MONG-JADA-001 - ethnographic attestation
Tuvin (Soyot) rite with Mongol jada-zada parallels
Russia - Tuva - Soyot and Mongol-Inner Asian jada-zada complex - Asia - Central Eurasia
Weather / fertility magic
jada / zada / jada tasch English; German/Russian source chain via Radloff
Source term: rain-stone swung like a bull-roarer
jada / zada / yada (Turkic-Mongol): the rain-stone of Inner Asian weather magic, wielded by a specialist (Mongol jadaci, Turkic yadaci) to call or stop rain, hail and storm. Tuvan: chat tash. The swung-on-a-cord variant is marginal; the standard method is the stone dropped in water or held in the mouth.
Etymology. An Inner Asian weather-stone term tied to Early Turkic jada and Persian yada. (medium confidence)
Across the Mongol and Turkic steppe a rainmaker called a jadachi commands the weather with the jada (Buriat and Kalmyk zada; Tuvan chat tash) — a "rain-stone" that is usually a bezoar pried from the gut of a cow or goat, or from the stomach of a bird, and sometimes a fragment of meteorite. Most often he drops it into water or holds it in his mouth and chants until cloud and storm answer; in folktale and chronicle the stone unleashes not just rain but killing weather, as when Biligtu, son of Uqayatu Khan, raised a storm with a rainstone that flung the Chinese army's soldiers and horses against the walls. This stone belongs here only on a contested reading: an old report of a Soyot (Tuvan) rite, in which the stone is fastened by a short string to a staff and swung in the air, has been likened to a bullroarer — so the rain-stone may count as a whirled sound-object, though the far better-documented Inner Asian method is the stone dropped into water, not a slat spun on a cord.
Jada is mainly understood to be a certain stone, mostly the bezoar, found in the intestines of ruminants such as cows or goats but sometimes also in the stomach of birds. A meteorite fragment can also be used. The methods employed are those of analogous magic: most often a specialist, called jadaci in Mongolian, puts the stone into water (or his mouth) to cause rain.
Birtalan 2001:124
- Function
- Weather-magic rite for rain or rain-stopping: a rain-stone fastened to a string or staff is swung like a bullroarer.
- Map confidence
- medium - Tuva/Soyot regional anchor because Radloff's reported rite is Soyot/Tuvin while Emsheimer frames it in the Mongol/Altaian jada-zada weather-magic complex.
- Source location
- Radloff, Aus Sibirien (Leipzig 1884), vol. 2, p. 179 ('ii. 179 sq.', per Frazer 1911 fn. 1065). Frazer 1911, The Magic Art vol. 1, p. 306, fn. 1065. Emsheimer & Carroll 1986, note 3 (cited p. 14, not reconfirmed this session). Birtalan 2001, pp. 122-124.
- Weather / fertility magic