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Description
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The article is devoted to the study of the ethnic character of the Kazakh heroic epic. Despite the academic postulates of the luminaries of science – S. E. Malov, V. M. Zhirmunsky, V. Ya. Propp, B. N. Putilov, I. V. Pukhov, L. I. Emelyanov, V. M. Gatsak, S. Yu. Neklyudov, etc., the folklore studies of the Soviet period did not determine the ethnic character of the heroic epic. The scholars introduced new methodological guidelines into academic use, but the cognitive possibilities of the epic remained in the shadows. The Alpamys epic was comprehensively studied by scholars of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In the works of famous literary critics and folklorists, such as A. S. Orlov, Kh. T. Zarifov, L. S. Sobolev, M. O. Auezov, M. S. Silchenko, N. S. Smirnova, A. Kh. Margulan, A. S. Mirbadaleva, M. M. Sagitova, F. I. Urmancheev, K. M. Maksetov, I. G. Zakirov, R. G. Yagafarov, and etc., this heroic tale was studied from various academic positions. Almost all of them, with the exception of folklorists of a later period, noted that the genesis of the Alpamys epic cannot be connected with a single historical event. Nevertheless, in the studies of A. S. Orlov, V. M. Zhirmunsky, and Kh. T. Zarifov, an attempt was made to determine the epoch of the formation of the epic. The novelty of this work is dictated by the study of the Kazakh version of the Alpamys epic on the basis of the ethnic-genetic method of research. In the mid 1950s, following the V. Ya. Propp’s statement that “the epic goes not behind history, but ahead, and expresses the age-old ideals of the people”, the previously withdrawn epic tales of various peoples were returned, the folklorists of the Union republics were guided by the advanced research of Soviet scholars from Moscow and Leningrad. Kazakh folklorists, for example, covered the problems of Kazakh folklore on the basis of the methodological guidelines of the leading Soviet scholars of that time. Thus, following the collection “Typological Studies on Folklore” (1975), a collective monograph “Typology of Kazakh Folklore” (1981) was published in Kazakhstan. After the publication of the collection “Folklore. Problems of Historicism” (1988), the M. O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR prepared a monograph “Historicism of Kazakh Folklore” (1993). As we can see, the methodological research developed by representatives of the Russian Soviet folklore studies served as a model for the folklorists of Kazakhstan. However, due to the lack of ethnonyms in Russian epics, as V. Ya. Propp had already said, Soviet folklorists did not study the problem of the ethnicity of various tribes reflected in the heroic tales of a particular people. This also applies to the epic heritage of the Kazakh people, including Alpamys, since many phenomena recognized as the phenomenon of epic idealization are confirmed in real life. The historicity of the heroic epic is confirmed by many observations. Thus, the leading scholars of the Soviet era did not develop a methodology for studying the epic heritage in connection with ethnic history. This determines the relevance of this work. Alpamys is an epic heritage of many Turkic-speaking peoples. There are Kazakh, Uzbek, Karakalpak, Tatar, Bashkir, Altai, etc. versions. However, this study is limited to the study of ethnic information in the Kazakh version of the Alpamys heroic epic. In the course of the research, numerous toponyms (Baisin, Zhideli Baisyn), ethnonyms (konyrat, kalmak) and anthroponyms (Alpamys, Barshyn, Goklan), which were formed on the territory of the entire Central Asian region, were subjected to academic processing. The Alpamys epic is repleted with onomastic nomenclature, which sheds light on the ethnic history of the Central Asian peoples. On the basis of the toponym Baisyn, for instance, such cognitive areas are affected, which for a long time were not paid attention to by folklorists of various times. The article attempts to develop the study of the heroic epic in connection with the ethnic history of the Turkic-speaking peoples, which is a new direction for the epic studies of the modern period.
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