Structural Analysis of Three Legends on Animal-Based Healing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article examines historical legends within the broader corpus of Mongolian narrative traditions, focusing in particular on narratives about traditional healers known as maarambas. These legends frequently depict renowned healer figures who cure illness and suffering by discovering methods grounded in ordinary life and practical experience. The narratives emphasize empirically derived knowledge, suggesting that healing practices emerge from close observation of human life, the environment, and subsistence activities.
The study conducts a comparative analysis of three related legends recorded in different sources, which share similar structures in terms of characters, events, and narrative. It identifies and interprets three narratives: first, the deliberate preservation of disease residue taken from the body of a deceased patient; second, the crafting of objects, such as a hunting knife or spoon, from this residue; and third, the accidental melting of these objects, which leads to the discovery of a healing method. Through these narratives, the legends depict a transformation from death and residue into healing knowledge. In addition, the article explores the medicinal use of substances associated with hunting culture, including willow grouse blood, wild boar fat, and owl meat.
The article also examines narratives that challenge the traditional Mongolian taboo against hunting owls, interpreting them within the broader relationship between hunting practices and nomadic pastoral culture. Finally, by treating these legends as forms of oral narrative, the study applies structural analysis to reveal an underlying binary opposition between nature (illness) and culture (healing practices and hunting). The mediating elements that resolve this opposition are identified as the knife handle and spoon fashioned from bodily residue, which function as symbolic instruments of transformation.
Mongolian healing-legends preserve collective knowledge systems across medicine, ecology, religion, and survival. As cultural texts, these narratives encode historical memory, traditional medical knowledge, and the worldview of Mongolians.