universe, Nature and Man, revealed the structure of the space and the integration of the human psyche (Meletinsky 1976; Toporov 1982).

The world view that the Nanai, one of the Tungus-speaking peoples of the Amur Basin, had developed by the turn of the 20^th century, can be restored on the basis of folklore, including the cosmogonic myth and ritual practice (calendar, hunting, burial, wedding, shamanic rituals), shamanic iconography and chanting as well as cult attributes, and represents a uniform, although syncretic phenomenon.

The problem of the Nanai traditional world view has been treated by many researchers of ethnology and culture of the peoples of the Far East. The collection and initial systematization of the material can be found in the works of the researchers of the 19^th–20^th century (P. Shimkevich, I. Lopatin, A. Zolotaryov, S. Ivanov, I. Kozminsky). New materials on the Nanai beliefs and rituals were collected and systematic and more detailed analysis of the mythology, ritual lexis, ritual sculpture, partial study of folklore personalities, and the pantheon of beliefs was made in the 2^nd half of the 20^th century (Y. Sem, A. Smolyak, N. Kile, E. A. Gayer, A. Chadayeva, T. Bulgakova, T. Kubanova, T. Sem, E. Shanshina). The semantic analysis of the Nanai world model as the basis of the mythological-ritual world view had not been made before.

The Nanai shamanic iconography preserved the early mythological images of the world in the object-perceptive artistic form, and they are duplicated due to mythological thinking in the folklore and rituals. We possess a drawing of a shaman flying in the Universe, a depiction of a fragment of the creation of the world on shamanic and curative robes, on shamanic icons – curative and hunting drawings of the recreation of the structure of the Universe, the analysis of which, together with folklore and rituals, gives us an opportunity to recreate the world model and world view of the Nanai as one of the Tungus-language-speaking peoples.

World model – the World Egg, the World River, the World Tree

The Nanai world view perceives the world in its entirety as a flat spherical object connecting the vertical and horizontal world model in the form of a World Egg-Circle.

In the upper course Nanai group, A. Lipsky has recorded a drawing of the universe at the shaman's flight to the upper world to fetch a child's spirit, and to the underworld when leading the deceased's spirit, the original of which came from shaman Bogdano Onenko in the village of Dzhari in 1932 (Archives of the Institute of Ethnography, 1932). The drawing of the universe at the flight to the upper world has been depicted as a circle symbolizing the World Egg, which is oriented along the vertical line pointing from the south to the north by two trees (weather and life), which determine the opposition between the sky and the earth, the top and bottom. The upper part denotes the seven layers of clouds of different colours in the sky where the shaman is going through during his ascent. The upper world has been represented by the personified image of the Master of the Weather – Ka mur, the underworld – by the Master of the Earth – Duente. Along the horizontal line the World Egg – the Universe – has been marked by two lakes from the east and the west (Figure 1).

This kind of horizontal-vertical world model connects the eastern part with the world of the people, and the western part with the one of the forefathers and reincarnation. Death and reincarnation on the horizontal structure have been marked by the element of water, and on the vertical one by the element of the tree, air, earth, and this way have been divided by the opposites of dry-wet. The drawing in A. Lipsky's materials shows the west above, the east below, south on the left and north on the right. According to S. Neklyudov (1992: 172), this kind of orientation corresponds to the Mongol model; in the Tungus one the solar orientation prevails with the east above. Here we should pay attention to the fact that the Onenko and Zaksor families have been referred to as the first shamanic families in the Nanai folklore tradition. The drawing of the world model by the Nanai shaman Bogdano Onenko with the western orientation of the moon coincides with the world model depicted in a rock painting on the Tiger Rock in the village of Sakachi-Alyan in Central Amur (Okladnikov 1981: 21). A. Okladnikov held that this kind of similarity can be related to the secondary interpretation in the folklore of ancient images (1971: 106).

The shamanic drawing of the world model made by Bogdano Onenko has been commented on as to the direction of movement the route of the spirit omi to the world of the dead situated underground. The river of the alive on the earth is flowing on the ground in the direction from the left to the right (by the sun) and is marked in blue, but the underground river of the dead is flowing in the opposite direction, from the right to the left (by the moon) and is marked in red. The spirit of the omi, to be born in the people's world, is flying down the river course. It falls from the Tree of Spirits on the earth, which is growing with its roots upwards, into a shallow Lake of Return, situated on the earth on the western side of the forefathers (on the right hand side of the moon of the Universe). After that its route continues through the clouds to the centre of the sky in the upper world where it falls in Lom Boa, the Tree of Life, which is in the possession of Ka mur, the Master of the Universe. After that the spirit crosses the line to the eastern part of the people to be born in a deep lake (Archives of the Institute of Ethnography, 1932, pp. 33).

In the cosmogonic myth of the creation of the world the old woman-ancestress Myameldi, or the old man-ancestor Hadau change the course of the world river, whose one part flows down and the other up in one direction, which means breaking the enclosed circle of the rotation of birth and death. At the moment of finding the way to the world of the dead the immortality of the ancestors' son who belongs to the mankind, ceases to exist (Lopatin 1922: 238; Sem & Sem 1991: No. 13).

In the shamanic drawing the world river flows from the west to the east in a circle around a flat sphere of the Universe according to the rhythm of the Moon.

In the Nanai shamanic drawing the World Tree in the sky of the Universe has a crown in the form of two trees: the Tree of Life and the snowy Tree of the Weather; on the earth the Tree of the Spirits stands with its roots upwards. If you join the crown and roots with an imaginary line of one tree trunk, it looks like the World Tree with a fork connecting all the worlds of the Universe from the above to the below and dividing the World Egg along the vertical line (the seven-layer sky above and the earth below) as well as along the horizontal line (ancestors on the right hand side and people on the left). The Nanai folklore gives some additional information as to this image. The fairy-tale about the unfaithful wife of a hero, desiring an old man (Master of the Weather), reproduces the archaic motif of the cosmogonic myth about the creation of the world by the element of the wind (Sem 1986). The hero possesses the sacred strength of the supreme gods – the function of punishment of any persons – he throws the old man and his own wife through a tree fork onto an island in the middle of the sea (Sem & Sem 1991: No. 56). Another fairy-tale with a mythical plot tells us about Sangia mafa, Master of the Animals, who lives on an island in the sea, and the hero mergen Arhe, who gets into another world there (Kile 1996: No. 17).

In order to transfer from the human world to the world of ancestors, the Nanai ritual practice has created the building of the universe in the form of a special ritual construction.

Itoan – the ritual conical tent – model of the world in rituals

During the period of the Great Wake, in order to send the spirit to the World of the Dead, the Nanais build a special half-spherical conicaltent itoan, which imitates the structure of the Universe, analogous to the one described by shaman Bogdano Onenko. The main direction is east-west, which is marked by two passages and two fires from the side of people and from the side of ancestors (Sem 1973: 93–95). The drawing of the Universe made by Bogdano Onenko depicts two lakes of reincarnation corresponding to the two fires of the ritual. In folklore, they are called Sangia mama's (Mistress of the Earth) lakes of fire (Chadayeva 1990: 211). Obviously they are related to sunset and sunrise. When paying their last tributes to the deceased during the Great Wake, the shaman and the people place themselves on the southward side of the itoan. In the drawing of the Universe, the upper world of the gods with the upper World Tree of Spirits corresponds to it. In the centre of the southern part of the conical tent stands the shamanic tree toro, which imitates the upper tree of life, the World Tree of Ka, the Master of the Universe. The figure replacing the body of the deceased mugde (family tree) and its spirit hanya in the form of a small anthropomorphic figure, hanyalko's pillows and clothes are put to the northern, opposite side of the itoan (Lipsky 1956: 53–54). This way the ritual has created a spatial structure of the model of the world through concrete visible objects: the conical tent, two fires, the shamanic tree, the sides of people and ancestors. According to A. Lipsky, the ritual shamanic tree toro has two zoomorphic figures in the form of a winged tortoise-light above and a wild boar's fire jawbone (called crocodile simur) at the bottom; the tree trunk is encircled by a snake (Archives of the Institute of Ethnography, 1932). In Nanai folklore, the vertical line of the Universe is also depicted by the zoomorphic opposition of duck-fish and deer-bear (Sem 1999: 122).

Mythological plot of the creation of the world

The horizontal world model in the shamanic iconography of the Nanai shamans is depicted as the projection of a vertical spatial world structure and illustrates the mythological plot of the creation of the world. The depiction of the flat world model is characteristic of the Nanai ritual shamanic and curative robes. The back of the ritual robe of the great female shaman Nene Onenko from the village of Dippy (REM, 1992, coll. 11406-1), donated to the museum by her granddaughter L. Zh. Zaksor, a lecturer at the Faculty of the Northern People at the Russian State Pedagogical University depicts a double concentric radiating circle. In the centre of the inner circle there is a tiger drawn above and two birds with their heads pointing to the centre below. The circle is placed above a straight and a zigzag line. The semantics of this drawing are related to the cosmogonic myth about the creation of the world by birds and the plot of three elephants and the formation of the relief of the landscape.

In Nanai mythology, the plot of the creation of the world by birds is well elaborated and well known in several versions. It is usually inserted in the detailed narrative of the formation of the Universe from water chaos. The more important motifs forming this part of the cosmogonic myth include 1) procuring the land by birds (duck, diver, three swans, eagle) from the bottom of the primeval waters; 2) then the separation and lifting of the sky from the earth, and 3) the formation of the relief of the earth – mountains and rivers – as a result of the action of the heavenly fire-sun (Sem 1986: 32; 1996; Shanshina 1998).

Nene Onenko's shamanic robe depicts the earth (the inner circle) with two birds on it, probably the heavenly duck and the water diver, creating the world. The tiger depicted in the drawing above plays an important part in the Nanai world view. In Nanai mythology the tiger is the Master of the Mountains and serves as the dog for Boa Enduri, the Master of the Heaven (Sem 1999: 122). In addition to that, the mythology of the upper-course Nanai relates the image of the tiger to the middle one of the three suns from the creation times. D. Trusov, an orthodox priest, the leader of the Kamchatka mission, made the first of the well known records of the Nanai cosmogonic myth in which he called the primeval sun mafa, the second one mari and the third one gorodo (Trusov 1884; Sem 1996: 134). In translation these names mean bear, tiger and snake. It is the sun in the form of a tiger that ancestor Guranta leaves for the people to light the world. Here we should mention that the three suns represented by the three different animals of different colour – black, orange-black and green-black – are in correlation with the three elements of the middle world (represented by the black colour in each animal) and three worlds of the Universe marking the horizontal and vertical structure of the world simultaneously, i.e., they render three dimensions to the Universe.

The three suns in the Nanai cosmogonic myth stand out as the primary fire cause for the birth of the world (Trusov 1884; Sternberg 1933: 493–494). S. Shirokogoroff holds that the Tungus people relate this plot to the Buddhist tradition (1935). The three suns mark the passing time, the sunrise, zenith, sunset, the alternation of day and night, the life circle. In Nanai folklore, the three suns have the form of three swans or three animals marking the three zones of the world: the mountains, forest and water. The image of the tiger is connected with the upper part, being opposed by the bear (forest) and snake (water) (Sem 1997b: 117). The images of the tiger, bear and fish-animal were depicted on the magic bone ring of the hunter as the masters of the three elements, guaranteeing successful hunting, health, and well-being (Sem 1992: 35–36). In the first drawing made by the shaman Bogdano Onenko, the Master of the Earth Na lives at the roots of the Life Tree in the form of a bear Duente, and Ka mur, the Master of the Universe, in the form of a heavenly deer at the Weather Tree and the top of the heavenly Tree of the Spirits (Archives of the Institute of Ethnography, 1932, pp. 1–34). The zoomorphic coding of the Universe is duplicated in the Nanai rituals, folklore and beliefs. In Nanai folklore, the evil snake Sahari dyabdyan, who has created the Tree of Evil, releases three suns on the Earth at the same time, to counterbalance hero Hado, the forefather, who has created the Tree of Good (Chadayeva 1990: 5). In the corresponding version of the Sakachialyan Nanai three forefathers – Shankoa, Shanka and Shanva – release three swans (the three daughters of the Sun) to procure the earth. According to the myth, Goronta, the powerful forefather-hunter (in other versions – Hadau) kills the two superfluous sources of light, and chillness sets in on the Earth. As a result, fire as a means of surviving on the Earth is embedded in the world model of both the Nanai and the neolithic population of the Amur Region (Trusov 1884; Sternberg 1933: 492–495). In order to liquidate the crisis and establish world order, the myth determined the control of the Heaven over the elemental forces of the Earth. Ka, the Master of the Universe, sends two of his sons (symbolising the sunrise and the sunset) in the form of a mergen sable and a mergen dog, the brave men of the east and the west (sometimes both the images are merged in one – Arha mergen) – to marry the daughters of the Earth and Water in the form of a frog and a maiden, or a fish and a wild boar (Kile 1996: No. 8, 12, 18; Chadayeva 1986: 67; 1990: 155, 192). In the myth of the lower course Nanai, the Master of the settlement in the form of a dragon releases two spirits of the earth and water – Oda seveni, the twins – in order to rescue the people (Kubanova 1992: 145).

The cosmic vertical of the Nanai world model, depicted in the ornamentation on Nene Onenko's shamanic robe, is not marked with a tree but the World Mountain, the master of which is the tiger, and the mountain itself has three peaks and in the myth it is related to the motif of the formation of the relief – mountains and rivers. More often than not, the image of a snake or leech Oya are mentioned as the means for the formation of the relief, used as a magic wand to increase the growth of the primeval earth (Sem 1986: 33). The dragon's wand in Nanai fairy-tales brings the dead back to life (Chadayeva 1990: 183).

In the ornamentation on shaman Nene's robe, the heavenly and underground waters are mixed in one image of a red snake symbolising the world chaos, where fire and water are merged together and prove to be the initial cause for the progress of time. The regular ornament on the snake – the outer circle of the ornamentation – indicates the direction of the movement. The beams radiating from the snake marking the image of time and space, attribute solar symbolicism to it and, in combination with the inner regular ornament create the impression of pulsation. The red colour of the fire snake of the Universe is related to the colour of life – fire, movement along mythological associations with natural and biological indicators (blood, fire, the planet of Venus, etc.). Here we should bear in mind that in the Nanai astral conceptions stars are connected with reincarnation: Venus is the red star of life, Orion regulates the progress of time and is connected with the birth of new spirits of people, Sun bestows life, and on the moon side of the Universe there is a lake where the reincarnation of spirits takes place (Smolyak 1986: 136; Sem 1990: 114; 1999: 122–123). The Nanai curative shamanic drawings usually depict the shining sun and moon marking both the people's and the ancestors' world as well as the connection between them.

Among the ritual sculptural images, the curative shamanic complex always includes the images of stars, the Sun and the Moon, as well as their zoomorphic and antropomorphic duplicates: birds, eyes, spiders, frogs, lizards, snakes; also there are complicated compositions meant to support the vital strength of the sick person and the surrounding relatives.

The image of the fire snake in the Nanai mythology interfuses the heavenly waters, solar symbolics and the water chaos of the earth (Sem 1986: 32), which is also depicted on Nene Onenko's shamanic robe. The image of the fire snake preserves the Universe in the unity of the space and time – chronothrope (Sem 1999: 121). The image of the snake born from the World Egg is depicted on the rock paintings in the village of Sakachi-Alyan (Okladnikov 1968: 192, 198). In Nanai folklore tradition the heavenly sun snake-dragon is called the son of the Tsar of Birds and it has a robe of fire (Chadayeva 1990: 181). In Nanai shamanic ritual complex the image of the bird-snake is connected with the figure of the primeval shamanic spirit, the Master of the Wind Buchu (Sem 2000: 34).

The Nanai shamanic attributes also include a third vision of the Universe, splitting the uniform image into several fragments, reflecting the specific peculiarities of the mythological-poetical shamanic world perception. D. Solovyov, the renowned researcher of hunting, geographer and collector of ethnographical material donated to the Department of Ethnography of the Russian Museum a unique set of curative and shamanic robes (REM, 1910, coll. 1998-168, 169, 170, 173, 174) connected with the cult of the Thunderer. On the curative jacket, front and the skirt there are three versions of the world model. The ornamentation on the jacket marking the middle world depicts a circle open at the top, with two snakes penetrating into it with their heads from the left and the right (the water and the earth snake, whose master is, according to the mythology of the lower course Nanai of the Samar family, the heavenly dragon Boa Yaluni, the Master of the Universe (Kubanova 1992: 3, 145). Below the circle there are two birds-eagles with their heads pointed into different directions. This ornamentation records the beginning of the creation of the world, the birds' search for the primeval dirt to create the earth still only given in the perspective of the opposition between the sky and the earth, the earth and the water in the form of two snakes and two birds. The open circle could denote the epoch of primary creation and timelessness as well as the imperfection of the creative process. The skirt ornamentation (marking the lower world on the robe) depicts the following stage in the creation of the world: the universal circle is closed (World Egg), above there is a three-petal fragment of a flower, possibly three suns, separated by the firmament circle with two handles on the sides (the opposition of the sky-earth along the vertical and the two fires – Sun-Moon or two Venuses – morning and evening stars in the world of the people and the ancestors along the horizontal).

Inside the circle of the World Egg the ornamentation depicts an eagle in the centre below, above on the left there is the tiger or the sable, the figures of the cosmogonic myth of the creation of the world; they are also the personifications of the supreme gods of the Nanai pantheon, especially of Arha mergen, the cultural hero of the fairy-tales, the Master of the Weather, the Thunderer, regulator of the natural and life rhythms of the Universe. In mythology, he appears in the form of a red wolf, dog and sable (sunset and sunrise), causing the eclipse of the moon and the sun (Sem 2000: 34; Kile 1996: No. 8, 14; Bulgakova 1983: No. 10). On the curative shamanic robe, there are images of the personified supreme gods of the Nanai religious and cult pantheon – the big-eared Master of the Earth, the Sea, the Fish, the Sky standing on the figure of an eagle, and the Master of Thunder in the form of a dragon, as well as the ancestors of the wolf. The main images of the Nanai folkloric pantheon are featured on the petroglyphs of the Amur Region (Okladnikov 1968: 32; 1971: 209).

Images of the Universe in Nanai cosmology

According to the Nanai traditional world view the uniformity of the perception of the world, the cosmic space, rhythm, movement, and time was associated with the living breathing creature having a certain rhythm and pulsation. In Nanai folklore the hero, travelling to the upper and lower world on the verge of the earth (Sem 1986: 34) perceives this pulsation – this is the transfer from one state to another. In shamanic travels this transfer is recorded as a vibration, and on the shamanic attributes, the tambourine, the icons, and the robes it is depicted as a zigzag, or a dotted line in three parallel lines. The world as a whole is presented in the form of a huge snake or a dragon (a flying lizard, a snake with the head and fangs of a wild boar and the antlers of a deer), or a big deer with branchy antlers, a huge elk (Sem & Sem 1991; Chadayeva 1990; Kubanova 1992). The latter image mostly conforms to the earthly world. What is important is the fact that the image of the world, in its entirety, corresponds to its vertical structure. In Nanai fairy-tales it appears in the form of a deer with branch-like antlers, connecting the primeval marsh and the heavenly upper world, the dwelling place of the supreme gods. In the myth "Heavenly Deer" about procuring a bride from Boa Enduri, the Master of the Heaven, the hero Alha mergen, with the help of a heavenly goat, ascends to the upper world along the branch-like antlers of a huge deer connecting the sky and the marsh, and encounters a bear standing in the marsh up to its waist. The animals are begging him to forward their request to the supreme god of the Heaven to let them free. When the hero fulfils the request, the sky and the earth separate, the antlers fall down and mountains and rivers are formed, the bear's fur covers the forest, and a lake appears in the marsh (Sem & Sem 1991). According to the other version of the myth "Mergen and his Friends" about a gigantic Deer-Universe the courageous hero mergen encounters a tiger, an ant, a beluga and a deer, which he rescues on his way to his bride – the Sun's daughter. Undergoing his ordeals mergen hurries to the rescue of his friends-animals (Sem & Sem 1976). The image of the huge deer with branch-like antlers, along which the hero ascends to the Heaven, has been put down in the third version of the fairy-tale about the heavenly snake-mergen, the son of the Tsar of Birds (Chadayeva 1990: 181).

More wide-spread is the image of the Universe – the World Tree, sometimes with the sun and the moon, or the anthropomorphic tree-woman, the ancestress of the world, people, animals, and plants. The latter is often depicted on Nanai wedding gowns (Ivanov 1954: 229–245). In the cosmogonic myth of the upper course Nanai the ancestor Guranta extracts the woman Myameldi from the trunk of the world tree, which is also connected with the sacred power of the ancestor (Trusov 1884: 438–452, 468). On the Nanai wedding gown the cosmic image of the tree-ancestress has different versions, among others in the form of two anthropomorphic figures – the male one above, the female one below, or it is combined from two S-shaped figures in the form of a woman in labour, a tree, a bird and a frog (Sem 1997a: 222–227). The World Tree includes the images of three worlds of the universe, the birds marking the top, the deer and other animals – the middle world, the earth, and the frogs, snakes, lizards, and fish – the world below, the water. The anthropomorphic image of the World Tree-Universe often had the upper part of the crown in the form of a fork. In the Nanai shamanic curative drawings two trees can be encountered – the one of weather and the life tree of spirits, or else, three trees with solar symbolism (Ivanov 1954: 262, 264, 280–281), most probably corresponding to the myth about the three suns. Here, we should remember that a tree with a fork is the way to the world of the ancestors, a means of transfer between the worlds of the folkloric persons, and the image of the World Tree having the sun from the one side and the moon from the other, or the sun and the frost, rain (as in the Weather Tree or in the Tree of Spirits) is characteristic of the depiction of the world model not only in the case of the Nanai, but also in the drawings on the rocks of the Priamurye dating from the neolithic age.

In conclusion, it can be mentioned that the Nanai mythological-ritual world model has been preserved in shamanic images and sacred objects used in shamanic rituals connected with procuring the children's spirits, in curative incantation, in the process of leading the spirits. It characterises the spatial-temporal structure of the cosmos through the image of the World Tree, the sunny part of which reflects the people's world, and the upper moon side – the world of the spirits, the ancestors. The ancestor's image has been extracted from nature and is identical to its macro-structure. Alongside the plant code of the universe the Nanai mythological tradition widely uses zoomorphic images of the cosmic vertical. The Nanai world model and its images are based on natural and biological rhythms and the characteristics of the Universe, the main contents and essence of which is the harmony between all the spheres and phenomena, universal connection and interchange of separate images. When comparing the images of the neolithic paintings from the Amur Basin with the world model and folkloric images of the universe in the living Nanai tradition, we have to recognise their almost complete correspondence. Probably the sacred rocks and stones present peculiar sign-symbolic clichйs capable of modelling the images of myth creation in the Nanai traditional culture and they evidently formed the people's world model and world view, interpreting the standards of the ancestors' national mentality and fixing them in their memory through oral tradition and ritual practice.

References

Unprinted sources

Archives of the Institute of Ethnography (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography) at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Институт этнографии, Музей антропологии и этнографии, Российская Академия Наук): A. N. Lipsky, 1932, 5-5-6, pp. 1–34.

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