Codes in modeling the world of Tuvan and Yakut epic tales
The article examines codes as means of expressing units of space and time in epic texts, focusing on the best epic tales: “Khunan Kara” and “Boktu-Kirish, Bora-Sheelei” (Tuvan; published in the “Monuments of folklore of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East” series (1997)), “Ton Aralchyn Khan” (Tuvan; published in the “Monuments of folklore” series (1990)); “Nyurgun Bootur the Impetuous” and “Kulun Kullustuur the Obstinate” (Yakut; appeared in E.K. Pekarsky’s “Samples of Yakut folk literature” (1907) and in V.N. Vasiliev (1916)). The study aims to trace how the codes lead in old types of thinking and to pinpoint the similarities and differences of how the content of Tuvan and Yakut epic tales is coded. The study makes use of the methodologies of structural semiotics and hermeneutics, as well as those of review and historical comparison. Stage-by-stage decoding of units of space and time in epic texts, such as the motifs of first creation, description of the home country, or a different space plane, leads us to the prevailing set of qualifying oppositions. They reveal the sharpest contrast between the epic tales’ semiotic systems, which, in turn, reflect the specific features of landscape in the home countries, ethnography and life of the Tuvans and Yakuts respectively. The study proves that quantitatively, code configurations are numerous is both traditions. A comparative study of coding as a category of mythological thinking narrows it down to invariant uses of colour codes, as well as that of metals, space, time, geometry, numbers, climate and nature, and of the course, the hidden code of the unconscious. At the same time, code configurations in the Tuvan epic have some distinct uses of their own: the coupling of the codes of metals and phytonyms, and the sound code imitating that of climate and nature. For both traditions, we have determined common objects of semantic coding.