BLACK SHAMANISM

Caroline Humphreycites the 19th-centuryBuryatscholar Dorji Banzarov as saying that there was no indigenous term for shamanism, but that a recognizable complex of practices andcosmologyhad come to be called “the black faith,”har shashin, as a “direct contrast withBuddhism, which was called the ‘yellow faith.’” However, the Buryat andSakhapeoples ofSiberiaalso distinguish between “black shamans” and “white shamans.” Black shamans enter atranceand descend into theunderworldas part of their work ashealerswhocombatvariousillnesses. Unlike theAmazoniandistinction between curing shamans and “dark shamans,”blackandwhiteamong the Buryat and Sakha peoples are not equivalent to “good” and “bad.” However, this contrast is made and elaborated by the Duha Tuvinians and Tuvinians inMongoliaand in the Republic ofTuva, among whom black is associated with malevolence, “evil deeds,” and pollution, according to Benedikte Kristen.