Traditional Hunting with the Golden Eagle and Its Reflection in Kazakh Literature

Abstract

The famous Kazakh writer Akseleu Seidimbek defines the genre of his story Golden Eagle as ethnographic. This is natural, since the story gives many concepts and particulars related to the training of stalker birds for hunting, revealing the cognitive and encyclopedic essence of this work. Hunting is an ancient native occupation of the Kazakh people. For the Kazakhs, hunting was not only a trade, but a great art, and therefore not everyone was engaged in it. One type of hunting that is common among Kazakhs is hunting with a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). From each line of this ethnographic story, one can feel how deeply the writer has studied and researched everything related to the golden eagle. Therefore, the frequent occurrence of naturalistic elements in the descriptions of the complete “biography” of a particular bird is natural. The main goal of this research work is to show the tradition of hunting with a golden eagle as part of the identity of the Kazakh people, embodying the best of their “national character”