CHARACTER OF ZHALMAUYZ IN THE FOLKLORE OF TURKIC PEOPLES

 

Pakizat Auyesbayeva1, Akbota Akhmetbekova2, Zhumashay Rakysh3*

1PhD in of philological sciences, M. O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art, Kazakhstan, ksaryarka@inbox.ru

2PhD in of philological sciences, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan, axbota@mail.ru

3PhD in of philological sciences, M. O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art, Kazakhstan, zhumashay1970@gmail.com

*Corresponding author

 

Abstract

Among the Turkic peoples Zhalmauyz kempіr character, compared to other demonological characters, is widely used in genres. The transformation of this character from seven-headed villain - Zhalmauyz kempіr to mystan kempіr was seen. This very transformation is associated with the transition of society from matriarchy to patriarchy. Zhalmauyz is a syncretic person. She acts in the character of an evil old woman. This character is the main image of the evil inclination in the Kazakh mythology. She robs babies and eats them, floating on the water surface in the form of lungs, cleeks everybody who approached to the river and strangle until she will agree to give up her baby. In some tales she captures the young girls and sucks their blood through a finger deceiving or intimidating them. Two mythical characters in this fairy-tale image - mystan kempіr and ugly villain - Zhalmauyz are closely intertwined. In the Turkic peoples Zhalmauyz generally acts as fairy-tale character. But as a specific demonological force Zhalmauyz refers to the character of hikaya genre. Because even though people do not believe in the seven-headed image of this character, but they believes that she eats people, harmfull, she can pass from the human realm into the demons’ world and she is a connoisseur of all the features of both worlds. Zhalmauyz is a mythical image, which is as chthonic ghosts, destroys all flesh. Zhalmauyz is representative of the underworld, which is struggling with the world of light, she tends to extinguish the torch of life, draw the disaster and destroy all flesh. Zhalmauyz function, aimed at the destruction of life by absorbing the sun, the moon and the reign of darkness, surely connects her with the nether world. Based on her act of the sun and the moon absorbing, you can imagine her as bottomless, pitch substance with a huge mouth. There is not a portrait of Zhalmauyz in fairy tales, we get information in the course of its destruction only by destroying her one eye or cutting off her seven heads, and only through these acts we know that she was one-eyed, or seven-headed. Finally, we can say that the image of Zhalmauyz kempіr in Kazakh folklore was influenced by different historical periods - from the image of mythical ghosts in ancient times, and then in the form of a shapeless body, and later in the image of seven-headed villain, and in the process of the matriarchy collapse she appeared in the image of Zhalmauyz Kempіr.

Keywords: folklore, mythology, hikaya, genre.

 

 


FULL TEXT PDF

CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of SOCIOINT 2016- 3rd International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 23-25 May 2016- Istanbul, Turkey

ISBN: 978-605-64453-7-8