Tamgas of the 19th and Early 20th Century Yakuts (Sakha)

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Tamgas of the 19^th and Early 20^th Century Yakuts (Sakha)

tamga economic life

Rozalia I. Bravina, Natalia I. Popova and Valery E. Vasiliev Institute for Humanitarian Research and Indigenous Peoples of the North SB RAS Yakutsk, Russian Federation

Abstract

tamga economic life

The article deals with tamga symbols which played a role in the socio-economic life and culture of the Central, Vilyuisk and Northern local groups of the Yakuts since the lineage-based society up to the early twentieth century. Tamgas were marks to identify kinship and social status, property, enjoyment and dispose of the owner's property, as well as sacral symbols of religious beliefs and practices of the Yakuts. Tamga marks were used to denote numbers in the Yakut traditional number system. They are found on various seals and «eternal» calendars of the 17^{th -} 19^th centuries. Based on a comparative study of the tamga mark system of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Central Asia and Southern Siberia, an attempt was made to systematize various forms and names of the most common tamga of the Yakuts and to determine their functional aspect. It is suggested that tamga marks are primary in relation to the Turkic runic writing, as well as Yakut rune-like tamgas that the Turkic-speaking ancestors of the Yakuts brought to their modern territory before their acquaintance with the runic writing.

Keywords: the Yakuts, tonal culture, tamga, livestock brand, ownership mark, clan emblem, seal, stamp, numeral system, runic calendar, Turkic runic alphabet.

Аннотация

Тамговые знаки якутов (Саха) XIX - начала XX века

Р.И. Бравина, Н. И. Попова, В. Е. Васильев Институт гуманитарных исследований и проблем малочисленных народов Севера СО РАН Российская Федерация, Якутск

Представлены тамговые знаки, игравшие определенную роль в социально-экономической жизни и культуре центральной, вилюйской и северной локальных групп якутов со времен семейно-родовых отношений и вплоть до начала ХХ в. Тамги являлись отличительными знаками родовой и социальной принадлежности, владения, пользования и распоряжения собственностью хозяина, а также сакральными символами религиозно-мифологических представлений и ритуальной практики якутов. Тамговые знаки входили в качестве цифровых обозначений в якутскую традиционную систему счисления. Они обнаруживаются на различных печатях и «вечных» календарях ХVП-XIX веков.

На основе сравнительного изучения системы тамговых знаков тюрко-монгольских народов Центральной Азии и Южной Сибири предпринята попытка систематизировать различные формы и названия наиболее распространенных тамг у якутов и определить их функциональный аспект. Высказывается мнение о первичности тамговых знаков по отношению к тюркскому руническому письму, а также о якутских руноподобных тамгах, которые тюркоязычные предки якутов привезли на современную территорию своего проживания, предположительно, еще до их знакомства с руническим письмом.

Ключевые слова: якуты, традиционная культура, тамга, тавро, знак собственности, родовые «знамена», печать, клеймо, система счисления, рунический календарь, тюркская руника.

Introduction

народ социальный экономический

The word «tamga» of Turkic-Mongolian origin had several meanings in the languages of this group: «brand», «stamp», «seal». The use of tamga by the nomadic peoples of Eurasia in everyday life was diverse. Tamgas were used for branding livestock, marking land plots and grazing land, fishing and hunting areas, chattel and artisan work, signing documents, etc. Sacral marks often perpetuated places of sanctuaries or ritual prayers. The carving of tamga on the historical monuments evidences the presence of an ethnic group in this area which means that tamgas, undoubtedly, are among the most important sources for a comprehensive study of the history and culture of the peoples of Eurasia.

Tamgas and tamga-like symbols of the peoples of Siberia have been studied for more than two centuries [Simchenko, 1965, 8-14; Tyulyush, 2016, 158; Tishin, 2017, 209-239]. Although the achievements are unquestionable, this topic and many problems associated are still far from being resolved. This is particularly true for rune-like tamgas of the Yakuts, functional, formal-typological and religious-mythological aspects of which are considered in this paper for the first time.

The beginning of the study of rune-like inscriptions in the Lena River area is associated with addressing the scientific problem of the origin of the Yakut people and their culture (Shirobokova, 2018). In 1920, the famous Yakut ethnographer and folklorist G. V. Ksenofontov in his lectures on the origin of the Yakuts drew attention to the presence in the Yakut epic Olonkho of «an artistic image of inscripted stone pillars of the Orkhon type erected in honor of heroes describing their military exploits» (Sosnovsky, 1928). In Yakut folklore, the motif of written fate was widespread. In the epic text Olonkho, one of the descendants of the Supreme deity Urung Aiyy toyon, the scribe Usun Dzhurantaaiy recorded in his stone archive all vicissitudes of the heroes' fate since their birth, including their feats (Emel'yanov, 1980, 16).

Myths and legends say about the «white» and «black» letters which are written for new-borns by the spirits of plants (ot-mas ogoloro). Thus, the white letter «Yuryung suruk» was intended for people with strong and happy fate, while the black one «Hara suruk» was written for people with incomplete predestination.

It is very interesting that the Yakuts used the expression «tangha-bichik» to denote fate and destiny; its meaning can be defined as «rebus-ideogram» (tangha «fortune telling, fate, predestination»). One of the deities of the Yakut Pantheon, Tangha Haan, determined the fate of tribes and clans of the Middle World according to the book written in blood. In this regard, of particular interest is the existence of the role of tamgahan, the guardian of tribal tamgas, in the Turkic Khaganates (Yatsenko, 2001, 107). In the epic Olonkho, the role of the Supreme judge in determining the fate of the characters belongs to the deity Chyngys Haan, who owned the book of the fates of the three worlds (Yemel'yanov, 1980, 15). Among the medieval Turks, Khagan (Khan) assigned tamgas to tribes and noble clans, later this custom was practiced by the great Mongol khans, including Chengis Khan (Mitirov, 1979, 129). It might be possible that there are traces of tamga-like symbols of power of the medieval steppe empires of Central Asia and Southern Siberia within Yakut names of the deities of fate.

Plots with books - heralds of fate - are widespread among the Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia. They may have originated in the ancient Turkic written tradition, one of the famous monuments of which being «Yrk Bitig» («The Book of Fortune-Telling» or «The Book of Parables»). In the Yakut language, the word «yra» means «foreshadowing, interpretation, prediction; a better fate» (Pekarsky, 1959, vol.

III, 3808-3809), which is comparable to the an-cient Turkic yrym, yrk `sign, prophecy, fortune-telling' (Old Turkic dictionary, 1969, 220).

In a series of myths and legends about the legendary Yakut progenitor Ellei it is said that his father Tataar Tayma was a well-born, liter-ate person. Before his death he bequeathed his sacred «suruk-bichik» (reading and writing) to his son, which, according to one legend, was hidden in his homeland. Later, when already married, Ellei allegedly went to his father's homeland but didn't find the book which was believed to have burned, so the Yakuts were left without written language. According to other stories, Ellei received the letter from his father and lost it in the waters of the Lena Riv-er, when sailing downstream on a snag (Kseno- fontov, 1977, 43, 53, 55).

In this context, the first artifacts of the pos-sible existence of the written language among the southern ancestors of the Yakuts were two spinners with runic symbols found in the early 20^th century in the Baikal region which was the territory of the Kurumchi archeological culture of the 6^th-10^th centuries. B. E. Petri published the data on the runes, being convinced of their Yakut origin: «Finding these writings in the Baikal region so far to the North, is of course a remarkable fact. However, it is important for us to point out that the ancestors of the Yakuts, who left Northern Mongolia in ancient times and detached themselves from the common Turkish core, might have known the Orkhon writing» (Petri, 1922, 27-28). At that time Turkology was in its infancy, so when the key to decipher-ing the runic inscriptions was found, of course, these artifacts immediately attracted the ex-perts' attention. In 1932, Finnish researchers Kai Donner and Martti Rдsдnen published a paper in German «Zwei neue tьrkische Runen-inschriften», in which they gave their version of rune decryption. Based on the nature of the letters, K. Donner made an assumption that at that time the Turkic population of the Baikal region was rather culturally connected with the inhabitants of the Minusinsk steppes than Mongolia. G. V. Ksenofontov argued their ver-sions and suggested his interpretation based on the Yakut language: «qatar kьцrcдq (modern Yakut khatar kuercheh)», where qatar means «to twist, to spin», «ktiorcaq» «pinwheel, spin-ning top making noise», and «Bascit Arqaraj kis ktioltigar (modern Yakut «beschit Arkharay kys kueluger»)» - «on the lake, where Bes-chit Arkharay winters» (Ksenofontov, 1933, 170-173). His assumption was criticized by the famous Turkologist S. E. Malov (Malov, 1936, 251-279). However, over time, as evidenced in the Proceedings of the Scientific Confer-ence on the Study of the Productive Forces of Yakutia (1941), where he made a report «The Yakut Language and its Relation to other Tur-kic Languages», the academician changed his view on the problem: «The Yakuts have leg-ends that they had their own writing. Besides, on the banks of the Lena River and other riv-ers there are petroglyphs that are partly rune-like symbols.» Of some interest is the addition to his report made by the famous historian S. A. Tokarev: «There is very weak, but doc-umented evidence that the Yakuts had written language. ... In the unpublished record of the Yakut uprising of 1642, there is a testimony of a Yakut named Metemik on the role of one of the leaders of the uprising Toyon Ogey. Some «memorial» was brought to this Ogeya, and the document states: «And Ogey looked at the me-morial and threw it away.» This word «memo-rial» had the meaning of a written instruction ... Most likely, we deal with runic, pictograph- ic, and perhaps more developed writing.» (On the Ancient Yakut Writing // nu.s-vfu.ru «Expert Opinion» o-drevney-yakutskoy.) (О древней якутской письменности // nu.s-vfu.ru^KcnepraoeMHeH^'o-drevney- yakutskoy.).

In traditional culture of the Yakuts, the image of rock petroglyphs «suruktaakh kha- ya» has formed as one of geo-cultural markers of sacred territories. Some of petroglyphs are written using a natural clay earth pigment ocher (Yakut soho) on noticeable river rocks along the Lena, Olekma, Markha, and Siine rivers. The Yakuts believed that ocher is a stone with a «secret-magic» that changes its color depend-ing on the future fate of the person looking at the rock drawings. Shamans used ocher in their spells (Yakovlev - Kuruuppa oiuun, 1993, 14).

As early as in the 1920s, P. A. Oyunsky identified 17 cases of similarities between

Yakut runic characters and the Lena River graphemes (Oyunskiy, 1935). Researchers of the Lena rock petroglyphs A. P. Okladnikov and I. I. Barashkov devoted a special work to the ancient prehistoric writing of the Yakuts (1942). An expert in local history, artist, can-didate of theology P. V. Popov, while working at the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Yakut ASSR, made a report on «Highlights of the History of the Yakut Writing (Descriptive Writing)» in 1945 (De-partment of Manuscripts, Institute for Hu-manities, SB RAS, collection 5, inventory 4, document 86). This paper was published as an Appendix to L. N. Kharitonov's univer-sity textbook showing samples of the runes of the Lena rocks provided by A. P. Oklad-nikov (Fig. 1). Their style is mostly similar to the Yakut tamga style (Kharitonov, 1947, 279-284).

A well-known expert on Turkic runes A. N. Bernstam deciphered one of the inscrip-tions on the Lena rocks as a Yakut phrase «min alkatim» «I bless» (Bernstam, 1951). In the 1980s, in the Ust-Aldan district, Central Ya-kutia, during the excavation of an ancient Ya-kut settlement of the Kulun-Atakh culture, a bone arrowhead was found with an inscription in Yenisei runes on its flat side. E. S. Sidorov and A. I. Gogolev read the inscription as «aga el» «union, father's tribe» (Gogolev, 1990, 47). Currently, there are other ways of reading those and newly discovered inscriptions. In this case, we find important the presence of runic writing in the area of the Turkic speaking Yakuts itself since it offers a way to analyze and interpret rune-like tamgas.

The current study is based upon the field material collected by A. A. Savvin in the 1930s in the Far North: Allaikhovskiy, Abyyskiy, Verkhoyanskiy, and Ust-Yanskiy districts (De-partment of Manuscripts, Institute for Human-ities, SB RAS, collection 4, inventory 12, doc-ument 45). The author combined them into a separate folder titled «Ancient Writing of the Yakuts» that is kept in the Manuscript Depart-ment, Institute for Humanities SB RAS. We also use artisan brands on wooden goblets for drinking kumis «Choron» from the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum mostly collected in the 19^th -20^th centuries in various regions of Yakutia.

Functional aspects of rune-like tamgas of the Yakuts

V. L. Seroshevsky writes in his work «The Yakuts» (1896): «... each family and each sec-ondary tribe would have their own marks, «em-blems and tamgas», ... their own tribal cries uran, military songs, and nicknames». These tribal marks, the author continues, are com-pletely forgotten. However, it was recorded that in the old days Kolyma Yakuts of the Kan- galassky kinship possessed the golden eagle mark barilas. Unfortunately, the record with the «common name» of this mark was later lost (Seroshevsky. 1993, 454). The Eastern Siberi-an eagle (golden eagle) was a deity, a totem of the ruling Kangalassky family from the Middle Lena under the leadership of the «king» Tyg- yn during the arrival of the Russians. In this regard, of particular interest is the rune-like tamga of his grandson Mazara engraved on the blade of his polearm batas (Ksenofontov, 1927, table. X, Fig.2).

In the 17^th century documents, personal «emblems» (tamga) are found among Yakuts by occupation of fur tax payers. Shaman's tamga, similar to those of other indigenous peoples of Central and Eastern Siberia, was an image of a shaman drum. Graphically, it was depicted as a crossed-out circle (Sim- chenko, 1965, 185, Table 115). The motifs for most marks of ordinary Yakuts were horses and bows. Exceptions are the tamgas of the Yakuts from the Namsky district in the form of a spear and a quiver of arrows, those of the Batulinsky district in the form of a conical structure «urasa» (summer dwelling), and the Bayagantaisky district in the form of a yurt- balagan (winter welling) (Simchenko, 1965, Table. 116, Fig. 21, 22, 24, 7 and 9). Among the Yakut tamgas in the Krivogornitsin's list (17^th century) there are images of fish and a fish trap (Seroshevsky, 1993, 453, Fig. 130). It is known that Tungus tamgas in the form of bows belonged to hunters who hunted on foot and tamgas in the form of horses and rein-deer belonged those with horses and reindeer. These marks are most likely to have been in-troduced by Russian authorities who charged the fur tax «according to people and crafts».

According to legends, in the old days, ter-ritorial possessions of families, fishing, hunting grounds, and hayfields were strictly delimited by special boundary cuts made on trees erkeai, ekkeyi, (Bolo, 1994, 171-172). In the epic Olonkho, the World Tree grows at the sunrise, where the Sky meets the Earth and all paths of the Universe begin. There, in the «nests» of nine fir trees standing in a row, live bright goddesses Aji'i'sit (Oyunsky, 1930, 17-18). Here we can see similar semantics of the images of a tree, a nest, and a house marking the inhab-ited space separated from the celestial sphere of the higher deities. In this regard, it is worth to mention a rune-like inscription of 46 differ-ent marks carved on the sacred tree in the area of Nucalah-Alas in the Churapchinsky district (Levin, 2014, 274).

It is likely that visiting sacred places, where religious and ritual events were held, was accompanied by application of tamgas on the surface of the worshiped natural objects. In particular, a Lena inscription read by A. N. Ber- shtam as «I bless» indicates that. Perhaps, the four-sided wooden column with a carved im-age of a female face with earrings on one side, and rune-like symbols on the other discovered by R. K. Maak in the Vilyuisk district belongs to this group of symbols (Maak, 1994, 147). In this regard, of special interest is the story about the white shaman Yegor Chukrov (Emcit D'ogusa) of the Arctic Eveno-Bytantayskiy district who could use the ancient `Viluy writ-ing'. The famous healer died in 1946. Three crosses are believed to be there on his grave, each inscribed with unknown signs reproduced by his son at his request (Levin, 2014, 275). According to some accounts, these writings contained encrypted secret knowledge of an-cestors, including prophecies and predictions of the future.

Complex semantics of many tamgas of Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Eurasia, especial-ly those going back to the kinship cult symbols or even totems, allows their use as amulets. Perhaps it is the «protecting» function that ex-plains the widespread custom of applying rune-like patterns on household items and products among Yakuts. The most common are cross-shaped patterns, including «cross inside the circle» and the bud ornament (unugas), which lets us suggest a sacral connection between tamga and religious and mythological ideas of the Yakuts.

During ethnographic times «signature» tamgas were used by Yakut cattle breeders as a sign of personal possession of cattle (brand), certain valuable things (silver jewelry, subjects of ceremonial decoration of horse gear, weap-ons, etc.) that were the signs of high social status and material wealth of their owner. In Northern regions possession tamgas were put on dugout boats, hunting and fishing equip-ment, for example, crossbows, floats, nets, etc. A pole with the hunter's tamga was put near the shed where prey carcasses and skins were kept and over the pits with fish reserved (Depart-ment of Manuscripts, Institute for Humanities SB RAS, collection 4, inventiry 12, document 45, l. 385, 405). Possession tamgas were passed from father to son or other family members in-heriting fishing and hunting equipment. If heirs had their own tamgas, they would put it next to the tamga of the previous owner.

The Yakuts used tamgas as an «identi-ty card», a personal «signature». According to the records of the famous Yakut folklorist S. I. Bolo, each tribe's head had his own tamga (Bolo, 1994, 55, 61). Graphically, they consist-ed of intersecting straight and wavy lines. At the times of the lineage-based society tamga «stamp» was likely to be a collective mark. However, it is difficult to say whether all mem-bers were entitled to the «family mark» and under what circumstances they used it without changing the grapheme. V. L. Seroshevsky, re-ferring to a Yakut fairy tale written in the Verk-hoyansk district, wrote that ordinary people did not have their «signature» or «stamp» and, whenever necessary, could «invent» them on the spot. In the fairy tale cited by the author, it is said that the poor man Dodoy goes to the rich man Boilyt and asks to take him as a serf. In response, the rich man asks to provide an «oath mark». «Dodoy pulled out a bone knife from the sheath on his hip and cut his little finger, he smeared the end of the knife with blood and used it to draw either a spear or just a stick on a piece of birch bark and said: «From this day I consider you, my lord!» After that, he kissed the bloody knife and kneeling, gave the bark to Boilyt» (Seroshevsky, 1993, 455). As the text shows, there is no direct indication that the Dodoy «invented» his mark on the spot.

The fact that the «seal» tamgas were mainly the privilege of nobility is supported by a copper stamp with three runic symbols at the Elgyay Regional Museum in the Suntar dis-trict on the Vilyuy River, which, according to G. G. Levin, represent the initials of the owner of the stamp. It is possible that the stamp was made in the early 18^th century by a local Yakut craftsman and belonged to Nikita Samsonov, who at that time was the head of the district. Paleography of the inscription is very different from the Orkhon and Lena-Baikal runic sym-bols, its form and character are strongly rem-iniscent of the Manichean ones (Levin, 2014, 273-274). The image on the ring, accidentally found in Namsky district, resembles the motif of a «crown» characteristic of the Khoytsegor culture of the Uighur of Western Baikal area, which was widespread among the Yenisei Kyr-gyz and medieval tribes of the Southern Sibe-ria. Under the «crown» there is a sign similar in shape to the Sanskrit letter «^».

Some «signature», «seal» tamgas may have been the craftsman's brand marks, espe-cially those on valuable objects of decorative and applied art or of ritual purpose. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that the cus-tomer's tamga (future owner's) rather that of a craftsman was initially made. This group of tamgas most likely includes rune-like stamps on wooden kumis goblets choron and boxes matarchakh, presumably dating back to the 18^th -20^th centuries. There are two types of wooden kumis goblet choron: with a conical stem and three legs, sometimes horse hoof-like.

Tamgas on the goblets from the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (Saint Petersburg) are mostly placed on the bottom of the stem or between the legs, i. e., they, in con-trast to the tamgas on «status» items such as belts, bridle sets, saddles, are placed in hidden places. Probably, not every craftsman had his own brand stamp. Only 15 out of 178 chorons investigated in the collection of the Russian

Ethnographic Museum had stamps. They are represented by initials, notches, dots, and rune-like symbols. The monograph of the art histori-an A. I. Potapov presents 16 personal craftsman marks that include ones similar to, in author's opinion, to the symbols of the Lena rock paint-ings (Potapov, 1972).

Thus, tamgas were used by the Yakuts to mark one's clan, family, social status; occupa-tion of a territory; tribal and personal owner-ship of property; identity (personification); ar-tisan's brand; sacred places and objects, which verifies close relation the Yakut ancestors to the Turks of the Sayan-Altayc highlands (Tyulyush 2016). The fact that Yakut ancestors had close long-term contacts with neighboring peoples the Tuvans, Tofalar, Khakass, Shors, Altay is indicated by their languages, namely, a large layer of vocabulary that unites these languages and is absent in other Turkic languages.

Runic-like symbols in the Yakut traditional numeral system

As late as until 1930s, the Yakuts used their ancient number denoting system, which, at first glance, resembled Roman numerals. Numeral symbols were carved on a four-sided wooden tag called «ieres-dieres suruk», which might be translated as «agreement letter». Such tags were used in the 19^th -early 20^th centuries as receipts or tickets for various contractual obligations, trade or financial activities, im-posts, etc. Counting was marked on them by notches. According to A. A. Savvin, such tags were used in the Northern districts during the off-season for sale of fish and deer carcasses to the local population. Numbers from 1 to 9 were denoted by transverse notches, 10 by two criss-crossed inclined notches (X), 100 was denoted by a circle drawn over a cross (®). On the left side of the tag there was an image of the goods sold, the lower half, which remained with the seller, had the buyer's tamga. Such a tag was usually split in half, and the people who made a deal or contract, each took one half. To settle, the two halves were again placed against each other; this way, the correctness of the notch-es was established, and the settlement was made without any misunderstandings. Usually, merchants made a hole in their half of the tag, through which a string was passed and they held a bunch of tags in a special box (Manu-script Department, Institute for Humanities, collection 4, inventory 12, document 45, sheets 384, 385).

Also, similar symbols on wooden bars were used by the Yakuts of Central Yakutia on so-called «land registers» («Khandiedaat bie- demehe» or «Khandiedaat kerdeehe»), which looked like multi-faceted wooden blocks. «Register» generally shows the number of hay- fields in this area, with each side indicating the amount of land belonging to a particular clan. The amount of hay is indicated in carts. So, ten carts of hay were designated by one point, twenty carts by two points and so on, up to for-ty; fifty was denoted by inclined incision, one hundred by two intersecting inclined lines in the form of the Roman numeral «X», five hun-dred by double inclined incision - //, thousand by a pair of double inclined incisions at the in-tersection in the form of a slanted cross. When the count was referring to money, one hundred rubles was designated by a circle with a cross inside; ten rubles by a rectangle, one ruble by a slanted cross; dots carved with the tip of a knife were used to denote kopeks, large dots were ten kopeks, and small dots were less than ten kopeks (Kharitonov, 1947, 282, 283).

If we look at other peoples of Southern Siberia, we find similar numeral designation of the Khakass and Tofalars (Butanaev, 1975, 257-258). It is noteworthy that the Khakass numbers are based on symbols made up of different combinations of the cross used only for counting livestock. Chuvash numerical symbols, like the Yakut ones, had some resem-blance to the Roman numerals and were carved mainly with a knife on wooden bars and tags (Trofimov, 1993), which demonstrates the pres-ence of an ancient Turkic tradition.

Table 1. Rune-like tamgas in the Yakut calendar

Table 2. Names of rune-like tamgas

The symbols of the Yakut calendar in-dicating the main events of the agricultural year are also of great interest. Yakut folk cal-endars were close to Russian wooden church calendars. Basically, they were regular wooden planks with information about the beginning and progress of agricultural work, the timing of the hunting season and fishing, the days of family holidays carved with the help of notch- the Russian folk calendar, as the Yakuts start their year in May). The calendar is made ac-cording to the Julian calendar. Rune-like sym-bols mark Orthodox dates coinciding with the agricultural calendar of the Yakuts.

As can be seen from the material above, some numerical symbols in the Yakut numeral system resemble those of the Orkhon writing or Lena rock petroglyphs.

Typology of tamgas of the Yakuts. As noted above, the names of rune-like tamgas in the Central and Vilyuy districts were forgotten as early as in the late 19^th century. The field ma-terial of A. A. Savvin indicates that they sur-vived in the North until 1930s and had general-ly nominal denotations.

According to the form, the Yakut rune-like tamgas can be grouped as follows:

1. Cross, four versions, No. 1-4;

2. Straight line and its complicated forms, No. 5-17.

3. Slingshot, No. 16-20.

4. Circle, No. 21-23.

5. Birds, No. 24-25

6. Farm and residential buildings, No. 26-32.

As can be seen, the Yakut tamga was based on the following forms: cross, straight line, slingshot, circle, square and its types, triangle and its types. Like those of the Turks of Sayan es and means `stamp', `seal', `property mark'. Its meaning in the Old Turkish is `seal, print', `sign (magic)' (Old Turkic Dictionary 1969, 530). Despite the fact that functionally and ty-pologically the Yakut preserved the original symbol system, the word tamga is absent in their language. The word belie is used to de-note tamga, which corresponds to the Turkic belge, belgi `sign'.

It is interesting that in Yakutia tamgas of various types and purpose were preserved in their integral form only locally among Northern Yakuts. This fact can be interpreted in a way that the first Yakut ancestors, having reached the Northern territories, lived in socio-cultural isolation for a long period of time, resulting in preservation of traditional attributes of every-day life, including the active use of tamgas in relevant life situations.

Isolated existence also explains the pres-ence of a significant number of archaic fea-tures in the Yakut language dialects of the North-East of Yakutia, which at one time served as the basis for G. V. Ksenofontov to identify groups of Southern and Northern Yakuts, as he wrote: «the dialect of the rein-deer herder Yakuts diverges from the dialects of the Yakuts - cattle breeders much more than the latter among themselves. Therefore, it would be appropriate to first divide Yakut dialects into the Southern (cattle farmers) and Northern (reindeer herders)» (Ksenofontov, 1992, book 1, 317). This statement is still rel-evant, as evidenced by the existence of two ancient dialect formations of the Yakut lan-guage, «one of the main diagnostic features of which is the pronunciation of unstressed «o» as «a» or «o», convincing experts that «the mentioned ancient dialect formations result-ed not from disintegration of one language in the Middle Lena region but integration of two main Yakut-speaking tribal groups» (Ivanov, 2014, 233).

The similarity between tamga of the Ya-kuts before 1930s and the runic script of the an-cient Turks from Orkhon and Yenisey may be explained by referring to the scientists' opinion on the prototypical role of rune-like tamgas for some runic alphabet characters (Klyash- torny, 1964, 46-47; Amanzholov 2012, 299). If it is considered that the monuments of Turkic runic writing were created and became wide-spread in the 6^th-9^th centuries, and tamgas are pre-letter ideographic symbols that arose and became widespread among Turkic peoples, it may be suggested that the latter probably ap-peared on the territory of Yakutia when the Yakut ancestors had no idea of runic writing. Archaeological data indicate earlier arrival of the first wave of «settlers of the region» that «attest the penetration in Yakutia first of Hun- Xianbei groups in the 3^rd - first half of the 4^th century BC, and later from the 5^th - 6^th centu-ries of Turkic-Mongolian groups» (Bravina, 2018, 17) who were potential carriers of tamga culture.

As for a number of short runic inscriptions on rocks and small household items found in the territory of Yakutia, the reading of which is very difficult, it might be assumed that they appeared later with subsequent waves of Tur-kic nomads who had already had contacts with runic writing, or these are ancient Tamga sym-bols taken as runes (which was discussed in due time by Okladnikov, Barashkov).

The above confirms the idea that tamgas can be considered as an important source to study the ethnogenesis of the Yakuts as carriers of the ancient nomadic culture of the peoples who spoke Turkic and Mongolian languages.

Altay (the Tuvans, the Altay, and the Khakass), most tamgas consisted of two elements: the main tamga with an additional symbol - lines directed up or down. Some tamga names are similar to those of clan tamgas of the Kazakh, the Nogais, the Tuvans, the Altay, and the Kha-kass: «yi» (the moon), «aya» (bow), «taraakh» (comb), «balta» (hammer).

Thus, Yakut tamgas reflected natural phenomena (sun, moon, sprout, ornithologi-cal symbols), tools and household items (bow, arrows, hook, hammer, comb), farm and resi-dential buildings, social status (bow and arrow, tambourine).

Conclusion

In terms of the image, value and purpose Yakut tamgas are closely related to those of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Central Asia and Southern Siberia. They represent a fragment of the common system of symbols widespread in Asia, giving evidence of the once existed common ethno-cultural field of interaction and mutual influence of different Turkic and Mon-golian peoples.

By its origin, tamga is a pre-written ideo-graphic symbol system, widespread among Turkic and Mongolian tribes at the period of their cohabitation. The word tamga, as noted above, is deeply rooted in most Turkic languages and special symbols. These calendars were found in almost every Yakut family. The col-lection of the Yakut State Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples of the North in-cludes a calendar purchased from Petr Gerasi-mov from Yunkyur Dzhebarsk nasleg (county) of the Western - Kangalassky ulus (district) in 1911. This perpetual calendar is a quadrangular wooden board with 12 horizontal stripes with holes, each corresponding to a specific month, and graphic designations of holidays. The year begins in September (this is taken over from.

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