Continuity and Revitalisation in Sacrificial Rituals by the Eastern Udmurt. Part II
Continuity and Revitalisation in Sacrificial Rituals by the Eastern Udmurt. Part II

Collective Sacrificial Rituals by the Bashkortostan Udmurt: Revitalisation and Innovation

Summary/Abstract: This is the second part of an article that focuses on a marginal Udmurt group living in Bashkortostan, which has retained, in a Muslim environment, its original Udmurt religious practice. In some places, in spite of decades of anti-religious Soviet policy, the Udmurt were able to pursue their traditional rituals, thus warranting full continuity of their practice. In other places, the tradition was discontinued for some longer or briefer periods. But everywhere there has been a revival at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. The aim of this article, which is based on the authors’ fieldwork in one district, is to examine these processes and analyse them. In this second instalment, we analyse the changes that were introduced in the revitalisation process in several dimensions of religious practice: the use of sacred space, the role of different actors, the proceedings of the rituals, the transmission of the prayers, the costume of the priests, the behaviour of the participants.

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