Ethnographic groups of the Mari. Mari: what religion belongs to?

, Orthodoxy

Map of Finno-Ugric tribes before the arrival of the Slavs

Story

The first reliable mention of the Cheremis is found in the Tale of Bygone Years, where they are mentioned among the peoples paying tribute to Russia. It is also said there that the Cheremis live at the mouth of the Oka River. The next mention of the Cheremis is dated 1170 - the princes of Galich hired Cheremis detachments. Russian written sources of the end 12th century indicate that the Cheremis live in the upper reaches of the Vetluga River. There are no mentions of the Cheremis on the territory of the modern Republic of Mari-El in written sources of the 11th-13th centuries. no. Although at that time there were active contacts between Russia and Volga Bulgaria, including an agreement according to which the southern (mountain) bank of the river. The Volga River belonged to the Principality of Vladimir and the northern (meadow) Volga Bulgaria. Archaeologists discovered a large Russian settlement of the 11th-13th centuries on the territory of the Gornomariysky region of the Mari-El Republic (southern bank of the Volga River) (Yuryal village), on the northern bank of the Volga River near the regional center of Yurino a Bulgar settlement was discovered. In 1246, the territory was devastated by the Tatar-Mongols. After which, according to archeology and Russian chronicles, this territory was empty. At the beginning of the 14th century, settlements appeared on the territory of the modern Republic of Mari-El that can clearly be identified as Mari. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Mari were part of the Golden Horde and the Kazan Khanate. During the hostilities between the Moscow state and the Kazan Khanate, the Mari fought both on the side of the Russians and on the side of the Tatars. After the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552, the Mari lands that had previously depended on it became part of the Russian state. On October 4, the Mari Autonomous Okrug was proclaimed as part of the RSFSR, and on December 5, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

Meadow and mountain “Cheremis” (Mari) on the map of Muscovy in 1593

Ethnic groups

• Mountain Mari
  • Forest Mari
• Meadow Mari
• Eastern Mari
  • Pribel Mari
  • Ural Mari
    • Upper Ufa, or Krasnoufimsky, Mari
• Northwestern Mari

Settlement

The bulk of the Mari live in the Republic of Mari El (324.4 thousand people). A significant part lives in the Mari territories of the Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod and Kostroma regions. The largest Mari diaspora is in the Republic of Bashkortostan (105 thousand people). Also, the Mari live compactly in Tatarstan (19.5 thousand people), Udmurtia (9.5 thousand people), Sverdlovsk (28 thousand people) and Perm (5.4 thousand people) regions, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Chelyabinsk and Tomsk regions. They also live in Kazakhstan (12 thousand), Ukraine (7 thousand), and Uzbekistan (3 thousand).

Anthropological type

Yivan Kyrla

Ivan Stepanovich Palantai

The Mari belong to the Sub-Ural anthropological type, which differs from the classical variants of the Ural race in a noticeably larger proportion of the Mongoloid component.

Language

About 464 thousand or 77% of Mari speak the Mari language, the majority (97%) speak Russian, and Mari-Russian bilingualism is widespread.

Costume

Features of a men's suit

The main parts of ancient men's clothing are a canvas embroidered shirt, canvas trousers and a canvas caftan in summer and a cloth caftan in winter. By the end of the 19th century, blouses began to spread everywhere, replacing the old-style shirt. Embroidery on ancient shirts decorated the collar, chest and front hem.

The pants were made from rough, harsh canvas. They were of the same cut as the Chuvash and Tatar ones, and were held at the waist with ties. Already in the middle of the 19th century, they began to sew pants from motley fabric, usually blue striped. The style was like Russian pants, and instead of strings a belt was sewn on. However, old people continued to wear white canvas pants until the 20th century. Pants were usually tucked into onuchi. Over the shirt and pants in the summer, they wore a canvas caftan (“shovr”, “shovyr”) with ruffles, similar to a Russian poddevka.

Winter clothes were cloth caftans and sheepskin short fur coats. On their heads, the Mari wore a home-made woolen hat, black or white with the brim turned up and sometimes down. In villages near Tatar villages they wore a round oriental hat with a rather wide, upturned brim, similar to the Tatar one. In winter they usually wore a white lambskin hat with a black cloth top.

Leather shoes were put on their feet. Since the 17th century, bast shoes woven from linden flax and white onuchi have become widespread.

Features of a women's suit

The women's suit had more decorations, but basically repeated the elements of the men's suit. Women's headdresses were particularly unique. The main parts of the women's costume were, like the men's, a shirt, richly decorated with embroidery, trousers, a canvas caftan, a headdress and bast shoes. A set of different decorations was put on the costume - chest and waist.

The shirt (“tuvyr”, “tuchir”) served both as underwear and outer clothing, replacing a dress. The shirts differed in embroidery and collar cut. In some places the Mari made an incision in the middle of the chest, in others they made an incision on right side, as in men's shirts, and thanks to this, the chest embroidery, located along the cut, was asymmetrical. The hem of the shirt was decorated with a woven pattern or embroidery. The shirts of the Eastern Mari were somewhat different from the meadow and mountain shirts. So, for example, they often sewed a women’s shirt not only from white canvas, but also from motley fabric, and the sleeves were made from factory fabrics. Its cut also reflected the influence of the Tatars and Bashkirs. The chest slit was straight, and the collar was standing, even sometimes turned down. The cut was trimmed in an arc with several strips of colored material and multi-colored ribbons, like the shirts of Tatar and Bashkir women, and the collar was tied with a ribbon. The shirt was often worn without a belt. The embroidery on the Eastern Mari shirts was much less than on the meadow shirts, and it was located on the chest and hem. The embroidery on the shirts of the Perm province was openwork with a clearly defined pattern. The colors were dominated by dark tones - black, dark red, brown.

Mari women wore pants (“yolash”, “polash”) under their shirt. They were sewn from canvas, and in their cut they were similar to the Chuvash ones; strings were sewn to the upper edge of the pants.

Mari women wore an apron (onchylnosakime) over their shirt.

As outer summer clothing, the Mari women used canvas clothing in the form of a swinging caftan (“shovyr”, “shovr”). Among the Eastern Mari women, summer caftans resembled Bashkir and Tatar camisoles; they were sewn at the waist with wedges, sometimes without sleeves.

In the fall, women wore caftans made from homespun canvas in white, gray and brown colors. In winter, Mari women wore a sheepskin coat (“uzhga”) of the same cut as a cloth caftan with folds. The outerwear of the Ural Mari did not differ in cut from the clothing of the Volga Mari. Women sewed swing caftans - “elan”.

The headdresses of married Mari women were very different in their shape and way of wearing. A headdress called “shimaksh” was worn by meadow and eastern Mari women living on the territory of the counties of Urzhum, Elabuga, Birsky, Krasnoufimsky. Along with the usual canvas scarf, they also wore “solyk” - a narrow headband with embroidered ends. Solyk was worn by elderly Mari women when they went to prayer services. The girls walked with their heads open or wore a headscarf and occasionally a taqiyya cap.

Beads, beads, cowrie shells, coins and tokens, beads and buttons were used to make jewelry. Head decorations included braids in the form of pendants made of coins, beads and shells.

Straight weave bast shoes with a small head and bast frills were worn as shoes. The leg was wrapped in foot wraps made of white and black cloth. On holidays they wore onuchi, decorated along the edge of one long side with beads, buttons and plaques. Leather shoes were common until the 17th century, after which only wealthy Mari wore them. Winter shoes were felt boots from local artisans.

Religion

Names

From time immemorial, the Mari had national names. During interaction with the Bulgaro-Tatars, Turkic-Arab names penetrated the Mari, and with the adoption of Christianity - Christian ones. Currently, Christian names are being used more, and a return to national names is also gaining popularity.

Wedding traditions

One of the main attributes of a wedding is the wedding whip “Sÿan lupsh”, which is a symbol of a talisman that protects the road along which the newlyweds must pass.

Mari people of Bashkortostan

Bashkortostan is the second region of Russia after Mari El in terms of the number of Mari residents. There are 105,829 Mari living on the territory of Bashkortostan (2002), a third of the Mari of Bashkortostan live in cities. The resettlement of the Mari to the Urals took place in the 15th-19th centuries and was caused by their forced Christianization in the Middle Volga. The Mari of Bashkortostan for the most part retained traditional pagan beliefs. Education in the Mari language is available in national schools, secondary specialized and higher educational institutions in Birsk and Blagoveshchensk. The Mari public association "Mari Ushem" operates in Ufa.

Famous Mari

• Bykov, Vyacheslav Arkadyevich - hockey player, coach of the Russian national hockey team
• Vasiliev, Valerian Mikhailovich - linguist, ethnographer, folklorist, writer
• Grigoriev, Alexander Vladimirovich - artist
• Efimov, Izmail Varsonofevich - artist, king of arms
• Efremov, Tikhon Efremovich - educator
• Efrush, Georgy Zakharovich - writer
• Ivanov, Mikhail Maksimovich - poet
• Ignatiev, Nikon Vasilievich - writer
• Iskandarov, Alexey Iskandarovitch - composer, choirmaster
• Yyvan Kyrla - poet, film actor
• Kazakov, Miklai - poet
• Vladislav Maksimovich Zotin 1st President of Mari El
• Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Kislitsyn 2nd President of Mari El
• Kalikaev, Alexander Vladimirovich - oligarch
• Columbus, Valentin Khristoforovich - poet
• Konakov, Alexander Fedorovich - playwright
• Lekain, Nikandr Sergeevich - writer
• Luppov, Anatoly Borisovich - composer
• Makarova, Nina Vladimirovna - Soviet composer
• Mikay, Mikhail Stepanovich - poet and fabulist
• Molotov, Ivan N. - composer
• Mosolov, Vasily Petrovich - agronomist, academician
• Mukhin, Nikolai Semenovich - poet, translator
• Nikolaev, Sergei Nikolaevich - playwright
• Olyk Ipay - poet
• Orai, Dmitry Fedorovich - writer
• Palantay, Ivan Stepanovich - composer, folklorist, teacher
• Prokhorov, Zinon Filippovich - guard lieutenant, Hero of the Soviet Union.
• Pet Pershut - poet
• Savi, Vladimir Alekseevich - writer
• Sapaev, Eric - composer

Faces of Russia. “Living together while remaining different”

The multimedia project “Faces of Russia” has existed since 2006, telling about Russian civilization, the most important feature of which is the ability to live together while remaining different - this motto is especially relevant for countries throughout the post-Soviet space. From 2006 to 2012, as part of the project, we created 60 documentaries about representatives of different Russian ethnic groups. Also, 2 cycles of radio programs “Music and Songs of the Peoples of Russia” were created - more than 40 programs. Illustrated almanacs were published to support the first series of films. Now we are halfway to creating a unique multimedia encyclopedia of the peoples of our country, a snapshot that will allow the residents of Russia to recognize themselves and leave a legacy for posterity with a picture of what they were like.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Faces of Russia". Mari. "Mari El. From Shorunzhi with love"", 2011

General information

MARIANS, Mari, Mari (self-name - “man”, “man”, “husband”), Cheremis (obsolete Russian name), people in Russia. Number of people: 644 thousand people. The Mari are the indigenous population of the Republic of Mari El (324.4 thousand people (290.8 thousand people according to the 2010 census)). The Mari also live in the neighboring regions of the Volga region and the Urals. They live compactly in Bashkiria (105.7 thousand people), Tataria (19.5 thousand people), Udmurtia (9.5 thousand people), Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Sverdlovsk and Perm regions. They also live in Kazakhstan (12 thousand), Ukraine (7 thousand), and Uzbekistan (3 thousand). The total number is 671 thousand people.

According to the 2002 Census, the number of Mari living in Russia is 605 thousand people, according to the 2010 census. - 547 thousand 605 people.

They are divided into 3 main subethnic groups: mountainous, meadow and eastern. Mountain Mari inhabit the right bank of the Volga, meadow Mari inhabit the Vetluzh-Vyatka interfluve, eastern Mari live east of the Vyatka River, mainly in the territory of Bashkiria, where they moved in the 16-18 centuries. They speak the Mari language of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic family. The following dialects are distinguished: mountainous, meadow, eastern and northwestern. Writing based on the Russian alphabet. About 464 thousand (or 77%) Mari speak the Mari language, the majority (97%) speak Russian. Mari-Russian bilingualism is widespread. The Mari's writing is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Believers are predominantly Orthodox and adherents of the “Mari faith” (Marla Vera), combining Christianity with traditional beliefs. The Eastern Mari mostly adhere to traditional beliefs.

The first written mention of the Mari (Cheremis) is found in the Gothic historian Jordan in the 6th century. They are also mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. The core of the ancient Mari ethnic group that formed in the 1st millennium AD in the Volga-Vyatka interfluve were the Finno-Ugric tribes. Close ethnocultural ties with the Turkic peoples (Volga-Kama Bulgarians, Chuvash, Tatars) played a major role in the formation and development of the ethnos. The cultural and everyday similarities with the Chuvash are especially noticeable.

The formation of the ancient Mari people occurred in the 5th-10th centuries. Intensive connections with the Russians, especially after the Mari entered the Russian state (1551-52), had a significant impact on the material culture of the Mari. The mass Christianization of the Mari in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the assimilation of certain forms of spiritual culture and festive family rituals characteristic of Orthodoxy and the Russian population. However, the Eastern Mari and some of the Meadow Mari did not accept Christianity; they still retain pre-Christian beliefs, especially the cult of ancestors, to this day. In 1920, the Mari Autonomous Region was created (since 1936 - the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). Since 1992 Republic of Mari El.

The main traditional occupation is arable farming. The main field crops are rye, oats, barley, millet, spelt, buckwheat, hemp, flax; garden vegetables - onions, cabbage, radishes, carrots, hops, potatoes. Turnips were sown in the field. Of auxiliary importance were the breeding of horses, cattle and sheep, hunting, forestry (harvesting and rafting of wood, tar smoking, etc.), beekeeping (later apiary beekeeping), and fishing. Artistic crafts - embroidery, wood carving, jewelry (silver women's jewelry). There was otkhodnichestvo for timber processing enterprises.

The scattered layout of villages in the 2nd half of the 19th century began to give way to street layouts: the Northern Great Russian type of layout began to predominate. The dwelling is a log hut with a gable roof, two-partitioned (hut-canopy) or three-partitioned (hut-canopy-cage, hut-canopy-hut). A small stove with a built-in boiler was often located near the Russian stove, the kitchen was separated by partitions, benches were placed along the front and side walls, in the front corner there was a table with a wooden chair for the head of the family, shelves for icons and dishes, on the side of the front door there was a wooden bed or bunks, There are embroidered towels above the windows. Among the eastern Mari, especially in the Kama region, the interior was close to Tatar (wide bunks at the front wall, curtains instead of partitions, etc.).

In the summer, the Mari moved to live in a summer kitchen (kudo) - a log building with an earthen floor, no ceiling, and a gable or pitched roof, in which cracks were left for smoke to escape. In the middle of the kudo there was an open hearth with a hanging boiler. The estate also included a cellar, a cellar, a barn, a barn, a carriage house, and a bathhouse. Characteristic are two-story storage rooms with a gallery-balcony on the second floor.

Traditional clothing - a tunic-shaped shirt, trousers, an open summer caftan, a hemp canvas waist towel, and a belt. Men's headwear - a felt hat with a small brim and a cap; For hunting and working in the forest, a mosquito net type device was used. Shoes - bast shoes, leather boots, felt boots. To work in swampy areas, wooden platforms were attached to shoes.

A woman's costume is characterized by an apron, waist pendants, chest, neck, and ear jewelry made of beads, cowrie shells, sparkles, coins, silver clasps, bracelets, and rings. There were 3 types of headdresses for married women: shymaksh - a cone-shaped cap with an occipital blade, worn on a birch bark frame; a magpie, borrowed from the Russians, and a sharpan - a head towel with a headband. A tall women's headdress - shurka (on a birch bark frame, reminiscent of Mordovian and Udmurt headdresses) fell out of use in the 19th century. The outerwear was straight and gathered kaftans made of black or white cloth and fur coats.

Traditional types of clothing are partly common among the older generation and are used in wedding rituals. Modernized types of national clothing are widespread - a shirt made of white and an apron made of multi-colored fabric, decorated with embroidery and ribbons, belts woven from multi-colored threads, caftans made of black and green fabric.

The main traditional food is soup with dumplings, dumplings stuffed with meat or cottage cheese, boiled lard or blood sausage with cereal, dried horse meat sausage, puff pancakes, cheesecakes, boiled flatbreads, baked flatbreads. They drank beer, buttermilk, and a strong honey drink. For national cuisine Specific dishes made from the meat of squirrel, hawk, eagle owl, hedgehog, grass snake, viper, dried fish flour, and hemp seed are also typical. There was a ban on hunting wild geese, swans and pigeons, and in some areas - on cranes.

Rural communities usually included several villages. There were ethnically mixed, mainly Mari-Russian, Mari-Chuvash communities. Families were predominantly small and monogamous. There were also large undivided families. Marriage is patrilocal. Upon marriage, the bride's parents were paid a ransom, and they gave a dowry (including livestock) for their daughter. The modern family is small. They come to life in the wedding rituals traditional features(songs, national costumes with decorations, wedding train, presence of everyone).

The Mari developed traditional medicine, based on ideas about the cosmic vitality, the will of the gods, corruption, the evil eye, evil spirits, souls of the dead. In the “Mari faith” and paganism, there are cults of ancestors and gods (the supreme god Kugu Yumo, the gods of the sky, the mother of life, the mother of water, etc.).

Archaic features of the cult of ancestors were burial in winter clothes (in a winter hat and mittens), taking the body to the cemetery in a sleigh (even in the summer). The traditional burial reflected ideas about the afterlife: nails collected during life were buried with the deceased (during the transition to the next world, they are needed in order to overcome mountains, clinging to rocks), rosehip branches (to ward off snakes and a dog guarding the entrance to the kingdom of the dead), a piece of canvas (on which, like a bridge, the soul crosses an abyss into the afterlife), etc.

The Mari have many holidays, like any people with a centuries-old history. There is, for example, an ancient ritual holiday called “Sheep's Foot” (Shorykyol). It begins to be celebrated on the winter solstice (December 22) after the birth of the new moon. During the holiday, a magical action is performed: pulling sheep by the legs so that more sheep will be born in the new year. A whole set of superstitions and beliefs was dedicated to the first day of this holiday. The weather on the first day was used to judge what spring and summer would be like, and predictions were made about the harvest.

The "Mari faith" and traditional beliefs have been revived in recent years. Within the framework of the public organization "Oshmari-Chimari", which claims to be the Mari national religious association, prayers began to be held in groves, in the city of Yoshkar-Ola it belongs " Oak Grove"The Kugu Sorta (Big Candle) sect, which was active in the 19th and early 20th centuries, has now merged with the “Mari faith.”

Development national identity and the political activity of the Mari people are promoted by the Mari national public organization "Mari Ushem" (it was created as the Mari Union in 1917, banned in 1918, resumed activity in 1990).

V.N. Petrov

Essays

Expensive ax of a lost ax

How do people become wise? Thanks to life experience. Well, that's a very long time. And if you need to quickly, quickly gain intelligence? Well, then you need to listen and read some folk proverbs. For example, the Mari.

But first, some quick information. The Mari are a people living in Russia. The indigenous population of the Republic of Mari El is 312 thousand people. The Mari also live in the neighboring regions of the Volga region and the Urals. In total, there are 604 thousand Mari in the Russian Federation (2002 census data). The Mari are divided into three territorial groups: mountainous, meadow (forest) and eastern. Mountain Mari live on the right bank of the Volga, meadow Mari - on the left, eastern - in Bashkiria and the Sverdlovsk region. They speak the Mari language, which is part of the Volga subgroup of the Finnish group of the Finno-Ugric family of languages. The Mari have a written language based on the Cyrillic alphabet. The faith is Orthodox, but there is also its own, the Mari faith (Marla faith) - this is a combination of Christianity with traditional beliefs.

As for Mari folk wisdom, it is carefully collected into proverbs and sayings.

The ax of a lost ax is precious.

At first glance, this is a strange proverb. If you really regret the lost axe, then the whole thing, and not his separate parts. But folk wisdom- the matter is subtle, not always immediately perceptible. Yes, of course, the ax is also a pity, but the ax handle is more pity. Because it is more dear, we take it with our hands. The hand gets used to it. That's why it's more expensive. And it’s easy to draw conclusions from this proverb. And it's better to do it yourself.

Here are some more interesting Mari proverbs, supported by centuries of folk experience.

A young tree cannot grow under an old tree.

A word will give birth, a song will give birth to tears.

There is a forest - there is a bear, there is a village - there is an evil man.

If you talk a lot, your thoughts will spread. (Very useful advice!)

And now, having gained a little Mari wisdom, let’s listen to a Mari fairy tale. More precisely, a fairy tale. It's called:

Forty-one fables

Three brothers were chopping wood in the forest. It's time for lunch. The brothers began to cook dinner: they filled the pot with water, built a fire, but there was nothing to light the fire with. As luck would have it, not one of them took any flint or matches with them from home. They looked around and saw: a fire was burning behind the trees and an old man was sitting near the fire.

The elder brother went to the old man and asked:

- Grandfather, give me a light!

“Tell forty-one tales, I’ll give you,” answered the old man.

The elder brother stood and stood, and didn’t come up with a single fable. So he returned with nothing. The middle brother went to the old man.

- Give me a light, grandfather!

“I’ll give you money if you tell forty-one fables,” the old man replied.

The middle brother scratched his head - he didn’t come up with a single tall tale and also returned to his brothers without fire. The younger brother went to the old man.

“Grandfather,” says the younger brother to the old man, “my brothers and I got ready to cook dinner, but there is no fire.” Give us fire.

“If you tell forty-one tales,” says the old man, “I will give you fire and, in addition, a cauldron and a fat duck that is boiling in the cauldron.”

“Okay,” agreed the younger brother, “I’ll tell you forty-one fables.” Just don't be angry.

- Who gets angry at fables!

- Okay, listen. Three brothers were born to our father and mother. We died one after another, and there were only seven of us left. Of the seven brothers, one was deaf, another was blind, the third was lame, and the fourth was armless. And the fifth one was naked, he didn’t have a scrap of clothing on him.

One day we got together and went to catch hares. They entangled one grove with threads, but the deaf brother already heard.

“There, there, there’s a rustling noise!” - shouted the deaf man.

And then the blind man saw the hare: “Catch it!” He ran into the ravine!”

The lame man ran after the hare - he was about to catch it... Only the armless man had already grabbed the hare.

The naked brother of the hare put it in his hem and brought it home.

We killed a hare and made a pound of lard from it.

We all had one pair of father's boots. And I began to lubricate my father’s boots with that lard. I smeared and smeared - there was only enough lard for one boot. The ungreased boot got angry and ran away from me. The boot runs, I follow him. He jumped his boot into some hole in the ground. I made a rope out of chaff and went down to get my boot. Here I caught up with him!

I started to crawl back out, but the rope broke, and I fell back into the ground. I’m sitting, sitting in a hole, and then spring has come. The crane built a nest for itself and brought out the baby cranes. The fox got into the habit of climbing after crane babies: today he will drag one away, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow he comes for the third. I once crept up to a fox and grabbed it by the tail!

The fox ran and dragged me along with it. At the exit I got stuck, and the fox rushed - and the tail came off.

I brought home a fox tail, cut it open, and inside there was a piece of paper. I unfolded the piece of paper, and there it was written: “The old man who is now cooking a fat duck and listening to tall tales owes your father ten pounds of rye.”

- Lies! - the old man got angry. - Fable!

“And you asked for tall tales,” answered the younger brother.

There was nothing for the old man to do; he had to give up both the boiler and the duck.

A wonderful fable! And mind you, not a lie, not a lie, but a story about something that did not happen.

And now about what happened, but in the depths of history.

The first written mention of the Mari (Cheremis) is found in the Gothic historian Jordan in the century. They are also mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. Close ties with the Turkic peoples played a major role in the development of the Mari ethnic group.

The formation of the ancient Mari people takes place in centuries.

For centuries, the Mari were under the economic and cultural influence of the Volga-Kama Bulgaria. In the 1230s, their territory was captured by the Mongol-Tatars. Since the century, the Volga Mari were part of the Kazan Khanate, and the northwestern Mari, the Vetluga Mari, were part of the northeastern Russian principalities.

The cult of ancestors has been preserved

In 1551-52, after the defeat of the Kazan Khanate, the Mari became part of the Russian state. In the century, the Christianization of the Mari began. However, the Eastern Mari and some of the Meadow Mari did not accept Christianity; they retained pre-Christian beliefs for centuries, especially the cult of ancestors. Since the end of the century, the resettlement of the Mari to the Urals began, intensifying in -XVIII centuries. The Mari took part in the peasant wars under the leadership of Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev.

The main occupation of the Mari was arable farming. Of secondary importance were gardening, livestock breeding, hunting, forestry, beekeeping, and fishing.

Traditional clothing of the Mari: a richly embroidered shirt, an open summer caftan, a hemp canvas waist towel, a belt, a felt hat, bast shoes with onuchas, leather boots, felt boots. A woman's costume is characterized by an apron, caftans made of cloth, fur coats, headdresses - cone-shaped caps and an abundance of jewelry made of beads, sparkles, coins, and silver clasps.

Traditional Mari cuisine - dumplings stuffed with meat or cottage cheese, puff pancakes, cheesecakes, drinks - beer, buttermilk, strong mead. Mari families are predominantly small. The woman in the family enjoyed economic and legal independence.

Folk art includes wood carving, embroidery, patterned weaving, and birch bark weaving.

Mari music is distinguished by its richness of forms and melody. Folk instruments include: kusle (harp), shuvyr (bagpipe), tumyr (drum), shiyaltish (pipe), kovyzh (two-string violin), shushpyk (whistle). Performed on folk instruments mainly dance tunes. Among the folklore genres, songs stand out, especially “songs of sadness,” as well as fairy tales and legends.

It's time to tell another Mari tale. If I may say so, magically musical.

Bagpiper at a wedding

One cheerful bagpiper was walking at the festival. He went on such a spree that he didn’t even make it home—the drunkenness knocked his quick legs down. He fell under a birch tree and fell asleep. So I slept until midnight.

Suddenly, through his sleep, he hears someone wakes him up: “Get up, get up, Toidemar!” The wedding is in full swing, but there is no one to play. Help me out, my dear.

The bagpiper rubbed his eyes: in front of him was a man in a rich caftan, a hat, and soft goatskin boots. And next to him is a dun stallion harnessed to a black lacquered carriage.

We sat down. The man whistled, whooped and off we went. And here is the wedding: big, rich, guests, apparently and invisible. Yes, the guests are all playful and cheerful - just play, bagpiper!

Toydemar is sweating from such a game, and asks his friend: “Give me, savush, that towel that’s hanging on the wall, I’ll wash my face in the morning.”

And the friend answers:

- Don’t take it, I’d rather give you something else.

“Why doesn’t he allow you to wipe yourself off with this? - the bagpiper thinks. - Well, I’ll try. At least I’ll wipe one eye.”

He wiped his eye - and what does he see? He sits on a stump in the middle of the swamp, and tailed and horned animals are jumping around.

“So this is the kind of wedding I ended up at! - thinks. “We need to clean up quickly.”

“Hey, dear,” he turns to the main devil. “I need to get home before the roosters.” In the morning, people were invited to a holiday in a neighboring village.

“Don’t bother,” the devil answers. - We'll deliver it right away. You play excellently, the guests are happy, and so are the hosts. Let's go now.

The devil whistled - a trio of dun ones and a varnished carriage rolled up. This is how a drugged eye sees, but a clean eye sees something else: three black crows and a gnarled stump.

Landed and flew. Before we had time to look around, there was the house. The bagpiper came quickly at the door, and the roosters were just crowing - the tailed ones ran away.

Relatives to him:

- Where have you been?

- At the wedding.

- What kind of weddings are these days? There wasn't one in the area. You were hiding here somewhere. We were just looking out into the street, you weren’t there, and now you showed up.

— I drove up in a wheelchair.

- Well, show me!

- It’s standing on the street there.

We went outside and there was a huge spruce stump.

Since then, the Mari have said: a drunk can get home on a tree stump.

Pulling the sheep by the feet!

The Mari have many holidays. Like any nation with a centuries-old history. There is, for example, an ancient ritual holiday called “Sheep's Foot” (Shorykyol). It begins to be celebrated on the day of the winter solstice (from December 22) after the birth of the new moon. Why such a strange name - “Sheep's Foot”? But the fact is that during the holiday a magical action is performed: pulling the sheep by the legs. So that more sheep are born in the new year.

In the past, the Mari associated the well-being of their household and family, and changes in life, with this day. The first day of the holiday was especially important. Getting up early in the morning, the whole family went out to the winter field and made small piles of snow, reminiscent of stacks and stacks of bread. They tried to make as many of them as possible, but always in odd numbers. Rye ears were stuck into the stacks, and some peasants buried pancakes in them. In the garden they shook branches and trunks of fruit trees and bushes in order to collect a rich harvest of fruits and berries in the new year.

On this day, the girls went from house to house, always went into the sheepfolds and pulled the sheep by the legs. Such actions associated with the “magic of the first day” were supposed to ensure fertility and well-being in the household and family.

A whole set of superstitions and beliefs was dedicated to the first day of the holiday. Based on the weather on the first day, they judged what spring and summer would be like, and predicted the harvest: “If the snow pile swept into Shorykyol is covered with snow, there will be a harvest.” “There will be snow in Shorykyol - there will be vegetables.”

Fortune-telling occupied a large place, and the peasants attached great importance to its implementation. Fortune telling was mainly associated with predicting fate. Girls of marriageable age wondered about marriage - whether they would get married in the new year, what kind of life awaited them in marriage. The older generation tried to find out about the future of the family, sought to determine the fertility of the harvest, how prosperous their farm would be.

An integral part of the Shorykyol holiday is the procession of mummers led by the main characters - Old Man Vasily and the Old Woman (Vasli kuva-kugyza, Shorykyol kuva-kugyza). They are perceived by the Mari as harbingers of the future, since the mummers foretell to householders a good harvest, an increase in the number of livestock in the farmstead, a happy family life. Old Man Vasily and the Old Woman communicate with good and evil gods and can tell people that whatever the harvest is, such will be life for each person. The owners of the house try to welcome the mummers as best as possible. They are treated to beer and nuts so that there are no complaints about stinginess.

To demonstrate their skill and hard work, the Mari display their work - woven bast shoes, embroidered towels and spun threads. Having treated themselves, Old Man Vasily and his Old Woman scatter grains of rye or oats on the floor, wishing the generous host an abundance of bread. Among the mummers there are often Bear, Horse, Goose, Crane, Goat and other animals. Interestingly, in the past there were other characters depicting a soldier with an accordion, government officials and priests - a priest and a deacon.

Especially for the holiday, hazelnuts are preserved and treated to the mummers. Dumplings with meat are often prepared. According to custom, a coin, pieces of bast and coal are placed in some of them. Depending on who gets what while eating, they predict their fate for the year. During the holiday, some prohibitions are observed: you cannot wash clothes, sew or embroider, or do heavy work.

Ritual food plays a significant role on this day. A hearty lunch at Shorykyol should ensure food abundance for the coming year. Lamb's head is considered a mandatory dish. In addition to it, traditional drinks and foods are prepared: beer (pura) from rye malt and hops, pancakes (melna), unleavened oat bread (sherginde), cheesecakes stuffed with hemp seeds (katlama), pies with hare or bear meat (merang ale mask shil kogylyo), baked from rye or oatmeal unleavened dough “nuts” (shorykyol pyaks).

The Mari have many holidays; they are celebrated throughout the year. Let us mention one more original Mari holiday: Konta Payrem (stove festival). It is celebrated on January 12th. Housewives prepare national dishes and invite guests to large, hearty feasts. The feast goes uphill.

It seems to us that the expression “to dance from the stove” came into the Russian language from the Mari! From the stove holiday!

And, I tell you, he still makes bloody sacrifices to God.

At the invitation of the organizers of the international conference on languages ​​in computers, I visited the capital of Mari El - Yoshkar Ola.

Yoshkar is red, and ola, I already forgot what it means, since the city in Finno-Ugric languages ​​is just “kar” (in the words Syktyvkar, Kudymkar, for example, or Shupashkar - Cheboksary).

And the Mari are Finno-Ugrians, i.e. related in language to the Hungarians, Nenets, Khanty, Udmurts, Estonians and, of course, Finns. Hundreds of years of living together with the Turks also played a role - there are many borrowings, for example, in his welcoming speech, a high-ranking official called the enthusiastic founders of the only radio broadcasting in the Mari language radio batyrs.

The Mari are very proud of the fact that they showed stubborn resistance to the troops of Ivan the Terrible. One of the brightest Mari, oppositionist Laid Shemyer (Vladimir Kozlov) even wrote a book about the Mari’s defense of Kazan.

We had something to lose, unlike some of the Tatars, who were related to Ivan the Terrible, and actually exchanged one khan for another,” he says (according to some versions, Wardaakh Uibaan did not even know the Russian language).

This is how Mari El appears from the train window. Swamps and mari.

There is snow here and there.

This is my Buryat colleague and I in the first minutes of entering the Mari land. Zhargal Badagarov is a participant in the conference in Yakutsk, which took place in 2008.

We are looking at the monument to the famous Mari - Yyvan Kyrla. Remember Mustafa from the first Soviet sound film? He was a poet and actor. Repressed in 1937 on charges of bourgeois nationalism. The reason was a fight in a restaurant with drunken students.

He died in one of the Ural camps from starvation in 1943.

At the monument he rides a handcar. And sings a Mari song about a marten.

And this is where the owners greet us. The fifth one from the left is a legendary figure. That same radio batyr - Chemyshev Andrey. He is famous for once writing a letter to Bill Gates.

“How naive I was then, I didn’t know a lot, I didn’t understand a lot of things...,” he says, “but there was no end to the journalists, I already started to pick and choose - again the first channel, don’t you have the BBC there...”

After rest we were taken to the museum. Which was opened especially for us. By the way, in the letter the radio batyr wrote: “Dear Bill Gates, by purchasing the Windows license package, we paid you, so we ask you to include five Mari letters in the standard fonts.”

It’s surprising that there are Mari inscriptions everywhere. Although no special carrot-and-sticks were invented, and the owners do not bear any responsibility for the fact that they did not write the sign in the second state language. Employees of the Ministry of Culture say that they simply have heart-to-heart conversations with them. Well, they secretly said that the chief architect of the city plays a big role in this matter.

This is Aivika. In fact, I don’t know the name of the charming tour guide, but the most popular female name among the Mari it is Aivika. The emphasis is on the last syllable. And also Salika. There is even a TV movie in Mari, with Russian and English subtitles, with the same name. I brought one of these as a gift to a Yakut Mari man - his aunt asked.

The excursion is structured in an interesting way - you can get acquainted with the life and culture of the Mari people by tracing the fate of a Mari girl. Of course her name is Aivika))). Birth.

Here Aivika seemed to be in a cradle (not visible).

This is a holiday with mummers, like carols.

The “bear” also has a mask made of birch bark.

Do you see Aivika blowing the trumpet? It is she who announces to the district that she has become a girl and it’s time for her to get married. A kind of initiation rite. Some hot Finno-Ugric guys))) immediately also wanted to notify the district about their readiness... But they were told that the pipe was in a different place))).

Traditional three-layer pancakes. Baking for a wedding.

Pay attention to the bride's monists.

It turns out that, having conquered the Cheremis, Ivan the Terrible forbade blacksmithing to foreigners - so that they would not forge weapons. And the Mari had to make jewelry from coins.

One of the traditional activities is fishing.

Beekeeping - collecting honey from wild bees - also ancient occupation Mari

Animal husbandry.

Here are the Finno-Ugric people: in a sleeveless jacket, a representative of the Mansi people (taking photographs), in a suit, a man from the Komi Republic, followed by a fair-haired Estonian.

End of life.

Pay attention to the bird on the perch - the cuckoo. A link between the worlds of the living and the dead.

This is where our “cuckoo, cuckoo, how long do I have left?”

And this is a priest in a sacred birch grove. Cards or maps. Until now, they say, about 500 sacred groves - a kind of temples - have been preserved. Where the Mari sacrifice to their gods. Bloody. Usually chicken, goose or lamb.

An employee of the Udmurt Institute for Advanced Training of Teachers, administrator of the Udmurt Wikipedia Denis Sakharnykh. As a true scientist, Denis is a supporter of a scientific, non-sneaky approach to promoting languages ​​on the Internet.

As you can see, the Mari make up 43% of the population. Second in number after Russians, of whom 47.5%.

The Mari are mainly divided by language into mountainous and meadow. Mountain people live on the right bank of the Volga (towards Chuvashia and Mordovia). The languages ​​are so different that there are two Wikipedias - in the Mountain Mari and Meadow Mari languages.

Questions about the Cheremis wars (30-year resistance) are asked by a Bashkir colleague. The girl in white in the background is an employee of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who calls her area of ​​scientific interest - what do you think? - identity of the Ilimpiy Evenks. This summer he is going to Tours in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and maybe even stop by the village of Essey. Let's wish good luck to the fragile city girl in mastering the polar expanses, which are difficult even in summer.

Picture next to the museum.

After the museum, while waiting for the meeting to start, we walked around the city center.

This slogan is extremely popular.

The city center is being actively rebuilt by the current head of the republic. And in the same style. Pseudo-Byzantine.

They even built a mini-Kremlin. Which, they say, is almost always closed.

On the main square, on one side there is a monument to the saint, on the other - to the conqueror. City guests chuckle.

Here is another attraction - a clock with a donkey (or mule?).

Mariyka talks about the donkey and how it became the unofficial symbol of the city.

Soon three o'clock will strike and the donkey will come out.

We admire the donkey. As you understand, the donkey is not an ordinary one - he brought Christ to Jerusalem.

Participant from Kalmykia.

And this is the same “conqueror”. First imperial commander.

UPD: Pay attention to the coat of arms of Yoshkar-Ola - they say it will be removed soon. Someone on the City Council decided to make the elk antlered. But maybe this is idle talk.

UPD2: The coat of arms and flag of the Republic have already been changed. Markelov - and no one doubts that it was him, although parliament voted - replaced the Mari cross with a bear with a sword. The sword faces down and is sheathed. Symbolic, right? In the picture - the old Mari coat of arms has not yet been removed.

This is where the plenary session of the conference took place. No, the sign is in honor of another event)))

A curious thing. In Russian and Mari;-) In fact, on the other signs everything was correct. Street in Mari - Urem.

Shop - kevyt.

As one colleague, who once visited us, sarcastically remarked, the landscape is reminiscent of Yakutsk. It's sad that our guests hometown appears in this guise.

A language is alive if it is in demand.

But we also need to provide the technical side - the ability to print.

Our wiki is among the first in Russia.

An absolutely correct remark by Mr. Leonid Soames, CEO of Linux-Ink (St. Petersburg): the state does not seem to notice the problem. By the way, Linux Inc. is developing a browser, spell checker and office for independent Abkhazia. Naturally in the Abkhazian language.

In fact, the conference participants tried to answer this sacramental question.

Pay attention to the amounts. This is for creating from scratch. For the whole republic - a mere trifle.

An employee of the Bashkir Institute for Humanitarian Research reports. I know our Vasily Migalkin. Linguists of Bashkortostan began to approach the so-called. language corpus - a comprehensive codification of the language.

And on the presidium sits the main organizer of the action, an employee of the Mari Ministry of Culture, Eric Yuzykain. Speaks Estonian and Finnish fluently. He mastered his native language as an adult, largely, he admits, thanks to his wife. Now she teaches the language to her children.

DJ "Radio Mari El", admin of the Meadow Mari wiki.

Representative of the Slovo Foundation. A very promising Russian foundation that is ready to support projects for minority languages.

Wikimedists.

And these are the same new buildings in a quasi-Italian style.

It was the Muscovites who began to build casinos, but a decree banning them arrived just in time.

In general, when asked who finances the entire “Byzantium”, they answer that it is the budget.

If we talk about the economy, there were (and probably are) military factories in the republic producing the legendary S-300 missiles. Because of this, Yoshkar-Ola used to even be a closed territory. Like our Tiksi.

History of the Mari people from ancient times. part 2 The question of the origin of the Mari people is still controversial. For the first time, a scientifically substantiated theory of the ethnogenesis of the Mari was expressed in 1845 by the famous Finnish linguist M. Castren. He tried to identify the Mari with the chronicle measures. This point of view was supported and developed by T.S. Semenov, I.N. Smirnov, S.K. Kuznetsov, A.A. Spitsyn, D.K. Zelenin, M.N. Yantemir, F.E. Egorov and many others researchers of the 2nd half of the 19th – 1st half of the 20th century. A new hypothesis was made in 1949 by the prominent Soviet archaeologist A.P. Smirnov, who came to the conclusion about the Gorodets (close to the Mordovians) basis; other archaeologists O.N. Bader and V.F. Gening at the same time defended the thesis about Dyakovsky (close to measure) origin of the Mari. Nevertheless, archaeologists were already able to convincingly prove that the Merya and Mari, although related to each other, are not the same people. At the end of the 1950s, when the permanent Mari archaeological expedition began to operate, its leaders A.Kh. Khalikov and G.A. Arkhipov developed a theory about the mixed Gorodets-Azelinsky (Volga-Finnish-Permian) basis of the Mari people. Subsequently, G.A. Arkhipov, developing this hypothesis further, during the discovery and study of new archaeological sites, proved that in mixed basis The Mari were dominated by the Gorodets-Dyakovsky (Volga-Finnish) component and the formation of the Mari ethnos, which began in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, generally ended in the 9th - 11th centuries, and even then the Mari ethnos began to be divided into two main groups - mountainous and meadow Mari (the latter, compared to the former, were more strongly influenced by the Azelin (Permo-speaking) tribes). This theory is generally supported by the majority of archaeological scientists working on this problem. Mari archaeologist V.S. Patrushev put forward a different assumption, according to which the formation of the ethnic foundations of the Mari, as well as the Meri and Muroms, took place on the basis of the Akhmylov-type population. Linguists (I.S. Galkin, D.E. Kazantsev), who rely on language data, believe that the territory of formation of the Mari people should be sought not in the Vetluzh-Vyatka interfluve, as archaeologists believe, but to the southwest, between the Oka and Suroy. Scientist-archaeologist T.B. Nikitina, taking into account data not only from archeology, but also from linguistics, came to the conclusion that the ancestral home of the Mari is located in the Volga part of the Oka-Sura interfluve and in Povetluzhie, and the advance to the east, to Vyatka, occurred in 8 - 11 centuries, during which contact and mixing took place with the Azelin (Perm-speaking) tribes. Azelinskaya culture is an archaeological culture of the 3rd-5th centuries in the Volga-Vyatka interfluve. Classified by V.G. Gening and named after the Azelinsky burial ground near the village of Azelino, Malmyzh district, Kirov region. It was formed on the basis of the traditions of the Pyanobor culture. Habitats are represented by settlements and settlements. The entire economy is based on arable farming, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing. The Buyskoe settlement (Buisky Perevoz) hid a treasure of 200 iron hoes and spears. Most round-bottomed vessels have a pattern of notches or cord prints. Ground burial grounds, inhumation burials, oriented with their heads to the north. Women's costume: a cap or corolla with a braid and temple pendants, a necklace, hryvnias and bracelets, breast plates, an apron, a wide belt, often with an epaulette-like fastener, overlays and hanging tassels, various stripes and pendants, shoes with straps. Men's burials contain numerous weapons - spears, axes, helmets, chain mail and swords. The final process of separation of the Mari tribes was completed around the 6th-7th century AD. An ancient legend of the Mari people says that once upon a time, in ancient times, a mighty giant lived near the Volga River. His name was Onar. He was so big that he would stand on the steep Volga slope and his head would just barely touch the colored rainbow that rose above the forests. That's why they call it a rainbow ancient legends Gate of Onar. The rainbow shines with all colors, it is so red that you can’t take your eyes off it, and Onar’s clothes were even more beautiful: a white shirt was embroidered on the chest with scarlet, green and yellow silk, Onar was belted with a belt made of blue beads, and silver jewelry sparkled on his hat. Onar was a hunter, caught animals, collected honey from wild bees. In search of the beast and the sides full of fragrant honey, he went far from his home, kudo, which stood on the banks of the Volga. In one day, Onar managed to visit both the Volga and Pizhma and Nemda, which flow into the bright Viche, as the Vyatka River is called in Mari. It is for this reason, the Mari, that we call our land the land of the hero Onar. In the minds of the ancient Mari, ONARS are the first inhabitants who rose from the sea waters of the earth. ONARS are giant people of extraordinary height and strength. The forests were knee-deep. People call many hills and lakes in the Mountain Mari region the traces of an ancient giant. And again, the ancient Indian legends about the asuras involuntarily come to mind - ancient people (the first inhabitants of planet Earth) - the asuras, who were also giants - their height was 38-50 meters, later they became lower - up to 7 meters (like the Atlanteans). The ancient Russian hero Svyatogor, who is considered the progenitor of the entire ancient Russian people, was also an asur. The Mari themselves call their people the name Mari. Among scientists, the question of their origin is open. According to etymology, the Mari are a people living under the protection of the ancient goddess Mara. The influence of Mara on the beliefs of the Mari is strong. The Mari are considered the last pagan people of Europe. The Mari religion is based on faith in the forces of nature, which man must honor and respect. Mari temples - Sacred groves. There are about five hundred of them on the territory of the Mari El Republic. In the Sacred Grove, human contact with God is possible. The first written mention of the Cheremis (Mari) is found in the Gothic historian Jordan (6th century). They are also mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. Around this time, the first mentions of other tribes related to the ancient Mari - Meshchera, Muroma, Merya, who lived mainly to the west of the Vetluzhsky region, date back. Some historians claim that the Mari people received the name “Mari” from the name of the ancient Iranian god Mar, but I have not met such a god among the Iranians. But there are many gods with the name Mara in the Indo-European peoples. Mara is a female mythological character in the Western and Eastern Slavic traditions associated with the seasonal rites of death and resurrection of nature. Mara - night demon, ghost in Scandinavian and Slavic mythology Mara in Buddhism is a demon, personified as the embodiment of artlessness, the death of spiritual life. Mara is a goddess who takes care of cows in Latvian mythology. In some cases, it coincides with the mythologized image of the Virgin Mary. As a result, I believe that the name “Mari” has its origins from the times when the Ural and Indo-European peoples lived side by side or were a single people (Hyperboreans, Boreans, Biarmians). Some researchers of the history of the Mari people believe that the Mari descended from the mixing of ancient Iranian tribes with the Chud tribes. Here the question arises: when did this happen? I spent a long time checking when the Iranians appeared on the territory of the ancient Mari, but I did not find such a fact. There was a contact of ancient Iranian tribes (Scythians, Sarmatians), but it was much further south and the contact was with the ancient Mordovian tribes, and not with the Mari. As a result, I believe that the Mari people received the name “Mari” from the most ancient times, when the Ural peoples and Indo-European peoples (including the Slavs, Balts, Iranians) lived nearby. And these are the times of the Biarmians, the Boreans, or even the Hyperborean times. So let’s continue to talk about the history of the Mari people. In the 70s of the 4th century AD, the Huns appeared in the south of Eastern Europe - a nomadic Turkic-speaking people (to be more precise, it was a union of many nomadic peoples, which included both Turkic and non-Turkic peoples). The era of the Great Migration of Peoples began. Although the alliance of Hunnic tribes advanced through the south of Eastern Europe (mainly along the steppes), this event also influenced the history of more northern peoples, including the history of the ancient Mari people. The fact is that one of the ancient Turkic peoples, the Bulgars (initially they were called Onogurs, Utigurs, Kutrigurs), was also involved in the flow of nomadic tribes. In addition to the ancient Bulgar tribes, other Turkic-speaking tribes, the Suvars, came to the territory of the steppes of the North Caucasus and the Don. From the 4th century until the emergence of a strong Khazar state in these places, many different nomadic tribes lived in the territory between the Black and Caspian Seas and in the steppes of the Don and Volga - Alans, Akatsirs (Huns), Maskuts, Barsils, Onogurs, Kutrigurs, Utigurs) . In the 2nd half of the 8th century, part of the Bulgars moved to the region of the Middle Volga region and the lower reaches of the Kama. There they created the state of Volga Bulgaria. Initially, this state was dependent on the Khazar Kaganate. The appearance of the Bulgars in the lower reaches of the Kama led to the fact that the single space occupied by the ancient Mari tribes was divided into two parts. A significant part of the Mari living in the west of Bashkiria found themselves cut off from the main territory of residence of the Mari. In addition, under pressure from the Bullgars, some of the Mari were forced to move north and displace the ancient Udmurt tribes (Votyaks); the Mari settled between the Vyatka and Vetluga rivers. For information, I inform readers that in those days the modern Vyatka land had a different name - “Votskaya Zemlya” (land of the Votyaks). In 863, part of the Suvars who lived within the Northern Caucasus and the Don, under the influence of Arab invasions, moved up the Volga to the Middle Volga region, where they became part of the Volga Bulgaria in the 10th century and built the city of Suvar. According to a number of Bashkir historians, in Volga Bulgaria the Suvars were the numerically predominant ethnic group. It is believed that the inconsistent descendants of the Suvars are the modern Chuvash. In the 960s, Volga Bulgaria became an independent state (since Khazar Khaganate was destroyed by the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav). The question of the origin of the ethnonyms “Mari” and “Cheremis” also remains complex and unclear. The meaning of the word “Mari”, the self-name of the Mari people, is derived by many linguists from the Indo-European term “mar”, “mer” in various sound variations (translated as “man”, “husband”). The word “Cheremis” (as the Russians called the Mari, and in a slightly different, but phonetically similar vowel, many other peoples) has large number various interpretations. 960s - the first written mention of this ethnonym (in the original “ts-r-mis”) is found in a letter from the Khazar Kagan Joseph to the dignitary of the Cordoba Caliph Hasdai ibn Shaprut. D.E. Kazantsev, following the 19th century historian G.I. Peretyatkovich, came to the conclusion that the name “Cheremis” was given to the Mari by the Mordovian tribes, and in translation this word means “a person living on the sunny side, in the east.” According to I.G. Ivanov, “Cheremis” is “a person from the Chera or Chora tribe,” in other words, the name of one of the Mari tribes. Neighboring peoples subsequently extended this name to the entire Mari people. The version of the Mari local historians of the 1920s and early 1930s, F.E. Egorov and M.N. Yantemir, is widely popular, who suggested that this ethnonym goes back to the Turkic term “warlike person.” F.I. Gordeev, as well as I.S. Galkin, who supported his version, defend the hypothesis about the origin of the word “Cheremis” from the ethnonym “Sarmatian” through the mediation of Turkic languages. A number of other versions were also expressed. The problem of the etymology of the word “Cheremis” is further complicated by the fact that in the Middle Ages (up to the 17th and 18th centuries) this was the name in a number of cases not only for the Mari, but also for their neighbors – the Chuvash and Udmurts. For example, the authors of the textbook “History of the Mari People” about archaeological finds related to Iranian-speaking tribes write that sacrificial fire pits with a large content of bones of domestic animals were discovered in Volga settlements. Rituals associated with the worship of fire and the sacrifice of animals to the gods subsequently became an integral part of the pagan cult of the Mari and other Finno-Ugric people. The worship of the sun was also reflected in applied art: solar (solar) signs in the form of a circle and a cross took a prominent place in the ornaments of the Finno-Ugric peoples. In general, all ancient peoples had solar gods and worshiped the Sun as the source of life on Earth. Let me remind you once again that the suras (ancient gods from the Sun) were the divine teachers of the first people - the asuras. The end of the first millennium BC for the Mari Volga region is characterized by the beginning of the use of iron, mainly from local raw materials - swamp ore. This material was used not only for the manufacture of tools that facilitated the clearing of forests for land plots, cultivation of arable land, etc., but also for the manufacture of more advanced weapons. Wars began to occur more and more often. Among the archaeological monuments of that time, the most characteristic are fortified settlements, protected from the enemy by ramparts and ditches. The hunting way of life is associated with a widespread cult of animals (elk, bear) and waterfowl. A.G. Ivanov and K.N. Sanukov talk about the resettlement of the ancient Mari. The ancient foundation of the Mari people, which had formed by the beginning of the first millennium, was subject to new influences, mixtures, and movements. But the continuity of the main features of material and spiritual culture was preserved and consolidated, as evidenced, for example, by archaeological finds: temple rings, elements of breast decorations, etc., as well as some features of the funeral rite. Ancient ethnic-forming processes took place in conditions of expanding ties and interaction with related and unrelated tribes. The real names of these tribes remained unknown. Archaeologists gave them conventional names in accordance with the name of the settlement near which their monument was first excavated and studied. Regarding social development For tribes, this was the time of the beginning of the collapse of the primitive communal system and the formation of a period of military democracy. The “Great Migration of Peoples” at the beginning of the first millennium also affected the tribes living on the border of the forest zone and forest-steppe. The tribes of the Gorodets culture (ancient Mordovian tribes), under the pressure of the steppe inhabitants, moved north along the Sura and Oka to the Volga, and reached the left bank, in Povetluzhie, and from there to Bolshaya Kokshaga. At the same time from Vyatka, the Azelinians also penetrated into the area of ​​the Bolshaya and Malaya Kokshaga rivers. As a result of their contact and long-term contacts, with the participation of more ancient local populations, great changes occurred in their original cultures. Archaeologists believe that as a result of the “mutual assimilation” of the Gorodets and Azelin tribes in the second half of the 1st millennium, the ancient Mari tribes were formed. This process is evidenced by such archaeological monuments as the Younger Akhmylovsky burial ground on the left bank of the Volga opposite Kozmodemyansk, the Shor-Unzhinsky burial ground in the Morkinsky district, the Kubashevsky settlement in the south of the Kirov region and others containing materials from the Gorodets and Azelinsky cultures. By the way, the formation of the ancient Mari on the basis of two archaeological cultures predetermined the initial differences between the mountain and meadow Mari (the former had a predominance of features of the Gorodets culture, and the latter - the Azelinskaya). The region of formation and initial habitat of the ancient Mari tribes in the west and southwest extended far beyond the borders of the modern Republic of Mari El. These tribes occupied not only the entire Povetluga region and the central regions of the Vetluga-Vyatka interfluve, but also the lands west of Vetluga, bordering the Meryan tribes in the area of ​​the Unzha River; on both banks of the Volga, their habitat area extended from the mouth of the Kazanka to the mouth of the Oka. In the south, the ancient Mari occupied not only the lands of the modern Gornomari region, but also northern Chuvashia. In the north, the border of their settlement passed somewhere in the area of ​​​​the city of Kotelnich. In the east, the Mari occupied the territory of western Bashkiria. At the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia, when the ancient Mari people were basically already established, close relationships with related Finno-Ugric tribes (except for the closest neighbors - the Mordovians and Udmurts) actually ceased and quite close contacts were established with the early Turks (Suvars and Bulgars) who invaded the Volga. . Already from that time (mid-1st millennium), the Mari language began to experience a strong Turkic influence. The ancient Mari, already having their own specific characteristics and maintaining a certain similarity with the related Finno-Ugric people, began to experience serious Turkic influence. On the southern outskirts of the Mari territory, the population both assimilated with the Bulgars and was partially forced out to the north. It should be noted that some researchers in China, Mongolia and Europe, when covering the history of Attila’s Empire, include the Finnish-speaking tribes of the Middle Volga region in the empire. In my opinion this statement was extremely erroneous. . The decomposition of the clan system among the Mari occurred at the end of the 1st millennium, clan principalities arose, which were ruled by elected elders, and later the Mari began to have princes, who were called Oms. Using their position, they eventually began to seize power over the tribes, enriching themselves at their expense and raiding their neighbors. However, this could not lead to the formation of its own early feudal state. Already at the stage of completion of their ethnogenesis, the Mari found themselves the object of expansion from the Turkic East (the Volga-Kama state of Bulgaria) and Slavic state(Kievan Rus). From the south, the Mari were attacked by the Volga Bulgars, then by the Golden Horde and the Kazan Khanate. Russian colonization came from the north and west. Around the 11th century, the Vetlya-Shangonsky kuguzstvo (Mari Vetluzhsky principality) was formed. To protect its borders from Russian advances from the Galich principality, the Shanza fortress was built; this fortress later became the center of the Vetluga principality. The Shanza fortress (now the village of Staro-Shangskoye in the Sharya region) was placed by the Mari on the border of their lands as a guard post (eyes) that monitored the advance of the Russians. The place was convenient for defense, since it has natural fortress “walls” on three sides: the Vetluga River with a high bank and deep ravines with steep slopes. The word “shanza” comes from the Mari shentse (shenze) and means eye. The borders of North-Eastern Rus' came close to the territory of settlement of the Mari in the 11th century. The colonization of the Mari lands that began was both peaceful and violent. On the right bank of the Volga the Mari lived until Nizhny Novgorod. To the west of Sura, the Mari settlements of Somovskoe I and II and toponymy are known. There is Lake Cheremisskoye, two villages of Cheremiski and many villages with Mari names - Monari, Abaturovo, Kemary, Makatelem, Ilevo, Kubaevo, etc. The Mari, pressed by the Mordovians, retreated to the north and east beyond Sura. The Mari tribal elite turned out to be split, some of its representatives were guided by the Russian principalities, the other part actively supported the Bulgars (and later the Tatars). In such conditions there could be no question of creating a national feudal state. The first mention of the Mari in Russian written sources dates back to the beginning of the 12th century. and is found in the “Tale of Bygone Years” by the monk Nestor. The chronicler, listing the Finno-Ugric peoples neighboring the Slavs who pay tribute to Rus', also mentions the Cheremis: “On Beleozero there is all gray, and on Lake Rostov there is merya, and on Lake Kleshchina there is merya. And along the Otse Retsa, where it flows into the Volga, the Muroma have their language, and the Cheremisi have their language, and the Mordovians have their language. This is only the Slovenian language in Rus'; glades, derevlyans, nougorodtsy, polotsk, dregovichi, north, buzhans, zane sadosha along the Bug, and then the Velynians. And these are other languages ​​that give tribute to Rus': Chud, Merya, Ves, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordovians, Perm, Pechera, Yam, Lithuania, Zimigola, Kors, Noroma, Lib: these are their own language, from the tribe of Afetov, etc. live in midnight countries...” At the beginning of the 12th century, the Shanga prince Kai, fearing Russian squads, turned Shanga into a fortified city, and built for himself a new city, Khlynov Vetluga. At this time, the Galician prince Konstantin Yaroslavich (brother of Alexander Nevsky) tried by force of arms to force the Vetluga Cheremis to submit to Galich and pay tribute with “Zakamsky silver”. But the Cheremis defended their independence. In the 12th – 16th centuries, the Mari were more clearly divided into local ethnographic groups than now. There were differences in material and spiritual culture, language, and economy. They were determined by the characteristics of the settlement territory and the influence of various ethnic components that took part in the formation of certain groups of the Mari people. Some differences between ethnographic groups can be traced archaeologically. Studies of the structure of the Mari language also confirm the existence of tribal associations of the Mari with independent and rather different dialects. The mountain Mari lived along the right bank of the Volga. Meadow Mari settled east of the river Malaya Kokshaga. In relation to Kazan, they were also called “lower” and “near” Cheremis. To the west of Malaya Kokshaga lived the Vetluga and Kokshai Mari, also referred to by scientists as the northwestern ones. This was already noted by contemporaries. The Kazan chronicler, having reported about the “meadow cheremis,” continues: “... in that country of Lugovoy there are Koksha and Vetluga cheremis.” Cheremis and the scribal book on Kazan 1565–1568 are divided into Kokshai and Meadow ones. The Mari who lived in the Urals and Kama region are known as Eastern or Bashkir. In the 16th century, another group of Mari was formed, which, by the will of fate, ended up far to the west (in Ukraine), called the Chemeris. Mari society was divided into clans that made up tribes. One of the Mari legends indicates the existence of more than 200 clans and 16 tribes. Power in the tribe belonged to the council of elders, which usually met once or twice a year. Issues about holidays, the order of public prayers, economic matters, issues of war and peace were resolved there. It is known from folklore that once every 10 years a council of all Mari tribes met to resolve issues affecting common interests. At this council, the redistribution of hunting, fishing, and hunting lands took place. The Mari professed a pagan religion; their gods were the spiritual forces of nature. Some of the Mari who lived close to Kazan, especially the clan elite, converted to Islam in the 16th century under the influence of neighboring Tatars, and subsequently they became Tatars. Orthodoxy spread among the Mari living in the west. The significant place in the economic activities of the Mari in forestry, beekeeping, fishing and hunting is explained by the fact that they lived in a truly fertile forest region. Boundless dense mixed virgin forests occupied the entire Meadow Side in a continuous mass, merging with the taiga in the north. When describing the Mari region, contemporaries often used expressions such as “forest supports”, “wilds”, “forest deserts”, etc. In the Mari forests there was a great variety of game - bears, moose, deer, wolves, foxes, lynxes, ermines, sables, squirrels, martens, beavers, hares, a large number of various birds, the rivers were full of fish. Hunting among the Mari was commercial, focused on the extraction of furs for sale. An examination of bones from Mari archaeological sites shows that about 50% of them belong to fur-bearing animal species, mainly beaver, marten and sable. The Mari also established handicraft production. They knew blacksmithing and jewelry, woodworking, leather tanning, and pottery. Mari women wove linen and woolen clothing. The Mari lived in log houses, in small villages consisting of several houses - ilems and settlements - ruems. Settlements were located along the banks of reservoirs. There were also “forts” and “fortresses” fortified with ditches, ramparts and palisades, in which the Mari took refuge in case of military danger. Some of these forts were administrative and tribal centers. The Mari had a family nobility, referred to in Russian sources as tens, pentecostals, centurions and hundred princes. The ten-hundred form of government developed as a result of the organizational measures of the Golden Horde for administrative, fiscal and military purposes. This form of government generally corresponded to the tribal organization already existing among the Mari and was therefore accepted by them. The Mari themselves called their leaders shÿdyvuy, puddle, luzhavuy, luvuy and kuguoza (kugyza), which meant “great master, elder.” Mari could act as a mercenary army in the internecine feuds of the Russian princes, or carry out predatory raids on Russian lands alone or in alliance with the Bulgars or Tatars. Often the Bulgar and Kazan rulers hired mercenary warriors from among the Mari, and these warriors were famous for their ability to fight well. All territories in the north of Rus' were at first subordinate to the “lord of Veliky Novgorod”. His sons, the dashing Ushkuiniki, knew the waterway that connected the Volga with the north, through Vetluga, Vokhma, through a small portage between the Northern Dvina and the Volga, through the Yug River and the Northern Dvina. But the advance of the Russians to the northeast constantly accelerated every year, and by 1150 the Russians completely subordinated them to their power and included in their state the Murom tribes and a significant part of the Merya tribes (in the western part of the Kostroma region). The Russians had already penetrated to the banks of the Unzha, but they were not in the Upper Vetluga valley (in the Vetluga region). The northern Mari, the Cheremis, still lived there. But from the north, Novgorodians gradually penetrated into this territory, and Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod residents penetrated into the territory of the south of Vetluga. At the end of the 12th century, Mari armed detachments took part in the internecine wars of the Kostroma and Galician princes, helping one of the warring princes. But it didn't last long.

Mari, (Cheremis is the Old Russian name for the Mari) Finno-Ugric people. The self-name is the name “Mari”, “Mariy”, which translates as “husband”, “man”.

The Mari are a people living in Russia, the indigenous population of the Republic of Mari El (312 thousand people according to the 2002 census). The Mari also live in the neighboring regions of the Volga region and the Urals. In total, there are 604 thousand Mari in the Russian Federation (data from the same census). The Mari are divided into three territorial groups: mountainous, meadow (forest) and eastern. Mountain Mari live on the right bank of the Volga, meadow Mari - on the left, eastern - in Bashkiria and the Sverdlovsk region.

The Mari language belongs to the Finno-Volga group of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages. About 464 thousand (or 77%) Mari speak the Mari language, the majority (97%) speak Russian. Mari-Russian bilingualism is widespread. The Mari's writing is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

The faith is Orthodox, but there is also its own Mari faith (Marla faith) - this is a combination of Christianity with traditional beliefs. The first written mention of the Mari (Cheremis) is found in the Gothic historian Jordan in the 6th century. They are also mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. Close ties with the Turkic peoples played a major role in the development of the Mari ethnic group.

The formation of the ancient Mari people occurred in the 5th–10th centuries. In 1551–52, after the defeat of the Kazan Khanate, the Mari became part of the Russian state. In the 16th century, the Christianization of the Mari began. However, the Eastern Mari and some of the Meadow Mari did not accept Christianity; they still retain pre-Christian beliefs, especially the cult of ancestors, to this day.

The Mari have many holidays, like any people with a centuries-old history. There is, for example, an ancient ritual holiday called “Sheep's Foot” (Shorykyol). It begins to be celebrated on the winter solstice (December 22) after the birth of the new moon. During the holiday, a magical action is performed: pulling sheep by the legs so that more sheep will be born in the new year. A whole set of superstitions and beliefs was dedicated to the first day of this holiday. The weather on the first day was used to judge what spring and summer would be like, and predictions were made about the harvest.

Reference article from the almanac “Faces of Russia” from the site rusnations.ru/etnos/mari/

The Mari are one of the ancient Finno-Ugric peoples of the Middle Volga region. Currently, the Mari live in dispersed groups in many regions of Russia.

The Mari are divided into three ethnographic groups: mountain, meadow, and eastern.

How do the Mari live?

Mountain Mari (Kyrykmars) live on the right bank of the Volga within the modern Mountain Mari region of the Republic of Mari El, as well as along the basins of the Vetluga, Rutka, Arda, Parat rivers on the left bank of the river.

Volga. The entire central and eastern part of the Mari El Republic is inhabited by a large ethnographic group of Meadow Mari (Olyk Mari). In the 16th century Some of the Mari rushed to the Trans-Kama region to the Bashkir lands, marking the beginning of the formation of the ethnographic group of Eastern Mari.

Self-name - In scientific literature there is an opinion that the Mari under the name “Imniscaris” or “Scremniscans” were mentioned by the Gothic historian of the 6th century.

Jordan in "Getica" among the northern peoples subject to the 4th century. Gothic leader Herman Rich. More reliable information about this people called “Ts-r-mis” is found in a letter from the 10th century. Khazar Kagan Joseph. The self-name of the Mari people (Mari, Mare) - originally used in the meaning of “man, man”, has been preserved to this day and is represented in the traditional names of small territorial groups "Votla Mare"(Vetluga Mari), "Paja Marais"(Pizhma Mari), "Morco Mari"(Morkin Mari).

The closest neighbors used ethnonyms in relation to the Mari "chirmesh"(Tatars), "eyarmys"(Chuvash).

Settlement - According to the 2002 census, there are 604,298 people in the Russian Federation of Mari. The Mari are predominantly settled on the territory of the Volga-Ural historical and ethnographic region. 60% of the Mari population lives in the Vetluzhsko-Vyatka interfluve (Mari El and adjacent areas of the Kirov and Nizhny Novgorod regions), about 20% along the Belaya rivers in Ufa and in their interfluve (northwest Bashkiria and southwest Sverdlovsk region).

Small groups of Mari villages are found in Tataria, Udmurtia, Perm and Chelyabinsk regions. In the 20th century, especially after the Great Patriotic War, the proportion of Mari living outside their traditional settlement areas has increased.

Nowadays, beyond the Urals, in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, in the south of the European part of Russia, in Ukraine and other places, more than 15% of the total number of Mari live.

Clothing - Traditional women's and men's costumes consisted of a headdress, a tunic-like shirt, a caftan, a belt with pendants, pants, leather shoes or bast shoes with woolen and canvas footwear. The women's costume was most richly decorated with embroidery and complemented with removable jewelry. The costume was produced mainly by home methods.

Clothes and shoes were made from hemp, less often linen, homemade cloth and half-cloth, tanned animal skins, wool, bast, etc. Mari men's clothing was influenced by Russian costume, which was associated with handicrafts. Traditional men's undershirt ( Tuvir, Tygyr) had a tunic-like cut. A panel folded in half made up the front and back of the shirt; sleeves were sewn to it at right angles to the width of the canvas, and under the sleeves, side panels in the form of rectangular panels were sewn to the waist.

Embroidery on shirts was located at the collar, at the chest slit, on the back, sleeve cuffs and hem.

Settlements - The Mari have long developed a riverine-ravine type of settlement. Their ancient habitats were located along the banks of large rivers - the Volga, Vetluga, Sura, Vyatka and their tributaries. Early settlements, according to archaeological data, existed in the form of fortified settlements ( pocket, op) and unfortified villages ( Ilem, surt), related by family ties.

Until the middle of the 19th century. The layout of Mari settlements was dominated by cumulus, disorderly forms, inheriting early forms of settlement by family-patronymic groups. The transition from cumulus forms to an ordinary street layout of streets occurred gradually in the middle - second half of the 19th century.

Noticeable changes in layout occurred after the 1960s. Modern central estates of agricultural enterprises combine the features of street, block and zoned layouts. Types of Mari settlements are villages, villages, neighborhoods, repairs, settlements.

The village is the most common type of settlement, accounting for about half of all types of settlements in the mid-19th century.

National Republic of Mari El

The Republic of Mari El is located in the center of the European part of Russia, in the basin of the great Russian river Volga. The area of ​​the republic is 23.2 thousand square meters. km, population - about 728 thousand people, capital - city.

Yoshkar-Ola (founded in 1584). From the north, north-east and east, Mari El borders on the Kirov region, from the south-east and south - on the republics of Tatarstan and Chuvashia, and in the west and north-west - on the Nizhny Novgorod region.

Guests of the republic are invariably amazed and delighted by the nature of the region. Mari El is a land of the purest springs, deep rivers and beautiful lakes. The rivers Ilet, Bolshaya Kokshaga, Yushut, Kundysh are among the cleanest in Europe.

The pearls of the Mari region are the forest lakes Yalchik, Kichier, Karas, and Sea Eye. The northeastern regions of the republic have long been called “Mari Switzerland”.

The culture of the Republic of Mari El is also unique. There are not many regions in Russia where you can still meet people in national clothes in everyday life, where the faith of their ancestors - paganism - has been preserved, where traditional culture is an integral and organic part of modern life.

Figure 1. Ancient jewelry, 4-6 centuries: // Medzhitova, D.E. Mari Mari folk art = Kalik. Article: album / Medzhitova E.D. - Yoshkar-Ola 1985: .

Photo 2. Beer spoons. Herbalist and the mountains of Marie. Kazan province, 19th century: [Photos: Tsv. 19.0x27.5 cm] // Medzhitova, D.E. Mari Mari folk art = Kalik article: album / Medzhitova E.D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985 - P. 147.

Gerasimova E.F. Traditional musical instruments of Mary in the system of primary music education / E.

F. Gerasimova // Musical instrument of the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals: traditions and modernity. - Izhevsk, 2004 - p. 29-30.

The Art of Maria // Folk decorative skills of the peoples of the RSFSR. - M., 1957. - p. one hundred and third

Kryukova T.A. Mari vez = Mari Tu: r / T.A. Kryukova; Maris.

scientific research etc. I, lit. and history, State. Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. - L., 1951. - Text par.: Rus., Marius. language

Mariž kalyk Art: Album / Medžitova ED – Yoshkar-Ola: Marijs. book. publishing house, 1985. - 269 pp.: ill., color. ill. +Res. (7 seconds). On the track. auto not specified. — Parallel text: Russian, Marius. language Residence in English. and Hungarian. language — Bibliography: p. 269-270.

Model of embroidered women's T-shirts. Fragments. Herbalist Marie. Kazan region. First half of the 19th century: [Photos: color; 19.0 × 27.5 cm] // Mezhitova, E.D. Mari Mari art: Mari kalyk: album / Medzhitova E.D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985 - p. two hundred and sixth

Wedding towels. Fragments. Additional weaving. East Marie. Ufa province, 1920-1930s: [Photos: color; 19.0x27.5 cm] // Medzhitova, D.E. Mari Mari folk art = Kalik article: album / Medzhitova E.D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985 - P. 114.

Figure 5.

The dagger of married women rustles. Herbalist Marie. Vyatka province, 18th century: [Photos: color. 19.0 × 27.5 cm] // Medzhitova, E. Mari folk art = Mari kalyk Art: Album / Mezhitova E.D. — Yoshkar-Ola, 1985.

Photo 6. Women's cervical and chest jewelry - kishkivudzhan arsash. Herbalist Marie. Kazan province, 19th century: [Photos: Tsv. 19.0x27.5 cm] // Medzhitova, D.E. Mari Mari folk art = Kalik article: album / Medzhitova E.D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985 - P. 40.

Women's chest and back trim - shy arshash. Herbalist Marie. Kazan region. Second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century: [Photos: color; 19.0 × 27.5 cm] // Medzhitova E.

D. Mari folk art = Mariy kalyk Art: Album / Medzhitova ED - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985. - P. 66.

Molotova L.N. Art of the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals / Molotova L.N. // Folk art of the Russian Federation: from pos. Gos. Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. - L., 1981. - p. 22-25.

Aprons. Additional weaving. East Marie. Udmurt and Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 1940-1950: [Photos: color; 19.0 × 27.5 cm] // Mezhitova, E.D. Mari human art = Mari kalyk: album / Medzhitova E.

D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985. - S.

Marie or Cheremis

one hundred and eighteenth

Photo 9. Women's T-shirts. Additional weaving. East Marie. Ufa region. Second half of the 19th century - first half of the 20th century: [Photos: color; 19.0 × 27.5 cm] // Mezhitova, E.D. Mari human art = Mari kalyk: album / Medzhitova E.

D. - Yoshkar-Ola, 1985. - P. 120.

Nikitin V.V. Sources of Mari art = Mari artistic tungalty Children / V.V. Nikitin, T.B. Nikitina; Maris. scientific research etc. I, lit. and their stories. V. M. Vasilyeva, Scientific-Prov. Center for the Protection and Use of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Ministry of Culture, Press and Nationalities. Mari El. - Yoshkar-Ola: , 2004. - 150, p. : sick. — The text is parallel. Russian, Marius. Residence Eng.

The book presents archaeological materials about the artistic history of the population of the Vetluz-Vatka Bear from the Stone Age to the 17th century, and studies the problems and direction of the creation and development of Mary's folk art.

Mara Art Craft Basics: Handmade Crafts for Children: For Teachers of Preschool Children.

institutions, teachers. classes, hands. Art. studio / Marie. Phil. Feder. state. Sci. Institution “Institute for Problems of National Schools”; auto-comp. L. E. Maykova. - Yoshkar-Ola: , 2007. - 165, p.

Soloviev, G.

I. Mari folk wood carving / Solovyova G.I. — 2nd ed., Revised. — Yoshkar-Ola: Marius. book. publishing house, 1989. - 134 p. — Bibliography: p. one hundred twenty-eighth

This book is the first general publication to cover the most widespread and traditional art form of Mari art.

The work was written based on a study of literature sources and analysis of materials collected during expeditions of the Mari Research Institute.

Khmelnitskaya L. Traditional Mari culture and the influence of Russian cultural traditions on its territory / L. Khmelnitskaya // Ethnocultural history of the Ural people 16.-21. Centuries: problems of nationality.

identification and culture. interaction. - Ekaterinburg, 2005. - st. 116-125

The Mari in the past were known as "Cheremis"; this name is found in historical monuments from the 10th century.1 The Mari themselves call themselves Mari, Mari, Mar (man). This self-name has been established as an ethnonym since the formation of the Mari Autonomous Region. The Mari live mainly within the Middle Volga region. The total number of them throughout Soviet Union 504.2 thousand. In small groups, the Mari are scattered in the Bashkir, Tatar and Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, Kirov, Gorky, Sverdlovsk, Perm and Orenburg regions.

The bulk of the Mari (55% of their total number) live in the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In addition to the Mari, Russians, Tatars, Chuvash, Udmurts, Bashkirs, and Mordovians live in the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic is located in the middle part of the Volga basin.

In the north and northeast it borders with the Kirov region, in the southeast with the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the southwest with the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the west with the Gorky region. The Volga divides the territory of the republic into a large low-lying left-bank plain - the forested Trans-Volga region - and the right bank, which occupies a relatively small part - mountainous, indented by deep ravines and valleys of small rivers. The rivers of the Volga basin flow through the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic: Vetluga, Rutka, Kokshaga, Ilet, etc. On the territory of the republic there are large forests and many forest lakes.

The Mari are divided into three groups: mountain (kuryk marii), meadow (iolyk marii) or forest (kozhla marii) and eastern (upo marii).

The bulk of the mountain Mari inhabit the right, mountainous bank of the Volga, the meadow Mari live in the wooded areas of the left bank; Eastern Mari villages are located within Bashkiria and partly in the Sverdlovsk region. and in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

This division has existed for a long time. Already Russian chronicles distinguished between mountain and meadow “cheremis”; the same division is also found in old cartography of the 17th century.

However, the territorial attribute adopted to designate individual groups of Mari is largely arbitrary. Thus, the mountain Mari inhabiting the Gornomari region of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic live not only on the mountainous right bank, but also partially on the left bank of the Volga. The main differences between these groups are linguistic features and some uniqueness of life.

The Mari language belongs to the eastern branch of the Finno-Ugric languages ​​and has three main dialects: meadow, eastern and mountain.

In terms of vocabulary, the first two are close, while mountain is only 60-70% similar to them. In all these dialects there are a number of words of common Finno-Ugric origin, for example kid (hand), vur (blood), etc.

etc., and many words borrowed from the Russian language as a result of long-term cultural communication with the Russian people.

The Mari have two literary language: Meadow-Eastern and Mountain Mari, differing mainly in phonetics: in the Meadow-Eastern language there are 8 vowel phonemes, in the Mountain Mari - 10. The consonant system is basically the same; The grammatical structure is also common.

In recent years, the vocabulary of the Mari language has been enriched thanks to new word formations and the assimilation of international terms through the Russian language.

The Mari writing is based on the Russian alphabet with the addition of some diacritics to more accurately convey the sounds of the Mari language.

Brief historical sketch

The Mari tribes were formed as a result of the interaction of the bearers of the Pyanobor culture on the left bank of the Volga with the tribes of the late Teoden culture living on the right bank.

The data at our disposal allows us to see the Mari as aborigines of the local region. A.P. Smirnov writes: “The Mari tribes were formed on the basis of earlier tribal groups that inhabited the interfluve of the Volga and Vyatka, and are the autochthonous population of the region.” However, it would be incorrect to identify the ancient inhabitants of the Volga region with the modern Mari people, since it was formed as a result of the crossing of many tribes, from which the peoples of the Volga region were subsequently formed.

In a letter from the Khazar king Joseph (mid-10th century), “tsarmis” are mentioned among the Volga peoples under his control, in which it is easy to recognize “cheremis”.

The Russian Tale of Bygone Years also mentions the “Cheremis” living at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. This latest news allows us to significantly expand our understanding of the boundaries of the settlement of the Mari in the past. At the end of the 1st - beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. e. the Mari were influenced by the Bulgars. In the first half of the 13th century. The Bulgarian state was defeated by the Mongols and lost its independence.

The power of the Golden Horde was established in the Volga region. At the beginning of the 15th century. The Kazan Khanate was formed, under whose rule the bulk of the Mari came to be.

The Golden Horde culture also influenced the formation of the Mari culture. At the same time, there are obvious traces of close communication with neighboring peoples (Mordovians, Udmurts), with whom the Mari share a common origin.

Archaeological material allows us to trace the ancient connections of the Mari tribes with the Slavs, but the question of the relationship between the ancient Slavic and Mari cultures has not yet been sufficiently developed.

After the fall of Kazan (1552), the territory occupied by the Mari was annexed to the Russian state.

At this time, patriarchal-tribal relations dominated among the Mari. Legends have been preserved about the existence of princes in the past in Mari society.

Apparently, this concept meant representatives of the distinguished tribal elite, since there is no information about the feudal dependence of the Mari population on these princes. In legends, the Mari princes

act as heroes - military leaders. During the period of the Kazan Khanate, some of these princes probably joined the ruling class of Tatar society, since there is information about the existence of the Mari Murzas and Tarkhans.

As part of the Russian state, the Mari Murzas and Tarkhans became part of the service people and gradually merged with the Russian nobility.

The inclusion of the Mari in the population of the Russian state contributed to their introduction to the more developed culture of the Russian people.

However, their situation remained difficult. The forced introduction of Christianity, numerous extortions, abuses of local authorities, the seizure of the best lands by monasteries and landowners, military service and various in-kind duties placed a heavy burden on the Mari population, which more than once served as the reason for the Mari to speak out against social and national oppression.

The Mari, together with other peoples of the Volga region and the Russians, took an active part in the peasant wars under the leadership of Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev (XVII-XVIII centuries).

Uprisings of Mari peasants also broke out in the middle and in late XIX V.

The Christianization of the Mari began at the end of the 16th century. and especially intensified in the middle of the 18th century. But the Christian religion was actually not accepted even by the baptized Mari population.

The transition to the glorification of the peoples of the Volga region did not supplant paganism; Christian rituals were often performed under duress. The majority of the Mari, who were formally Orthodox, retained many remnants of pre-Christian beliefs. In addition, there remained, mainly among the eastern and meadow Mari, a group of so-called chi marii - “real Mari”, i.e.

i.e. unbaptized. The Mari encountered Islam even before Christianization, but its influence was insignificant, although some groups of Mari observed certain Muslim customs, for example, considering Friday a holiday.

The pre-Christian beliefs of the Mari are characterized by polytheism. Chief among the deities who personified the elements of nature was the good god Yumo, the god of the sky. The bearer of evil, according to the Mari, was the peremet; they prayed to him and made sacrifices in special kermet groves.

In general, the Mari did not have a coherent religious system. We can only talk about a complex interweaving of beliefs that arose at different stages of social development.

Magic occupied a significant place in the beliefs and rituals of the Mari. Magical actions were associated, for example, with the cycle of agricultural work: the plow festival (aga-payrem), the autumn festival of new bread (kinde payrem).

The festival of manure of fields was associated in time with the ritual of sur rem - the expulsion of an evil spirit.

The struggle of the Russian autocracy and the church against the pre-Christian beliefs of the Mari lasted for many decades and especially intensified in the 19th century. In their actions, the administration and the church relied on the wealthy strata of the village. Repressions against the general mass of the Mari population, who did not succumb to Christianization, aroused religious-nationalist sentiments among the Mari.

In the 70s of the XIX century. The Kugu Sorta (Big Candle) sect appeared, which tried to reform old beliefs on the basis of pronounced nationalism and was extremely reactionary.

It is no coincidence that already under Soviet power, during the intensified class struggle in the countryside during the period of collectivization, sectarians actively opposed collective farms, as well as cultural events.

By the beginning of the 20th century. include organized joint actions of Russian and Mari workers - against tsarism and the exploiting classes.

National character of the Mari

This was largely due to the growth of the working class in connection with the development of industry in the Mari region (here in 1913, for example, 1,480 workers were already employed in industry).

As elsewhere in Russia, the Bolshevik Party stood at the head of the working masses. The first Bolshevik Social Democratic circle on the territory of what is now the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in the spring of 1905.

in the village of Yurino from workers at tanneries. He had connections with the Nizhny Novgorod district center of the RSDLP. In 1905-1906 Political demonstrations took place under his leadership.

During the revolution of 1905-1907.

The Kazan regional committee of the RSDLP led joint actions of Russian, Chuvash and Mari workers and peasants against the landowners and the local bourgeoisie.

Such revolutionary uprisings took place in Zvenigovo, Kokshamary, Mariinsky Posad and other villages and towns of Kozmodemyansky and Cheboksary districts. These protests were mercilessly suppressed by the tsarist authorities.

After the overthrow of tsarism in March 1917, power in the Mari region was seized by the bourgeoisie, which organized the so-called Committee of Public Security in Tsarevokokshaisk (now Yoshkar-Ola).

However, revolutionary forces also grew, and in May 1917, Mari workers began seizing private lands and enterprises.

The complete liberation of the Mari people from political, economic and national oppression was achieved during the Great October Socialist Revolution. At the beginning of January 1918, Soviet power was established in the Mari region.

On January 30, the district congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies began its work. At the end of the same year, the first party cell was created. During Kolchak’s offensive in the Volga region in 1919, 50% of the entire party membership went to the front; On the initiative of the party organization, volunteers were recruited from among the Mari workers, who were formed into special-purpose companies and sent to the Eastern Front.

In the struggle against foreign invaders and internal enemies, the Mari workers marched in the same ranks with other peoples of the multinational Soviet country.

A significant date for the Mari people is November 4, 1920 - the date of publication of the decree on the formation of the Mari Autonomous Region signed by V.I. Lenin and M.I. Kalinin. The Mari Autonomous Region included Krasnokokshaysky and part of the Kozmodemyansky district of the Kazan province, as well as volosts with the Mari population of the Iranian and Urzhum districts of the Vyatka province.

and Yemaninskaya volost of Vasilsursky district of Nizhny Novgorod province. The regional center became the city of Krasnokokshaysk, which was later renamed Yoshkar-Ola. At the beginning of 1921, the Mari regional party organization took shape organizationally. On June 1, 1921, the First Congress of Soviets of the Mari Autonomous Region opened, outlining practical measures to restore the national economy.

In 1936, the Mari Autonomous Region was transformed into the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

The devotion of the Mari people to the Motherland and the Communist Party manifested itself with particular force during the harsh years of the Great Patriotic War, when Mari patriots showed themselves to be courageous fighters both at the front and in the rear.

The collective farmer from the village swore the oath of the legendary Mari hero Choray. Nyrgynda, Private Eruslanov before leaving for the front: “As long as my eyes see the light, and my hands bend in the joints, my heart will not tremble. If my heart trembles, let my eyes close forever.” And the heart of the brave warrior did not waver: in 1943, his tank destroyed an entire fascist unit.

A heroic feat was performed by Komsomol partisan O. A. Tikhomirova, who, after the death of her commander, led the partisans into an attack. For their courage and courage, forty soldiers of the Mari Republic were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union; more than 10 thousand were awarded military orders and medals.

fighters and commanders. During the war, collective farms of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic joined the national movement to help the front. They donated 1,751,737 pounds of bread, 1,247,206 pounds of meat, 3,488 short fur coats, 28,100 pairs of felt boots and 43 million rubles to the army fund. Members of the Peredovik collective farm built two airplanes using their personal funds.

The post-war period in the republic, as well as throughout the Soviet Union, is characterized by an increased role of public organizations and the further development of Soviet democracy.

The workers of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic take an active part in the work of local Soviets through permanent commissions. Greater powers are vested in production meetings at enterprises and collective farms. The role of the Komsomol has increased both in cities and in rural areas. The youth of the Mari Republic, on Komsomol vouchers, go to the mines of Donbass, to Angarstroy, to the construction of railways and the virgin lands of Kazakhstan.

The labor exploits of communist labor teams in industry and agriculture are the real contribution of the Mari people to the common cause of building a communist society.

(self-name ≈ Mari; former name ≈ Cheremis), people; They live mainly in the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, as well as in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Udmurd Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Kirov, Gorky, Perm and Sverdlovsk regions of the RSFSR. They are divided into 3 territorial groups: mountain, meadow (or forest) and eastern M. Mountain M. live mainly on the right bank of the Volga, meadow - on the left, eastern - in Bashkiria and the Sverdlovsk region. The total number is 599 thousand people (1970 census). Language M.

Reflections on the Mari people

(see Mari language) belongs to the eastern branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. After the Mari lands became part of the Russian state in the 16th century, the Christianization of M. began, but the eastern and small groups of meadow M. did not accept Christianity; they retained pre-Christian beliefs, especially the cult of ancestors, until the 20th century.

By origin, M. are closely related to the ancient population of the Volga region. The beginning of the formation of the Mari tribes dates back to the turn of the century. e., this process took place mainly on the right bank of the Volga, partly capturing the left bank regions of the Volga region.

The first written mention of the Cheremis (Mari) is found in the Gothic historian Jordan (6th century). They are also mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years. In the process of historical development of M.

became closer and interacted with the neighboring peoples of the Volga region. Resettlement to Bashkiria began at the end of the 16th century and occurred especially intensively in the 17th and 18th centuries. The cultural and historical rapprochement with the Russian people began in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. After the annexation of the Middle Volga region to Russia (16th century), ties expanded and strengthened. After October Revolution 1917 M. received national autonomy and developed into a socialist nation.

M. are employed both in agriculture and in industry, created mainly during the years of Soviet power. Many features of the original national culture of M. modern times Folklore, decorative arts (especially embroidery), and musical and song traditions received further development.

The national Mari arose and developed fiction, theater, fine arts. The national intelligentsia has grown.

About the history, economy and culture of M., see also Art. Mari ASSR.

Lit.: Smirnov I.N., Cheremisy, Kaz., 1889: Kryukova T.A., Material culture of the Mari of the 19th century, Yoshkar-Ola, 1956; Essays on the history of the Mari ASSR (From ancient times to the Great October Socialist Revolution), Yoshkar-Ola, 1965; Essays on the history of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1917 ≈ 1960), Yoshkar-Ola, 1960; Kozlova K.

I., Ethnography of the peoples of the Volga region; M., 1964; Peoples of the European part of the USSR, vol. 2, M., 1964; Origin of the Mari people, Yoshkar-Ola, 1967.

K.I. Kozlova.

Origin of people

The question of the origins of the Mari people is controversial to this day. The first theory is the scientific basis of the ethnogenesis of Mari, expressed in 1845 by the famous Finnish linguist M. Castren. Marie tried to define it as a chronicle. This point of view was supported and developed by T.S.Semenov, I.N.Smirnov, S.K.Kuznetsov, A.A.Spitsyn, D.K.Zelenin, M.N.Yantemir, F.E.Egorov and many other researchers from the second half of the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century.

A new hypothesis in 1949, he made an important Soviet archaeologist A.P. Smirnov to find Gorodets (near Mordovians) foundations, other archaeologists Bader V.F. Gening, defending his dissertation dyakovskom (close to action) the origin of the Mari.

However, archaeologists have been able to convincingly demonstrate that the acts and Marie, although related, are not the same people. In the late 1950s, when it became a regular act of the Mari archaeological expedition, its leaders A.H.Halikov G.A.Arhipov and developed the theory of the mixed azelinskoy Gorodetsky (volzhskofinsko-Perm), based on the Mari people.

Later GAArhipov further development of this hypothesis, the discovery and study of new archaeological objects showed that the mixed basis of the Mari is dominated by the components of Gorodetsky Dyakovo (Volga-Finnish) and the creation of the ethnic Mari, which began in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, which ended in the 9th century in general. - XI century, ethnic group Mari has already begun to be divided into two main groups - mountains and meadow Mari (in the past, compared to the first, the stronger influence of the Azelinskie (permoyazychnye) tribes).

Currently, this theory is generally supported by the majority of scientists and archaeologists who study this problem. Mari archaeologist V.S. Patrushev put forward a different hypothesis that the formation of the ethnic foundations of both Mari Mary and Mure, formed on the basis of the image of the Akhmylovskaya population. Linguists (I.S.Galkin, D.E.Kazantsev), based on language data, indicate that the creation on the territory of the Mari people should not be found in the area between Vetluzhsky-Vyatsky, as archaeologists believe, and to the southwest, between Oka and Suri.

Archaeologists TBNikitina, according to data, not only archeology, linguistics, but they also came to the conclusion that the ancestral home of Mari is located in the Volga part of the interfluve Oki-Sura and Povetluzhe and east to Vyatka occurred in the 8th - 11th centuries, during which contact was made and mixing with the Azalian (Permian) tribes.

The source of the “Mari” and “Cheremis” ethnic groups

The question of the origin of the Mari and Cheremis ethnons remains complex and unclear. The meaning of the word "Mari", the name of the name Mary itself, many linguists come from the Indo-European term "mar", "measures" in various sound versions (translated as "man", "husband").

The word "Cheremis" (called "Russian Mari" and a slightly different but similar vowel by many other people) has many different interpretations. The first written mention of this name (in the original "c-p-MIS"), which is available in the letter of Kazar Kagan Joseph on the Scientology of the Hard of Cordoba to Hasdai ibn Shaprut (960s).

Marie. History of ethnicity

The degree of elasticity of Kazantsev followed the historian XIX. Century. G.I. Peretyatskovich came to the conclusion that the name “Cheremisian” was given by the Maris tribe of Mordovia, and translated this word means “a person living on the sunny side in the east.” According to I.G. Ivanov, “Cheremisyan” is “a person of the Chera or Hora tribe,” in other words, the name of one of the tribes of the neighboring Mari nation, and then spread to the entire ethnic group.

The wide popular version of Mari etnografi 1920 - early 1930 and F.E. Egorova M. N. Yantemir shows that it extends to the ethnonym of the Turkish term “man’s warrior”.

F.I. Gordeev and supports his version of I.S. Galkin to defend hypotheses about the origin of the word “Cheremisian” from the ethnonym “Sarmatian” through mediation in Turkish languages. A number of other versions were released. The problem of the etymology of the word “Cheremisian” is complicated by the fact that in the Middle Ages (until the 17th-18th centuries) in some cases it was not only the Mari, but also their neighbors - the Chuvash and Udmurts.

links

For more details see: S.K. Svechnikov.

Methodical manual "History of people IX-XVI. Century "Yoshkar-Ola: GOU DPO (PK) C" Mari Institute of Education ", 2005