Rosalia BRAVINA
The article deals with the perception and understanding of death by the northern TurksYakuts. They believe that a man could "earn" a decent "good" death by his behavior, actions and deeds. This clearly shows the ethical aspect of the phenomenon of death, according to which the Yakuts had a concept of "good" and "bad" death. It was believed that the substances of life (kut and sur) of those who died properly, returned to its roots and in a given time revived again on the earth. Those who died prematurely with "bad" death were thought to be victims of evil spirits of abaasy, in the category of which they subsequently changed into themselves and turned into a spirit of yuer. Living a decent life provided the decent "right" departure to the world of the ancestors, whereas access to the other world for the "wrong" dead required intervention and mediation of shamans. The paper presents the structural and functional analysis of shamanistic rituals at the funeral.
Keywords: Yakuts, mythology, ethnography, death, funeral, shamanistic ritual, structural and functional analysis