The relevance of the research topic is determined by the relevance of a multi-vector systematic study of the archaic religious beliefs of the Karachays and Balkarians, which is reflected in the texts of the Nart epic. For the first time, the article analyzes the pre-Islamic components of the beliefs of the Karachay-Balkarian people, which primarily include Tengrianism, and subsequently Christianity. The purpose of the article is to examine the specifics of reflecting the religious beliefs of the Karachay-Balkarian ethnic group in the Nart epic through various linguistic means. To achieve this goal, tasks were set aimed at identifying archaic Tengrian deities, artifacts associated with shamanism, as well as identifying and describing their functional features. The research was conducted mainly using the descriptive method, as well as using methods of comparison, component and lexico-semantic analysis, and various procedures for the linguistic interpretation of linguistic facts.

As a result of the conducted research, we come to the conclusion that the core of the religious beliefs of the ethnic group reflected in the epic is Tengrianism, which is supported by the presence of a system of celestial deities in it, the main of which are patrons of such significant elements as heaven, earth, water and fire. In addition, a number of stable descriptions containing the name of the supreme deity Teiri were identified, which still serve the field of speech etiquette, reflecting the belief of native speakers in the possibility of obtaining various benefits from it under certain conditions. In the texts of the epic, Teiri is anthropomorphized, his cult is included in the cycle of human life, he is an omnipotent and omnipresent God, who is found in everything, being the creator of the cosmos, living beings and supporting their vital activity. Along with Tengrianism, shamanism also contributed to the formation of the spiritual culture, religious and mythological views of the Karachays and Balkars, the elements of which in the epic texts are represented by the names of various characters and the tools of their activities.

The texts of the epic also reflect the time when the form of religious beliefs among the ancestors of the Karachays and Balkars was a complex interweaving of paganism with elements of Orthodox Christianity. This is mainly due to the figure of Elijah (aka the Old Testament prophet Elijah), who acts as the patron saint of the Narts in all their affairs. This study has prospects for subsequent scientific and theoretical research aimed at interdisciplinary analysis of epic discourse, which will allow us to fully present a holistic picture of the world of the Karachay-Balkarian people at the early stages of its formation.

The Aluang narratives, comprising hundreds of stories, constitute a core component of the Dai ethnic epic tradition. Aluang does not denote a specific figure but rather encompasses the 550 incarnations of the Buddha prior to attaining enlightenment. These incarnations manifest in three evolutionary typologies: Aluang as flora/fauna, Aluang as semi-divine beings, and Aluang as humans, reflecting a progressive spiritual hierarchy. While individual narratives vary in content, they share recurring motifs that form interconnected a motif chain. Through structural analysis of three representative Aluang stories, this study reveals a highly consistent narrative architecture. By examining the identity typologies, motif chains, and narrative structures among dozens of Aluang narrative texts (including oral and written versions), it demonstrates that Aluang narratives exhibit profound resonances with global heroic traditions. The research highlights three key contributions: firstly, systematically mapping the Buddhist cosmology embedded in the Aluang’s evolutionary typologies; secondly deciphering the trial-awakening-transcendence logic within motif chains, which mirrors the Theravada Buddhist framework; Thirdly identifying a cross-cultural heroic paradigm (exceptional origin—trials—apotheosis) based on the Proppian functional analysis. These findings position Aluang narratives as both a repository of localized Buddhist wisdom and a bridge for comparative studies of ethnic epic traditions. Methodologically, this study innovates a tripartite analytical model integrating religious symbolism, motif networks, and structural poetics, offering new pathways for researching oral traditions in ethnic minority cultures.

The study of lyrical Illi songs, which the authors of the article identify as a separate subgenre of lyric-epic Illi songs, represents a significant contribution to the study of Chechen folklore, revealing their cultural, historical and artistic significance. In the context of globalization, where culture is subject to rapid changes, such studies become necessary for the preservation of national identity. The main goal of the work is a comprehensive analysis of the content, artistic form and cultural-historical context of illi songs, as well as identifying their role in the transmission of national values and memory.

Illy songs, as an important historical source, reflect not only important events such as the Caucasian War and deportations, but also the psychological perception of the Chechen people of these historical cataclysms. They strengthened the spirit of resistance to social oppression, expressing the people’s protest and their desire for justice.

Illy songs have become a unique way of preserving cultural memory, fostering a sense of pride in the people and their traditions, and forming a national identity.

The main research method is the systematization and analysis of folklore material, which is implemented using linguistic, comparative, semiotic, psychological and cultural approaches, which allowed us to analyze illi songs as a form of protest, a means of expressing collective experiences and the struggle for freedom. The novelty of the study lies in the deep analysis of songs not only as historical evidence, but also as cultural and artistic phenomena. Particular attention is paid to symbolism and allegories that reveal people’s aspirations and experiences.
The results of the work highlight the importance of preserving the genre of illi songs, including the creation of digital archives for the dissemination and preservation of this cultural heritage. Prospects for further research include deepening the historical and cultural context, creating a theoretical basis for Chechen folk poetics, and conducting a comparative analysis with the folklore of other peoples of the Caucasus. An important aspect of future research is the use of songs in educational and cultural projects to form a sense of connection with the history and culture of their people in young people.

The article is devoted to one of the relevant and promising topics of modern linguistic folklore studies and ethnography – bread, a phenomenon of traditional ethnic culture. Bread is a significant part of the food traditions of the Mordovian people and the most conservative element of material culture. Bread retains its eternal significance in the ritual sphere of the Mordvins, acts as an integral part of the rite and is endowed with sacred meaning. In the traditional food picture of the world of the Mordvins, bread is a spiritual center of power that is present on every family table, ensures the native home existence and it is an expression of ethnic self-awareness. The paper reconstructs the etymological meaning and historical development of the lexeme kshy ‘bread’. The article attempts to show the role and place of bread in traditional prayers, in some family and calendar rites, with bread as an important sacral symbol and one of the most ancient archetypes in Mordovian culture. Based on the semantic analysis of folklore works, ethnographic, archival, field, lexicographic data, the original tradition of bread baking, features and methods of baking ritual bread are revealed, its connection with all stages of the life cycle – from birth to death – is emphasized. Bread is an important attribute in the most important moments of a wedding. The relevance of the study is dictated by the need to establish the functional, value and mythological attributes of bread. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the attempt of a comprehensive study of the cultural phenomenon of kshy ‘bread’ in the Mordovian linguistic picture of the world within the framework of ethnolinguistic and ethnographic approaches. The fragment research of the linguistic picture of the world allows us to study the word not only as a sign of language, but also as a phenomenon of national mentality. The research methodology is based on the linguocultural analysis of folklore works and the interpretation of ethnographic, archival, and field data.

The relevance of this topic is due to the need for a detailed, systematic analysis of the semantics, role, and function of specific magic objects in the Khakas’ heroic tales. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that magic objects and tools, in particular with the semantics of “viewing the universe”, are subjected to detailed research for the first time. The purpose of this study is to identify and describe magic objects with the semantics of “viewing the universe”. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: to identify and describe stable poetic descriptions using the example of magic objects with this semantics; with a detailed analysis of specific magic objects, to identify similarities and differences in the texts of different storytellers; to determine the degree of reference to the epic plot and motifs. Descriptive, structural and semantic, comparative methods were used in the work. The category of magic objects under consideration includes: a sun mirror, a moon mirror, an aira (a bat), a jack-knife, a needle (needle eye). With the help of magic objects such as a kyun kyostik (a sun mirror) and an ai kyostik (a moon mirror), characters of an epic can see what is happening at any distance. Most often, in the texts of epic narratives, there is a jack-knife with nine sockets or a jack-knife with twelve sockets. Sometimes, the functions of a golden jack-knife coincide with the functions of a magic sun mirror. The mystery of a mirror reflection is completely transferred to a jack-knife. The power of a jack-knife to reflect light and shine gave it the same magical features and likened it to the magical features of a mirror. Despite the fact that the golden bat has magical features, nevertheless it does not possess the power of omniscience. This magic object is associated with the motifs of the hero’s departure from home in search of his parents and to battle with enemies, which compositionally forms the beginning of the action. The needle is used as one of the elements of military games. This magic object is associated with the motifs of difficult tasks and conditions for their solution, trials and other feats of the hero.

The formation of early forms of religious beliefs in archaic societies closely related, to the economic and cultural type (“survival strategy”), therefore, their research needs to rely primarily on calendar realities. In the tundra, this is the time of collective production of migrating ungulates, corral hunting for lynx birds, in the taiga, hunting for cover, fishing for passing fish, etc. Therefore, it is important to identify their place and role in the calendar myth. The novelty of this work lies in the application of the method of ecological approach developed by the author to the analysis of early religious beliefs among the peoples of Sayan-Altai. The purpose and objective of the study is to identify the transformation of the “basic myth” of the Indo-Europeans in the ecological realities of Siberia, using the example of Sayan-Altai. The research method is a comparative analysis of folklore, as well as calendar vocabulary of the peoples of Sayano-Altai. An analysis of folklore texts, and the calendar vocabulary of North Asia peoples, shows that their main plots formed (“born”) at a certain calendar time (season). The cyclicity expressed in the death and rebirth of the characters, the heroes, and their opponents, which ensures the cycle of life, is a sign that the plot belongs to the calendar myth (CM), a set of mythologized ideas about the course of time in nature, correlated with the peculiarities of the climate during their formation or transformation. The examined papers shown the genesis and transformation of two Eurasian myths based on a calendar. The first is about the God of thunderstorms (“main myth” of the Indo-Europeans), whose history dates back thousands years. The second, about the “son of heaven”, known from ethnographic data (no more than 300 years). Periodic and multidirectional changes in humidity in Western Eurasia stimulated population migration to the east, and contributed to intensive ethnic and cultural contacts, with the inevitable transformation of social ideology. Although the etymology of the theonyms, the functions of the main actors (the gods of Heaven, the spirit of the underworld, God of thunderstorms, etc.) of the СМ of the population of Southern Siberia, as well as their external relations, are the subject of a separate study, the author considers it necessary to at least outline its contours. In the texts studied, the difference in the functions and semantics of the main actors of these two myths is almost imperceptible. The symbolism of the images of a mixed, zoo/anthropo-morphic nature, therefore, an analysis of the calendar semantics of its components is necessary, using the example of the chipmunk, flying squirrel and burbot. Using the texts from Sayan-Altai, Buryatia, and Western Mongolia, the transformations of these images and the main actors (the God of Thunderstorms, the son of heaven) in the context of the calendar myth shown. The same indicated in epic and folklore texts of the indigenous peoples of North Siberia, Urals and the Amur region (Khanty, Mansi, Evenk, Jukagir, Oroch and other).

In the article, using the example of the olonkho “Alandaaiy-Kulandaaiy Bogatyr” by Ekaterina Ivanova, the main mythological motifs that still remain outside the fi eld of view of researchers are analyzed, and this is the relevance of the study. The purpose of the presented work is to analyze the mythological motifs in a separate olonkho text, determine their role in the plot of the epic and establish a connection with the mythology of the Sakha people. To achieve this goal, the study was based on comparative, structural-semantic and inductive methods, which together allow us to reveal the features and role of mythological motifs in constructing the plot of the analyzed olonkho. The study revealed that the olonkho “Alandaaiy-Kulandaaiy Bogatyr” by Ekaterina Ivanova is two-generation: if the first hero, the bogatyr Alandaaiy-Kulandaaiy, is a rejected descendant of the aiyy deities, settled by the celestial parents in the Middle World, then the second, his son Moluo Daadar already appears as a defender of the aiyy aimaga and uraanghai Sakha tribe. As a result of the study of mythological motifs, it was established that they underline the text of the olonkho, tying the fabric of the epic narrative into a single whole. The main mythological motif from the point of view of constructing the plot of the olonkho is the motif of the messenger-crane, who explains the origin of the hero and initiates a heroic military campaign, conditioned by the motif of matchmaking. All identified motifs of mythological origin are classified into five groups, in which the most common are the mythological motifs of werewolfism. It has been established that the metamorphoses of the characters are used to explain their ability to travel to the Upper and Lower Worlds, which, according to traditional ideas of the Sakha people, are inaccessible to an ordinary person. The ability of the hero Moluo Daadar to numerous metamorphoses is explained by his heroic training and training in magic. Thus, it was revealed that mythological motifs enrich the plot of the epic with mythological ideas well known to the epic audience, which makes the plot of the olonkho recognizable to listeners and contributes to its adequate perception.

This article is devoted to the identification of human age characteristics in Yakut riddles with the involvement of similar units of Tuvan, Altai and Khakas languages. The relevance of the study of this problem is connected with the prospect of comparative study of the phenomenon of riddle texts from the point of view of a comprehensive study of a small genre of folklore in different cultures in the context of modern linguistic trends (cognitive linguistics, linguocultural studies, folkloristics). In the work the following methods are applied: the method of solid sampling, linguocultural and interpretative analysis. The material for analysis is extracted by the method of solid sampling from collections of folk riddles, from the works of individual authors, provided with a translation into Russian “line by line” for the convenience of work. The aim of the work is to identify and describe the universal and national-specific representations of the human life cycle, veiled allegorically in enigmatic texts. The study reveals that in these texts indirect nominations of the enigmatic denotation are possible in different structural constructions, the design of which depends on the intention of the addresser and the addressee. It is also revealed that riddles with a multi-part structure encode a metaphorical image of a person in age transformations from birth to the last days. In riddles with a two-part structure, the course of a person’s life development is represented as an instantaneous change of daily time (morning>day>evening). This metamorphosis of time is found in the riddle about a man, which turned out to be universal for the considered linguocultural communities. As the material shows, the enigmatic description of the object is presented in Yakut examples in actional, temporal and digital codes, and in the Turkic languages under consideration – in zoomorphic, digital, artifactual and social codes, since the enigmatic texts contain information that reflects the linguocultural picture of the world to which they belong, their deciphering, unraveling is based on cleverness, life experience, knowledge, ideas about the surrounding world. The prospect of further work is seen in a more detailed and in-depth understanding of the nature of folk and modern riddles in order to identify the dynamics of perception of the image of a person on the material of related languages.

The article examines the methods of conveying the specific sounds of proper names from the Yakut heroic epic Olonkho into Russian. Based on the analysis of 1,131 proper names from 18 translated Olonkho texts, various approaches to representing sounds such as diphthongs (ie, uo, ya, üö), vowels (ü, ö), long vowels (аа, yy, оо, ii, uu, ee, üü, and öö), and consonants (dj, ŋ, һ, ğ, nj) were identified. The aim of the research is to analyze the ways of transmitting proper names in Olonkho during the translation from Yakut to Russian at the phonetic level. In contemporary translation studies, proper names are classified as a group of non-equivalent vocabulary, which is conveyed into other languages through transcription and transliteration methods. Transcription involves representing the phonetic form of a unit from one language using the phonetic system of another language, while transliteration entails replacing each letter or combination of letters from the source language with corresponding elements from the target language. Both methods play a crucial role in interlingual communication, allowing for the preservation of the original form and sound of proper names, which is particularly significant for maintaining cultural associations related to them. However, despite the desire to retain cultural connotations, traditional methods of transcription and transliteration often lead to distortions of the phonetic structure and difficulties in perceiving the text in Russian. Thus, translating proper names from Yakut requires a detailed analysis of the combinatorics of sound elements, as this factor determines the accuracy of reproducing the original phonetic image. The conducted analysis demonstrates that in the practice of translating proper names of Olonkho characters, a certain tradition has gradually developed, indicating a striving for a more consistent and accurate transmission of the original. Nevertheless, the proposed solutions are not always justified, highlighting the need for developing and standardizing methodologies that preserve the unique phonetics of the Yakut language when translating it into Russian.