A Systematisation of Transcriptions of Early Olonkho Recordings According to Plot Peculiarity

Abstract The article* presents the results of textual studies of the early recordings of the Yakut heroic epic Olonkho, recorded from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that scientific research of the texts of the early recordings of Olonkho with full broadcasts of the plot is most widely, systematically carried out. At the same time, researchers today continue to pay less attention to early recordings of Olonkho, producing brief or incomplete schematic statements of content. A review of early texts on Olonkho shows that these reviews have incomplete, overly concise, summaries of the plot, although they do confirm the stability of the ancient thematic content, plot structure, motifs, and image system. The richness of the poetic language and the beauty of the style, and the surprisingly artistic content and archaic motifs, which can be seen even in translations, are of considerable value for establishing a full picture of the unique oral creativity of the Yakut people. This study attempts for the first time to systematise transcriptions of early recordings of Olonkho using a summary of the plot in Russian compared with a summary of the plot in the original language. The systematised texts will be used in a comparative study of Olonkho texts recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries. This analysis shows that there has been a transfer of plot with epic texts of the late period in order to maintain a degree of continuity, using both common and specific features to bridge between traditional and modern forms of Olonkho, taking into account regional and local features.