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Churakov V. Udmurt Family and Clan Signs: Sources and Historiography

V. Churakov
Udmurt Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Izhevsk, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0001-9998-3294
E-mail: vermis3@gmail.com

 

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ABSTRACT. The article examines the family-household signs of Udmurt peasants called pus. The earliest evidence of the use of such signs by the population of the Middle Volga and the Kama regions dates back to the period of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria. In the Kazan Khanate, they were used to mark various movable and immovable property and as personal signatures in documents. After the annexation of the Kazan Khanate, the tradition of using family and clan marks as a personal signature enters Russian documents and persists almost until the end of the nineteenth century. The earliest documents, in which there are images of Udmurt family signs, date back to the 1620s. The first information about the use of family and clan signs by the Udmurts appeared in the works of scientists and travelers from the first third of the eighteenth century. In 1826, J. F. Erdmann published more than 200 images of Udmurt property signs. In 1865, N. N. Blinov was the first to draw attention to the connection between the Udmurt clan signs, tamgas, and the clan division of the Udmurt society. At the beginning of the 1890s, P. M. Sorokin thoroughly studied the Udmurt signs of property. His article is still among the best works on this subject. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the collection of information about the use of family clan signs by the Udmurts stopped, and most researchers used the material accumulated by their predecessors for illustrative purposes. A researcher who embarks on the study of the Udmurt pus signs will face a number of tasks, including the cataloging of the signs already known to the scientists. The task of identifying and studying clan property signs remains relevant, too.

 

KEYWORDS: Udmurts, ethnography, family-clan signs, pus, tamga, wild-hive beekeeping property sign (bortnoye znamia)

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8600-2024-3(25)-6-27
UDC 392.3(=511.131)

 

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