MONG-JADA-001 - ethnographic attestation
Mongol/Tuvin jada rain-stone bullroarer
Russia - Tuva - Soyot and Mongol-Inner Asian jada-zada complex - South Siberia
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
Page references
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 magic