현대몽골의 질병과 관련된 어휘의 민속학적 연구

Abstract

Nomadic cultures and folklore of Mongolian people are easily find out inside their everyday life. In particular, it is often true that there are various cultures inside their common usages of language. The perspective of cultural analyses through language is called "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" as well as "linguistic determinism". I believe that terms concerning diseases are particularly linked to grassroots' culture of Mongolia and thus, those terms surely reflect nomadic cultures and folklore of Mongolian people. In order to do a folkloric analysis on terms concerning diseases, I looked into principally two fields: one is folk classification of terms on diseases and the other one is reflection of nomadic cultures and folklore.In the case of folk classification, I classified those terms into five categories: (1) traditional Mongolian diseases, which are often mentioned in historical texts and folk texts, (2) diseases from everyday life, (3) symptoms of diseases, symptoms and conditions appearing in the body, (4) patients and medical drugs, (5) others. In addition, terms on diseases are also embedded into various spheres of folklore studies, such as folk medicine, folk stories and proverbs. For example, firstly, diseases are widely employed in the context of the folk medicine in Mongolia. There are many sorts of medical herbs around Mongolia and these herbs are very efficient to cure various diseases. For instance, a herbal medicine, so called shdergene, is widely known to cure typhoid, abdominal and stomach ache, cold, etc. Secondly, folk stories in Mongolia sometimes contain diseases. Thirdly, not many, but some Mongolian proverbs also provide other aspects of diseases.