Reviews for Beowulf scholarship

The average rating for Beowulf scholarship based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-09-27 00:00:00 Norberto Jansenson Summary: I'm currently researching the Ainu as I am developing another board game with an Ainu theme, called Kamuy. I want to make sure that the elements in the game are accurate so I've been doing a bit of a deep dive into Ainu yukar, which are epic songs depicting a number of elements of Ainu life and religion. The book provides a wealth of translations, references, descriptions and explanations through extensive footnotes and I found this book to be really interesting. I would often get sucked into the stories told in the yukar and forget to search for terms relevant to my game. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes literature or wants to learn about Ainu culture. The main message I took from this book is just that the yukar are such an amazing way to entertain, teach and carry on culture. Through the yukar we get a real lens into the thinking, interests, joys and struggles of the Ainu. Some notable points: -All animals, all plants, and even human artefacts are impartially referred to as kamuy (gods). The concept of 'god' is quite different in the sense that humans and gods are more or less equals despite gods having supernatural abilities. The relationships is one of interdependence where the humans depend on the gods for protection and the gods enhance their prestige when they are worshipped and are given presents by the humans. - The gods treasure wine and inau (whittled sticks of willow), gods returning from Ainu Moshir (the Ainu world) with lots of wine and inau have their prestige enhanced. - The gods do not visit Ainu Moshir just for sightseeing, but to conduct irauketupa, which means something like to conduct business or to strike a profitable transaction. That of protection, food and fur for wine and inau. - The gods have human forms, but they always come to Ainu Moshir in disguise, these costumes are called hayokpe (armour, disguise, costume). The costume will often be desirable and economically useful to the humans, for example a god may come wearing a bear costume, as such when the Ainu kill or hunt a bear, they are actually taking the costume of the god as a present and in return the god receives inau and wine. This transaction of resources needed for survival in order for worship and gratefulness is at the core of Ainu beliefs and forms their relationship with the natural world. - Once the hayokpe is broken, the god's spirit is released and the god can return to the world of the gods. This relationship is exemplified by iyomante, or bear ceremony, where a young bear is kept in an Ainu kotan (village) and cared for with great respect and then 'sent off' with a ceremony. The ceremony involves killing the cub, and to Ainu means the god has been cared for lovingly for a time, before being released back to its own world. The bear god is often called Kimun Kamuy. - Gods save humans from famine, and tell them how to prevent famines in the future; bears come on visits to the land of the humans; gods bless certain humans and punish others; and the culture hero Okikurmi chastises evil deities. The human-god interaction involves mutual assistance and mutual instruction: gods help and teach humans, and humans, through their culture hero, help and teach gods. - Food animals are gods in disguise and must be treated with religious reverence (oripak) and given presents. The performance of the necessary ritual acts for the "animals" is a religious act essential for human survival, and the very existence of the human community depends on the observance of these rituals by all hunters and fishers. - Whales washed ashore are believed to be presents cast ashore for the humans by the killer whale. The killer whale god is often called Repun Kamuy. - Litigation amongst the Ainu took the form of prolonged oratorical contests (charanke), in which the more eloquent of the two litigants emerged victorious. - Birds and animals, when they are in the mountains, are not visible to human eyes, but they each have houses like those of the humans, and they all live in the same form as humans. When they appear in humans villages, they are said to appear wearing armour. The carcasses of birds and animals are the armour. The real body is not visible, but it is said to be between the ears of the carcass - Repunkar (people of the sea or islanders) is the name of the alien race living north of the Ainu. They have been identified with the people of the Okhotsk culture and were the enemies of the Ainu. It is theorised that there was common intermarriage and the eventually the Okhotsk culture was absorbed by the Ainu culture. The Ainu refer to themselves as yaunkar (people of the land or mainlanders). - Ainu pito is a term applied to chieftains and epic heroes and is interchangeable with kamui rametok (mighty warrior). These terms were used in an epic regarding an evil monster bear (wen asarush) who is a famine god (kemram kamui) who withholds food from the humans. - Tono is a Japanese loan word meaning lord or master and was originally applied to the officials and samurai of Matsumae, but in time it came to mean simply "Japanese". The more common word for Japanese people is shisam. - The term iyoipe refers to eating utensils often imported lacquer utensils regarded as treasures by the Ainu. Similar to ikor, or household treasures. These treasures often include swords with decorated sheaths. They are counted as the person's wealth and can be offered as indemnities in case of quarrels. -The culture hero is credited with having given a number of cultural boons to the humans in his role as the great teacher of mankind. So of them include: 1. Ritual techniques such as which gods are to be worshipped, how to whittle inau and how to offer wine to the gods. 2. Handicraft techniques such as wood carving performed by men and needlework/basketwork performed by women. 3. Hunting techniques such as how to make poisoned arrow, how to make spring bows and how to make bows and arroes. 4. Fishing techniques. 5. Agricultural techniques. 6. Architectural techniques such as how to build houses. 7. Medicinal techniques such as how to diagnose illnesses, how to pray to cure them and how to identify grasses and roots to help. 8. How to recite ritual salutations and methods of settling disputes. 9. Folklore, such as songs, epics and entertainment. - The Ainu believed there were many shamans among the repunkar. In one epic the phrase nupur hikehe, tusu hikehe was translated to describe enemy shamans discovering someone's whereabouts and capturing them as a result. - Inau-chipa refers to a fence of clustered inau located outside the sacred window of houses. Ainu houses have a window on the east side through which gods and ceremonial tools enter and leave, this is the sacred window which has an inau-chipa outside of it. - In some epics there is talk of spirits attaching themselves to characters as companion spirits. The term for this is i-turen or i-turen kamuy. - Departing life-spirits would fly off with an audible rumbling. Those spirits destined to be restored to life would become "living spirits" and would rumble off towards the east. The "utterly dead" spirits would rumble off towards the west. The soul or spirit was called inotu orke and departs from the body at death. This term is derived from the old Japanese word for life. - One epic describes the concept of supernatural protection where a being or object hovers behind someone and provides protection. Supernatural protection is referred to as sermak orke, sermak meaning behind. - Shamans seemed to have a range particular items they used including a silken hood, a tusu pon repni, which seems to be a drumstick like wand. - Utarpa is a term applied to a chieftain or a warrior and the word oan-raike means to kill utterly. - Shiknu raipe means living dead and refers to those that are destined to be restored to life again. - Some words relating to wizardry/shamans: nupurpe = wizard and is synonymous with tusu-kur = shaman. Nupur = magic powers wizardry, or shamanism. Tusu ipottum = a shaman's countenance. - Inuma refer to the rows of household heirlooms or treasures that line the north wall of Ainu houses. They are considered to be deities of insignificant degree. - Tumunchi = war. Tamunichi kamui appears to mean demon or fiend without any reference to warfare.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-14 00:00:00 Brian Ashworth The Ainu People are the indigenous inhabitants of the northernmost regions of Japan. Today there are not many Ainu people left. They lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and their neolithic traditions seem to have been untouched by all the changes that effected their neighbours. By the time the Japanese decided to invade them with muskets and steel, the Ainu were still living the same neolithic lifestyle they had been living for tens of thousands of years. This is a collection of their traditional stories directly from the mouths of Ainu people, and it makes for very fascinating reading and gives valuable insight into the way of life of a mostly forgotten people. It is a rare treat to find so many well-preserved stories of a neolithic culture. Many of these stories offer insights into the neolithic human mind. Animals are revered as essentially superior than humans, for instance. All of the stories are told from the first-person. The Ainu believed that the shaman story-teller was literally possessed by the spirit of whatever animal, god, or hero the story is about during the recitation of it. It is fascinating to think of a group of hunter-gatherers sitting around a fire, with a venerable old woman possessed by the spirit of a killer-whale telling a story about lost love. Ainu gender norms, the structure of their society and their economy, their shamanistic and animistic religion and their love of the landscape around them are all revealed in beautiful ways in these stories. There are 33 stories in this collection and they can sometimes get a little repetitive because so many of them are extremely similar to each other, but I respect the efforts of the author to preserve as many stories as humanly possible. Often many of the stories are essentially the same but with regional differences. My favourite stories in this collection are the ones that elucidate the Ainu bear-cult. The bear was the most sacred animal for the Ainu and they would actually raise a bear cub in their village, worshipping it and putting it in a sacred enclosure that contained the finest rugs. A shamaness would breastfeed it and sing lullabies to it as though it were a human baby. After the bear got too big for its enclosure they would send it back to Heaven by killing it, and then they would have a long festival that involved dancing around its dead body and making offerings of wine, sake, and food. In one of the stories, the spirit of a bear who was ritually killed in this way watches over the ceremonies and describes them in elaborate detail and delights in the festivities, saying that he will bless the humans when he returns to heaven. All in all, a truly splendid collection of stories. Highly recommended to anyone who is fascinated by hunter-gatherers.