Ru
EnI. Kulova
Interaction of the elements of the Christian canonical and traditional ritual spheres in Ossetian culture
The article is devoted to the influence of canonical practices on the folk ritual culture of the Ossetians. To reveal the commonality of the elements of traditional and religious rituals, the author shares historical information about Christianity among the Ossetians (Alans), considers separate components of ritual prayer at the sacred locus and analyzes the components of its intonational sphere. On the basis of archaeological data, found in the works of researchers, information from written sources and documents from various collections, article describes the main stages of the Christianization of the ethnos and the nature of the penetration of elements of the religious cult into the traditional ritual sphere. Connections of its individual elements with the components of Orthodox worship are found. The process of interaction between the Ossetian folk culture and Christianity, which began as early as the 6th century and proceeded with varying degree of intensity in different periods, continues nowadays. Its results are reflected in the locative, communicative, actional and verbal codes of rites: the place where many of them are performed is the dzuar, which is associated with the church; in this case, the dzuarylæg plays a role similar to a priest; and people, present during the performance of a ritual, take part by praying. Traditional prayer books are similar to the canonical ones on the structural and content levels as well as intonationally (division into verses and lines, refrain forms of prayers, dialogic form of construction, distribution of the text between the “priest” and the people, periodicity, orderliness of relations between notes value, sound pitch definiteness, musical and intonation differentiation – psalmody on one tone or the embodiment of an intonation configuration (wave) depending on the formative factor (stresses, caesurae).
Key words
intonation embodiment of traditional Ossetian prayers, Ossetian rituals, Ossetian traditional prayers, Christianity in Ossetia.
For citation
Kulova I. Interaction of the elements of the Christian canonical and traditional ritual spheres in Ossetian culture // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 68-76.
