Sagaan Ubgen
Sagaan Ubgen ( The Old White , White Old Man ; Mongolian : (Дэлхийн) цагаан өвгөн ; Buryat : Сагаан үбгэн ; Russian : Белый Старец ) is the Mongolian guardian of life and longevity. Other transliterations of the name are Tsagaan Uvgun , Tsagaan Övgön , Tsagaan Ebugen or Cagan Öbö .
He is one of the symbols of fertility and prosperity in the Buddhist pantheon. Sagaan Ubgen is worshiped as a deity in what scholars call "white shamanism", a subordination of "Buryat yellow shamanism". It is a shamanistic tradition that includes Buddhist rituals and beliefs and is influenced by Tibetan Buddhism . Sagaan Ubgen comes from Mongolia .
In some versions of his mythology, Sagaan Ubgen, the white old man, lives with Itügen, mother earth.
Syncretic inclusion in the Buddhist pantheon
Sagaan Ubgen also belongs to the Buddhist pantheon of today's Mongols and Buryats. As with many other characters, this is the result of a syncretism with the region's indigenous shamanism . Before Buddhism came to Mongolia and Buryatia, Sagaan Ubgen was the god of longevity, prosperity and fertility. To add to the further veneration as part of the Buddhist rites, further narratives have been added to the existing mythology. It tells how he accepted Buddhism and became a protector of this religion, while at the same time continuing his previous, more secular, functions. One version of the story tells how Buddha and his disciples met Sagaan Ubgen one day while walking. This impressed the Buddha with his wisdom, so that he named Sagaan Ubgen a "saint". In another version of the story, Sagaan Ubgen is one of two hunters, alongside Hara Ubgen, who encounter Milarepa in his cave while hunting . Milarepa persuades them to give up hunting and spread the teachings of Buddhism.
Appearance and iconography
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Sagaan Ubgen is often portrayed similarly to the Tibetan deity Pekar or the Chinese old man from the South Pole . Like him, Sagaan Ubgen is the patron deity of longevity, prosperity and health. His usual appearance is that of a bald old man with a white beard. He carries a staff with a dragon head and the book of fate with him. It is traditionally represented by a deer and a peach tree.
Cham dances
Even in the Mongolian version of the Cham dances , Sagaan Ubgen is a bald, old man with a white beard. He wears a snuffbox on his belt and appears in the company of other masked characters. These represent other syncretic Buddhist deities, such as Begze, Mahākāla or the Garuda . The white old man is one of the few characters in dance who can speak.
His character was included in the Tibetan Cham dance at the behest of the 13th Dalai Lama after he had a dream while in exile in Outer Mongolia . In Tibetan it is called rgan po dkar po or rgan dkar for short . He performed for the first time at a Cham New Year dance in the Namgyal Monastery of the Potala Palace . From there it spread to Cham dances from other monasteries all over Tibet.
Sagaan Ubgen is the main character in the "Tiger Dance", which symbolizes the transition from the old to the new year. He enters the dance floor weak and staggering, he is often carried. After he symbolically kills a tiger by striking a tiger skin with a stick, his strength returns. In some varieties of the dance he then walks past the audience and begs for donations and sometimes gives some of his snuff in return. In other varieties, however, he begins to drink alcohol and dance until he is too drunk for that.
literature
- Thomas Hauschild : Santa Claus. The real story . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-030063-8 .
- Walther Heissig : An Invocation of the “White Old Man” , in: Wolfgang Voigt (ed.), Folia Rara , Supp. Vol. 19, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1976, pp. 51-60.
- Walther Heissig: Some remarks on the cult of the "White Old" , in: Series Orientale Roma, Vol. LVI, No. 2, Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Rome 1987, pp. 589–616.
- Siegbert Hummel: The White Old One. A Tibetan image , in: Sinologica, Vol. VII, No 3, pp. 193-206.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Ippei Shimamura: Yellow Shamans (Mongolia) . In: Mariko Namba Walter and Eva Jane Neumann Fridman (ed.): Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara / Denver / Oxford 2004, pp. 649-651, ISBN 978-1-57-607645-3 . PDF
- ↑ Nataliia Lvovna Zhukovskaia: Lamaism . In: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (ed.): Religion and Politics in Russia: A Reader. Routledge, London 2015, ISBN 9780765624154 , pp. 194/195.
- ^ A b Philip Wilkinson: Myths and Legends , Dorling Kindersley Ltd., London 2009, ISBN 9781405344036 , p. 173.
- ↑ René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz: Tibetan Religious Dances: Tibetan Text and Annotated Translation of the ʼChams Yig. Religion and Society, vol. 2 , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1976, ISBN 9789027976215 , p. 84