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Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
The epic, one of the oldest forms of poetic expression, came into being and evolved in time immemorial, long before the appearance of writing - the advent of which, while helping to fix oral traditions since the dawn of history, has at the same time sapped these traditions of their freshness. Not until methods of recording and reproduction were perfected was the oral epic restored to its full compass as a work of enduring dimensions.
1. See Diogenes 171 (July-September 1995), Languages and Cultures of the Silk Roads.
2. Shamanic practices, particularly important in Siberia and Central Asia, have been well documented through the efforts of Russian ethnographers since their forays into Siberia. See in Diogenes 158 (April-June 1992), Shamans and Shamanisms: On the Threshold of the Next Millenium: V. N. Basilov, “Islamic Shamanism among Central Asian Peoples,” pp. 5-18; E. A. Helimsky and N. T. Kosterkina, “Small Seances with a Great Nganasan Shaman,” pp. 39-55; and R. N. Hamayon, “Stakes of the Game: Life and Death in Siberian Shamanism,” pp. 69-85.
3. In the Honshû, the epic begins with the great exploits of a civil war whose heroes are nearly contemporaries of the authors.
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