POSTHUMOUS WEDDING IN TRADITIONAL IDEAS AND RITUAL PRACTICE OF THE CHUVASHS IN SOUTHERN URAL

Abstract

The article considers the funeral and memorial customs and rites of the Chuvashs living in the Southern Urals, mainly the Ttans-Ik and Trans-Belaya basins of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The choice of the study range is due to the fact that the funeral and memorial customs and rites of the Chuvash of this region have not been studied sufficiently in historical and ethnological terms, and the available studies are generalized or fragmentary in nature. The purpose of the study is to show the phenomenon of the so-called posthumous wedding and its local variants, which have been preserved and exist in the ritual practice of this ethno-territorial group. Materials and methods. The study was conducted using general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, analogy, systematization and fundamental principles of historical research: historicism, objectivity, consistency and specificity. Historical-comparative, descriptive methods, the method of system-semantic analysis, as well as such methods of field research as interviews and observation were also used. The article is based on historical and ethnological studies on ethnography, religion and funeral and memorial rituals of the Chuvash, the peoples of Russia and the Volga-Ural region, archival documents of the Scientific Archive of the Chuvash State Institute of Humanities, as well as field materials collected by the author in 2014, 2021, 2022 in the Republic of Bashkortostan and the Republic of Tatarstan. Results of the study. The ideas of the Chuvash about the institution of marriage were analyzed from the point of view of its relevance for unmarried and unmarried dead, verbal, actional and ritual actions pursuing the motivation for marriage by representatives of the specified category of the deceased were considered, the essence and content of the posthumous wedding in the ritual practice of the Trans-Ural Chuvashs were reflected, including local forms of its manifestation. Findings. It was revealed that posthumous weddings were symbolic in nature and were held formally. With the participation of the parents and relatives of the deceased, they arranged both with a preliminary visit and without visiting the cemetery. The time for the wedding was determined by the parents of the deceased themselves or adjusted it to the summer or autumn general commemoration of the deceased. At posthumous weddings, such elements of the traditional Chuvash wedding were observed as the performance of long and dance wedding songs with dances, parental blessing, a joint meal at the table, and the distribution of gifts to the participants of the rite.