<몽골비사>에 반영된 종교 관련 어휘표현의 언어인류학적 연구

Abstract

This paper investigates embedded religious terms embedded inside the 13th century written historical text The Secret History of the Mongols. This research is closely linked to linguistic anthropological perspectives. Linguistic anthropology is interested not only in various forms of verbal and written languages but also in underlying hidden meanings inside linguistic texts. From this viewpoint I try to show nomadic customs and traditions in 13th century nomadic Mongolia by scrutinizing religious terms reflected inside The Secret History of the Mongols. Religious terms inside The Secret History of the Mongols can be divided into four major categories: shamanism related terms, terms for sky worship as well as nature belief, terms for ancestor worship and terms for other religious beliefs. Above all, frequent usages of shamanistic terms as well as terms for sky worship are probably the most characteristic points in 13th century nomadic Mongolia. In other words Buddhist terms are rarely visible inside The Secret History of the Mongols. Also some shamanistic terms are not yet classified by gender in 13th century nomadic Mongolia since only ‘bӧe’ (equivalent meaning to contemporary Mongolian ‘bӧӧ’) is used for male shamans. However in some cases shamans are either addressed or referred differently according to their social status. For example, a high ranked shaman was addressed as ‘Teb-tenggeri’. Furthermore, a certain morphological structure such as ‘personal names + shaman (or shamans’ titles)’ is used for referring to a particular shamans. Some examples of this usage are ‘Toɣto’a-bӧe’ and ‘Kӧkӧčü Teb-tenggeri’. Lastly, some vocabularies among terms for sky worship and natural belief contain components such as status, ability, function, etc. and thus componential analysis is applicable. In addition, the metaphorical kinship term ‘bone’ is related to spiritual world in shamanism as well as patrilineal ancestor worship.