The Nanai.  Spiritual culture (mythological worldview, traditional beliefs, holidays and rituals) 

The Nanai’s traditional worldview is based on animating and personifying forces of nature and on harmonious relations between nature and human beings. Shamanism was central to the Nanai’s religious and mythological system. The Nanai’s worldview also experienced some influence of Far Eastern Buddhism and, to a lesser degree, of Orthodox Christianity. The Nanai believed that the universe had three worlds: the upper, the middle, and the lower ones. The Nanai believed the sky to be divided into realms and to be populated by spirits affecting human life. These ideas differed depending on the specific locality. The Nanai had also different concepts of various underground realms (that were different from the underworld located underground in the West). Some believed these worlds to be populated by spirits and they did not believe shamans to be capable of traveling there, while others had different ideas. Like many other ideas, the concepts of otherworldly and earthly realms were largely linked with folklore stories and shamanic fairy tales that to a significant degree originated from shamans’ dreams.

The Nanai culture preserved the ideas of kinship between people and trees. The Nanai’s mythological and ritual tradition likened the life of trees to the life of people in every little detail. Like people, trees are born, grow, fall ill, die, get married, have children, understand human speech, and can talk. A later tradition includes the concept of a Mother Tree (a second parent) that nurtures children, brings them up, and hides them in its foliage, branches, hollows, etc. until they reach a certain age. 

Animals play many diverse roles in the Nanai’s worldview and mythology. Animals, birds, fish, insects, and reptiles (both real and mythological) act as guardian spirits, master spirits of certain areas, shamans’ helping spirits, sacrifices, etc. Not infrequently, animals served as primal ancestors of individual clans, peoples, and the entire humankind. With the Nanai, such roles were mostly frequently performed by the bear, the tiger, and the eagle. The bear played an important role in the Nanai’s beliefs. Several traits common to people and bears (behavior, anatomical, and morphological traits) were the grounds that helped evolve the ideas of a blood kinship between people and these animals. 

Animal sculptures could be made for healing. For instance, in case of a general illness or rheumatism in hands, the Nanai made the image of a sitting bear with outstretched paws made of two jointed parts. Other images of a sitting bear had an image of a bear cub cut into its left and right hind legs; these images were used to heal back pains or to bring luck in hunting. In case of a cold, the bear was made out of dried grass. Plates and spoons the Nanai used at the bear feast were decorated with images of bears.

Shamans guided the creation of sculptures for religious rituals; these sculptures were called sevhen , and the Nanai believed them to be guardians, shamans’ helpers, and masters of spirits. (“ Sevhe ” in Nanai means “soul”.) A sculpture that housed a sevhe was called a sevhen . Girki sculptures were made before hunting or fishing to ensure luck.

The Nanai’s clan ancestors, dzhulins ( dyulins ), could take both human shapes and the shapes of their totemic animal, a bear, a tiger, possibly a wild boar and a dog or a wolf. The dzhulin was the guardian of the house and the hearth. The clan’s guardian spirit had many functions: they were healers, hunters and fishermen, soothsayers, they were involved in initiation rites, and they served as mediators in addressing the lord of the underworld when sending souls off to it. 

Shamans commonly had several helping spirits. Shamans would keep their images in their homes and regularly take care of them: shamans would “feed” sacrificial food to them, cense with precious herbs. These spirit images belonged to the Nanai kasata shaman Chuke Chongidi Oninka. “ Kasata ” means “sending a soul off to the underworld.” That is the most important and difficult ritual in the traditional Nanai culture, and only a most powerful shaman of the highest “ kasata ” rank could perform it; such a shaman would have a large number of helping spirits that aided the shaman in traveling the most dangerous road in the world beyond, the road to Buni , the world of ancestors.

A wooden dyulin figure is set by the wall opposite the entrance. Various plates with all kinds of food, berries, and bottles of drinks are set before it on a woven mat. This ritual was mandatory when moving into a new house to ensure the dyulin ’s protection for all members of the household in the new living space.

The Nanai had the concept of the soul. The Nanai believed that evil spirits, the spirits of diseases, or evil shamans could steal a person’s soul. When a soul was sent off to buni , the shaman would throw in the fire the fanya pillow and a mugdy effigy thereby cutting every connection with the deceased. The Nanai believed the dead to continue existing after their body was gone, but their life was less active than that of the living people, and the dead are not as close to the living.

The Nanai’s traditional rituals had two types of rites: those connected with spring and fall, with the sun cycle (the water and sky worship), and those connected with summer and winter, with ancestor worship, and with worshipping the earth and mountains (the great wake ritual and the bear celebration). The spring and fall Undi ritual was a calendar New Year rite, but it has a shamanic nature and is connected with the birds’ arrival. The shaman in the ritual is the master of the weather. The fall ritual of praying to the sky is performed to ensure health and is connected with ancestor worship. It was performed in honor of supreme deities, Boa, the lord of the sky, or Sangiya mapa , the master of the clan’s land. The Kasa taori , or the great wake ritual, was intended to ensure that the clan would live on via the ancestors being reborn in their descendants. The bear celebration was intended to induce a magical rebirth of the animal, to propitiate spirits and nature in order to ensure successful hunting, and to help relatives be reincarnated. A bear cub was specifically reared for the celebration that featured a ritual killing of the bear; its body was then skinned and a ritual meal was held. The bear’s skeleton was placed in a special shed. Once a year, every Nanai family prayed to the sky. Preparations for this solemn rite would start well in advance, a pig would be fattened for sacrifice. All prayers to the sky were held without shamans who could participate as regular clan members.

The Nanai had clan-type shamanism. They viewed shamans as creatures with two natures who could “see” into two worlds, the everyday world and the sacred world. Both men and women could be Nanai shamans. 

 The first paraphernalia of a beginner shaman was a drum and a belt. The Nanai’s shaman music is marked by heightened emotions in singing and is accompanied by beating the drum ( unchukhun in Amur / unikhun in Ussuri) and by the jingling of the belt with conical rattles. Sticks for shamans’ drums were made from wood and upholstered with fur. They were decorated with carvings, fish skin appliqué, or drawings made with paint. The upper part of the handle sometimes bore the carved head of a two-faced spirit ( ayami-teremi ) and two images of an anthropomorphic hunting spirit ( edekhe ).

In the traditional Nanai shamanic concepts, the principal shamanic spirit bears the general name Ayami (shaman’s helper). Shamans’ guardians called Buchu, Boco, and Bokhoso also played an important role. The spirit could be visualized differently in ritual practices: as a sculpture, as a drawing, or as a stencil-figure made of birch bark. The more powerful the shaman, the more different spirit helpers they had.

Each shaman had their unique costume details depending on their clan affiliation and their power. The costume of a powerful male shaman capable of sending the soul off to the underworld comprised a tetu shirt worn open, a khozya skirt, a yamkha belt, zapagdo gloves, the toli mirror, leather straps and geramsa wood shavings, and khoya headgear. Shamans always had a drum and a stick, two staffs, nine stones, and idols serving as vessels of their helping spirits. Female shamans’ costumes were different from men’s. Since women did not take part in great wake rituals, they did not have the toli mirror and the khoya headgear. Female shaman’s dress included a shirt, two aprons, gaiters, a chelemi round hat, a belt with pendants, a healing pectoral, wood shavings, and a drum with a stick. 

Nanai shamans had different functions. They performed divinations, predicted when things and people would go missing, healed the sick, sent souls of the dead off to the underworld, performed clan-wide rituals to ensure luck in hunting and fishing, prayed annually for their kinfolk’s health and well-being, and also performed shamanic rituals proper such as different-level initiations to increase shamanic power. Shamans were also believed to be able to turn the weather and summon wind from the needed direction.

The 20 th century saw radical changes in Nanai rituals. The state’s efforts to create new mass rites and holidays had a major effect on the Nanai’s current ritual practices. Rituals became part of cultural representation, and ritual elements turned into period pieces at mass culture events and in the tourism industry.