Monday, August 17, 2020

Ruminations on the "deer" of deer stones



Last week, followers of the CSEN Twitter account may have seen the retweet and translation of the image below, originally tweeted by turbat (turbat1) on Twitter:

 
Turbat's original tweet: Тамчийн дацангийн (Галуут нуур) буган хөшөө. Буриад (ХХ зууны эхэн үе)
 My translation of turbat's tweet into English:
 
"Deer stone at Tamch datsan (college at a Buddhist lamasery), Galuut Lake (Lake Gusinoye),  Buryatia, beginning of the 20th cent."

In response to this image of a horse in amazing regalia next to a deer stone, L. Dorjnamjim (DorjnamjimL) asked on Twitter whether the antlered animals on deer stones were “deer or elk”.   His question prompted me to dive into the question of the “deer” on “deer stones”.  In fact, I thought about it so much that I resurrected my old blog just to collect all my thoughts into one place!