From the national history of children's toys: “I will mould a donkey out of clay...”
October 26, 2017 | 14:20 |979
The documents of the Central State Archive of Turkmenistan open new pages of the history of the culture of the people. The theme of children's creativity is among them. The childhood of any child, no matter where and when he lived, is impossible to imagine without toys. Toys for kids are the instruments of knowledge of the surrounding world, and the history of toys began since humanity arose. Today the toy industry is developed all over the world no worse than the production of cars, clothes, sports equipment, and other consumer goods.Vladimir ZAREMBO
Nowadays, we can find bright and colorful, diverse in form and content games and toys not only in the store chain Children's World, but in any supermarket. But this is today, when a huge army of engineers, designers, and artists offer new developments for children every day. And how did the children have fun when there were no purchased toys yet? Very simply - they made toys themselves. This is how, for example, children from Turkmen villages created toys 100-200 years ago.
The games of Turkmen children reflected, mainly, the realities of their parents' lives. Toys were divided into four groups: military, hunting, music and household. Children used any material for creativity what they had on hand.
Using clay and rush, children sculpted figures of sheep, horses, camels and other domestic animals with great pleasure. For example, children used a rush pipe to make a horse, to the upper part of this pipe they fastened a shorter pipe, which depicts a bridle and reins. There were also labor toys of agricultural purpose – ketmen (grub hoe), plow, harrow, and hatchet “tesha” with the direction of the blade perpendicular to the axis of the handle. All these objects were cut from the tree with a knife. Playing “commerce” children, imitating adults, made miniature copies of scales with two cups and a wooden rocker.
Often in the areas where the rivers flowed, especially in the Karakala district with an abundance of mountain streams and a multitude of mills, children created their miniature mills. The water wheel served as an example of one of the favorite toys of goklenic children - “charhyjdha”, made up of two crisscrossed twigs or straws, fastened by a long and thin axis, and driven by a stream of brook. The same type of toys was “pinwheel”, made up of two crisscrossed twigs, pinned to the end of a long handle, with attached paper blades. Children could keep the toys in the wind and then the blades turned under the influence of the force of the wind, or they could run, putting the pinwheel forward.
The Turkmen needed weapons for self-defense, and hunting was necessary for life. Children, imitating adults, crafted bow and arrows, it was the most common type of children's weapons. The usual material for making bow and arrows is a mulberry tree, and the arrows had a tip in the form of a conically folded piece of tin.
Another type of toys for shooting was “samopal” (harquebusier), made of rush pipes and twine. The most interesting by their construction were samopals “kumolok-yayi” and “tarkyllavuk.” Turkmen children used sheep's buttons instead of shooting bullets.
One of the types of toy guns was “tupen”. Another type was a water bow “sorcuch”, it was something like a pump: a stick was inserted into the rush pipe with a rag wound at the end, water was poured into the pipe and the child pressed on the piston. This cheerful toy served children for sprinkling each other, and, by the way, survived to our time.
Hunting games included all kinds of nets for catching small birds, woven from horsehair. Children made a toy from wooden branches or stalks of reeds, which imitated a real big trap for catching foxes, hares. It was impossible to catch any kind of animal with the help of this toy, but children felt themselves like an adult hunter.
Musical toys were particularly popular among children. This was because in all ages weddings or other solemn events could not be provided without folk musicians “bakhshi”. The children saw how much their art was respected among people, and sought to imitate their idols.
Among the toys there were small copies of a gyzjak with a bow, a dutar and a tuiduk. Children made the body of the dutar and gyzjak from thick trimmings of the umbrella of the umbelliferous plant “kamak”, and strings - from horsehair. Other musical instruments were “buzzer”- “syzlavuch”. It was a wooden stick with a ring-shaped notch or a serrated disc from a dry pumpkin crust with two holes in the center. A stick or a disc was attached to a thick, folded woolen thread. The ends of the woolen thread were taken in the right and left hand, with a few strokes of the right hand the disc was moved of a circular movement with a rhythmic sipping of the lace in one direction or another. With strong stretches, the toy made a sharp buzzing sound.
All these toys were almost exclusively for boys. Girls were characterized by household toys, which were explained by the historically established role of women in the Turkmen family - mother, wife, and hostess. For example, “jaijec-juijec”. This was a set of painted ware crocks, each of which, in the eyes of children, served as a household item - a tripod (tagan) for cooking food, a large cooking pot (kazan), a spoon, a teapot, a bowl, a bucket, etc.
Of course, the most common toys among girls were dolls. They were different in size and clothing, depending on represented object - a child, a girl or an adult woman. Girls almost did not do dolls, which represented boys.
A special event in the life of a girl was a wedding. Children also gave the dolls in marriage, scrupulously following the present rite: something like a palanquin – “kedjebe”, in which the bride is taken from the yurt of the parents to the yurt of the groom, was made especially for the game. There was also a ball among the toys, which was a tangle of rags, a top (sarmach), and “a chizhik” (chilik). All of them are accessories of children's games.
Any toy is a child's joy. But the toy that was made by children themselves is doubly expensive. Suppose it is unpretentious in appearance, and the horse from the reed pipes does not look like a horse, and the dutar does not sing under your fingers, like real bakhshi, but you created them yourself, and therefore breathed life into them, giving the toy part of yourself.
