General and specific traits in the folklore and ritual life of the peoples of the Caucasus (ethnolinguistic aspect)

Abstract

The article deals with the cultural connections between the speakers of Caucasian and Iranian(Ossetian) languages which reflect the flexibility of the language as well as cultural values and preferences. These connections are revealed through main rituals such as the ritual of killing old people to prevent them from a disgraceful death by age, funeral and wedding rituals, as well as ritual object and their names. The authors aim at establishing the common and unique traits in the ritual and cult life of the peoples of the Caucasus. The research proved that the life of the Caucasian peoples constituted a cultural unity. It was determined both by the internal life of the peoples and the common source of cultural and language loan, namely the multilanguage Caucasus inhabited by Iranian, Caucasian, Turkic, Arabic and Indo-European language speakers. The authors underline and analyse the resemblance of different elements of rituals and study the linguistic parallels in ritual and cult texts. The comparative -typological analysis reveals many common traits in the studied rituals, the verbal representation of which reflects to which extent the traditional values are preserved in the culture and contributes to interpretation of the semantics and symbolic of the ritual text.