Substitute Offering

The substitute offering is a little known ritual practice described by Artturi Kannisto among the northern Khanty and Mansi in the early 1900s, and by the Novosibirsk ethnographers in 1985–2017. Substitution was practiced in case of the offeror’s illness, absence of a requisite domestic animal or unsuccessful hunt. In such cases, instead of actual animals, their effi gies were offered to the patron spirits—fi gurines of horses, reindeer, cows, sheep, and cocks cut from birch-bark or cast of lead; alternatively, purchased toys were offered. A substitute could be a pencil drawing or an embroidered fi gure of a horse on cloth. The specifi c substitute was normally prescribed by a shaman; it had to be made only by someone unrelated to and older than the supposed offeror. The effi gy and the prayer to the deity, accompanying the offering, are described. Animal effi gies were kept in sacral trunks, attached to the clothes of patron spirits, tied into the corners of head cloths and ribbons of covers to be offered. The combined version of the substitute offering includes hitherto unknown representations of a head cloth, a coat or robe, cut from birch-bark

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Clothing · Effi · Shamanism · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · History

• Khanty and Mansi Cultural Heritage

  Open Access•Elena Glavatskaya•Ural Historical Journal•2024

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