earticle

영어

The researcher has looked into the aspects of mother-god belief on the basic of the cases of mother-god practices in Mongolian folk custom to the extent that the problem of how the mother-god belief had put down roots in Mongolian mind would be dealt with through mythological discourses. The findings from the discussions conducted so far are to be summarized as follows:
First, such things as mother-tree, mother-rock and mother-stone-statue are nothing less than religious objects that the people worship as a being with the deity of motherhood.
Second, the worshiped objects are born after the death of a female. Even though the birth of an object and the death of a female come from a different origin, the idea seems somehow related to the female deity from Mongolian mythology, Dayan Dereh. Dayan Dereh was the first shaman who became petrified while she was taking away the daughter of Jenghizkan. A similar story is told of mother-rocks and part of the story agrees with that of the mother-trees. The recurrent theme here is 'the death of a female and her deification after death.'
Third, it is noteworthy that the ways of worshipping these objects are mostly tactile and that the praying is done in a whispery voice. These acts are frequently observable in the ordinary relations between mother and child, so they prove that the deity of their belief objects is a female parent.
Fourth, although there are only a few examples of mother-god or female god in Mongolian mythology, Eh Yureng Hatang, Ehe, or the crane woman who is the tribal bird of Boriyad shows how the Mongolians have conceived of female deity in their imagination.
Fifth, the Mongolian view that the fire-god is female is related to the view that the sun-god is also female.
Sixth, it is interesting that Mongolians think of the heaven as male and they regard the earth as female. They also put hierarchy between heaven-god and earth-god. They called the lords of earth and water ‘et gen' which implies ‘mother,' ‘mother's belly', and ‘mother's womb,' and they made the ‘etgen' the object of worship second only to Menke Tengeri.
Seventh, the Mongolians put ‘eh’, ‘ehe’ or ‘eke' implying ‘mother' to either the head or the tail of their deity words to signify the highest adoration. This is a similar practice to the case of male deities where the affix ‘father' is often attached. But the male affixation is less universal and less highly invoked.
Finally, the Great-Mother god belief of the Mongolians where the earth is deified as a female god seems to be based on their nomadic culture in that they base their living on the meadow land, rather than influenced from the agricultural practice. The female affixation to the names of the gods appears to have some affinity with the formation of the earth conception since ‘eh' (‘ehe' or ‘eke') refers to ‘origin,' ‘first,' or ‘the beginning' while ‘etgen' refers to ‘mother,' ‘mother's ‘belly' or ‘mother's womb.'