«The unknown people» in the medieval Russian literature

The article analyzes the descriptions of «the unknowns» in the medieval Russian literature, beginning with those dwelling in the «countries of the East», in «Shem’s Domain», and those from the faraway lands, Persia, India, Northern Europe and Siberia. There’s a brief introduction to the literary history of the works on these countries ( The Tale of Aphroditian, The Story of the Irania Star, A Journey Beyond the Three Seas by Afanasy Nikitin, the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» etc.). Besides, the description of the quaint anthropomorphic and anthropozoomorphic human-like creatures, dwelling in the remote parts of the inhabited world and having a peculiar appearance and/or lifestyle is considered. These characters were migrated into the Russian letters from the translated versions of The Chronographs, Alexandria, The Tale of the Indian Kingdom . The first original Russian work that mentions the human monsters was the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» that contains both real and mythological facts on the Samoyed people. The article highlights the textual parallels in the description of the exotic nations between the Tale «on the unknown peoples», the Tale of the Indian Kingdom and the other medieval Russian works and the folklore data; it lists the most suggestive types of such creatures: blemmia , the humans with a mouth on the crown of their head, monomers and the Blessed Peoples. Apparently, the source for the descriptions of the exotic people, that later became rather widespread, was the folklore of the Samoyeds. The approach is shared by Academician M. P. Alexeev, who believed it was «plausible» that most of the data from the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» represented «the recording of isolated links of Northern epic cycles». The legends of the blessed (happy) peoples are amid those «isolated links».

Medieval Russia, trade routes, Persia, India, Afanasy Nikitin, the Samoyeds, Efrosin Belozersky, Utopia