Cultural and semiotic codes of calendar rituals of the Southern Altaians
The paper deals with the cultural and semiotic codes of the modern calendar rites of the southern Altai. The material of the study is based on the field recordings of sacrificial rites to the spirits-owners of the area made during folklore-ethnographic expeditions in the Altai Republic. Particular attention is paid to the semiotic components encoding the important culturological information about the time and the place of the ceremony, its participants, sacred objects, and ritual actions. The semantics of this complex sign is revealed by using the background knowledge: historical, ethnic, cultural and linguistic. The author concludes that the ancient sacrificial rites to the spirits-owners of the area related to calendar cycles in Altai went through a long historical path of development and underwent some changes. As a shamanic ritual, it involves some elements of Lamaism, as evidenced by borrowed Buddhist attributes and religious terms.