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The storyteller Pyokhon Petrov (1866-1943) was born in the village of Khadaakhan on the Uiga-island of the Angara river near Balagansk, now the “Primorski” state farm of the Nukut district, the Ust’-Orda Buryat autonomous okrug. P. Petrov’s ancestors come from the Khangin kin that goes back to the tribe of the Khibedeg khara Mongols. This found its reflection in the kinship shaman envocation:
Хамаг тумэн Хангин,
Хара монгол удха....
All the Khangin tumens,
All belonging to the Khara Mongol kin…
A big shaman gift along the genetic code passed over to P. Petrov, who in the opinion of the outstanding folklorist, collector S.P.Baldaev, an unprecedented expert of the ancient pagan rites, “could recite the invocation up to the end without pondering much as if reading a book”.
Pyokhon Petrov was known as an authority not only in the field of shaman poetry but in the field of history of the Buryats, i.e. the Mongolian kins and tribes. As an expert in the field of culture of his own people he knew its customs and rites very well, could read the book of nature and interpret its tokens, omens and signs.
He knew the names of the tops of the mountains, valleys, ravines and gorges, rivers and lakes, settlements and camps. The Cis-Baikalian wise man and old resident P. Petrov could say a lot. Not without reason in the Soviet time P. Petrov became the best guide – an expert of local history in a village museum opened in 1934.
But the natural gift, love for the old times history and antiquity as well as the phenomenal memory got their reflection in the knowledge of the native folklore and foremost the heroic epic “Geser” that immortalized the name of the storyteller. The great story that was born in the depths of Central Asia where geographically and historically involved is the region of Prebaikalia (Cirkum-Baikalia) found its worthy poets, performers, custodians and keepers.
The names of many storytellers-gesershins disappeared, passed out of mind but the time and fortune advanced Pyokhon Petrov in the number of the outstanding storytellers of the XXth century. The inexhaustible source of the peoples’ creativity and the rich epical tradition of the native place prompted the appearance of the well-known rhapsode. It is known that his father Petrunkha Baniev (Pytr Ivanov) was an uncommon storyteller. It is just from him that for the first time P. Petrov heard the story of Geser.
But the “Geser” performance is based on the perfect, irreproachable knowledge of the whole folklore legacy. The so-called “small forms” of folklore are sort of steps leading to the tops of the epical poetry. Pyokhon Petrov from childhood successfully went through the peoples’ school of storytelling perfection in order to become “a model uligershin who brought to us the traditional ‘unga’ performance of the uligers”.
He knew up to twenty big epical works that number to over 100 thousand verse lines upon the whole. And if to add here the tens of the highly artistic literary works like the fairy-tales, legends and tales, proverbs and sayings, riddles and shaman songs and invocations then this all would make up a many-volumed library that P. Petrov kept in his memory and could recite by heart, he could tell any page of the work of the people’s poetical activity referring to Geseriade..
P. Petrov performed the uligers only by way of certain telling or recitative. Thus S.P. Baldaev writes: “He didn’t sing but told. He could not sing, he had no voice … he recited the uligers in verses without thinking much or pondering, not stopping, even for a moment – you should be able to manage to write in time what he told… He possessed a phenomenal memory”. He was an adversary of a curtailed, shortened reciting of “Geser”, he was of the opinion that the uligers should not be performed at daytime with no reason to do that, he was of the opinion that the performing was to be prepared beforehand.
Unfortunately, the folklorists haven’t managed to write down all from the remarkable storyteller. But what some collectors like R. F. Tugutov, S.P. Baldaev, A.I. Shadaev wrote down gives a good idea of the creative potential of P. Petrov. One should say a few words of I. N. Madason, a well-known poet and folklorist who at the very beginning of the 40-s succeeded in writing down from Pyokhon Petrov shortly before his death as many as 12537 precious lines. “Abai Geser” recorded by him is one of the most complete variants of the Unga Geseriade.
The storyteller gave in good succession all the basic parts and episodes, told of all the campaignsand battles of his favorite hero. Only one “chapter” of the struggle of Geser with a cast iron whip (Sherem Minata) is given briefly. But one should say that not all of the storytellers make up their mind to tell of the struggle with this most frightful Geser’s enemy. Thus, for example, this “chapter” is lacking in P. Dmitriyev’s version although its content was no doubt known to him. P. Petrov’s “Abai Geser” has the additional “chapters” of the gigantic snake Abarga, of Sagan Bator (While bogatyr), of the four last-born children of the world (Ebi durben khenze), that is lacking with the other storytellers.
A long memorable road was destined to P. Petrov’s variant which was one of the best in the Buryat epic of Geser. Published in 1960 in the city of Ulan-Ude was the scientific (the first in Buryat folklore studies) edition of the pearl of the epical heritage. The introductory article, the preparation of the text, the translation to the Russian language and the commentary were completed by A.I. Ulanov, the coryphaeus of the Buryat “Geser” studies.
P. Petrov’s variant was in the basis of the combined text of the literary and art edition of “Abai Geser khubun” by N. Baldano, that was printed in 1959 in Ulan-Ude and printed again in ten uears later. This “Geser” though in an abridged form was edited twice in Moscow in the “Khudozhestvennaya literatura” Publishing house (1968 and 1973) as translated by S. Lipkin. The latter edited a story for children “A state of the morning larks” on the basis of the Buryat epic (Moscow, 1968). A similar rendering in proze was undertaken by the writer M. Stepanov whose book “Geser’s punishing sword” was edited thrice in Ulan-Ude in 1964, 1969 and 1994.
A complete poetical translation of “Geser” in Russian by V. Soloukhin was published in 1986 in the city of Ulan-Ude and two years later in the city of Moscow. A new stage on the way to the broad reader was the poetical translation of Pyokhon Petrov’s variant made by A. Prelovski. This book under the title of “Great Geser” was printed in Moscow in 1999. It is somewhat symbolical that with the edition of the Buryat Geseriade, this top folklore work of the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia completed was the II millennium recognized by the international public as Chenggis-khan’s millennium.
It should also be born in mind that it was just in the settlement of Khadaakhan, the motherland of P. Petrov that in connection with his 125th jubilee there was in August, 1991 a people’s festival that gave the beginning to the Buryat Geseriade festival dedicated to 1000th anniversary of the “Geser” epic. It was just there that Geser’s banner was consecrated and raised which had become the symbol of the spiritual uniting and immortality of the people living on the banks of the sacred Baikal.
Dark-complexioned and highbrowed, of middle height and solid built-up, industrious and wise – such was the people’s storyteller Pyokhon Petrovich Petrov. He loved his own tongue, believed in the magical life-giving and vivifying strength of the poetical word; spiritually was akin to the epical Geser’s heros who owing to the gift of the uligershin-storyteller have been a boost to our spirits from the depth of the millenniums in the name of serving the future. A storyteller’s life is a sparkle of swift moments. A storyteller’s song is a flame in the hearts of the generations.
