Aigine Cultural Research Center offers its internet-readers materials that were collected between 2005 and 2009 in Kyrgyzstan and which carry what we call traditional wisdom or traditional knowledge of people living in the territory of Kyrgyzstan.

 

The website that is being offered is the result of a project on the preservation and transfer of traditional wisdom. By traditional wisdom or knowledge we understand knowledge, and more broadly, practices in all spheres of human interests and activities that were collected and formulated throughout several generations of a particular people in a particular territory and which are transferred orally and regulate the lives of societies.

At present, this site only contains traditional knowledge pertaining to the ethnic Kyrgyz population. However, we are working on the collection of materials and in the future this website will present the knowledge of other ethnic groups as well.

 

The materials that are introduced on this website were recorded during interviews, transcribed and then shown to the informants in order to get their confirmation. One part of the collected materials, especially concerning spiritual practices, was previously published in our books. However, a considerable part of these materials is being introduced on this website for the first time.

 

The initial aim of this project was to record knowledge concerning spiritual practices, pilgrimage to sacred sites, ethnomedicine, prophecy, and skills of recitation, as well as knowledge that illuminates connections between nature and spirituality. Thus, we tried to introduce those practitioners who were out of the main religious and secular official traditions, and therefore have a marginal position in modern society. While working in this field, it was impossible to ignore the abundance of folk knowledge concerning the use of natural resources, family, calendars, nature and many other things which are included in traditional wisdom.

 

It was necessary to put in order the ocean of knowledge about the world, nature, economy, and spirituality, which is collected throughout centuries and which still continues to regulate our lives. Of course, “regulating” here is a contingent process, since it is impossible to clearly differentiate categories of native healers, or knowledge of times of year from the knowledge about nature. On the basis of the literature that we have and the materials that we have collected, we present the following classification on the basis of which this electronic resource is built.

 

One can also find video and photo materials on this website, which were recorded by us in the past several years and which give additional visual notion about the materials of this website. Here you can get acquainted with many of our authors as well. 

 

The creation of this website, where our collected materials will be presented, will compliment existing printed accounts enable new ways of passing on tradition through the virtual sphere. There are examples of websites, especially in English, where one can find information about organizations that work on traditional knowledge. Our website is the first such website in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, and will introduce traditional knowledge of the peoples of Kyrgyzstan in three languages.

 

Such an electronic resource will expand the circle of readers, and correspondingly, the possibility for the exchange of ideas on traditional knowledge. Thus, the possible argument that the record of traditional knowledge ends its life in the form in which it was written during the interview, has little ground, as there is hope for the “continuation” of its life in the context of worldwide exchange, as well as in the works of those scholars who would write their works on the basis of our materials.

 

Moreover, we hope that our website, which will unite many people from various cultures, will become a singular tool for introducing different worlds to one another. We hope that through this website many people from other parts of the world will contact us and share the information here with their own cultures, and as such we hope this will create a space for realizing the uniqueness of each culture in the world.

 

Whose voices are heard on this website? The voices of residents of villages and cities, young people and the elderly, traditional healers and medical practitioners, shepherds and businessmen, Manas tellers, poets and housewives and many other people, who shared with their life experiences and knowledge through education and upbringing by their parents or mentors.

 

It is necessary to underline one important moment: it is how the carrier of the knowledge himself/herself is estimating, experiencing and reproducing the information. It influences the way the teller stresses the moments s/he is describing and correspondingly, the way the information is told and transferred with different meaning and accent. Thus we underline the active role of the informants in understanding and passing the knowledge. That is why (along with other reasons, such as the protection of rights of carriers of traditional knowledge) we give the names of our informants as they are, except for the rare cases when informants preferred to be unknown.

 

In order to protect the authors' rights, we have made access to the materials on our website dependent upon prior registration. In the user's registration form we have included questions asking about what connections and interests that person has to traditional knowledge. It is expected that after we launch our website, people who are working on similar things will contact us. We also hope that we can initially build an objective auditorium, within which there might be organized a certain society of carriers of traditional knowledge of various cultures and the researchers who are working in this direction.

 

Aigine Cultural Research Center expresses its deepest gratitude to the Christensen Foundation (USA) and its regional director Erjen Hamaganova, to the students of Talas and Yssyk-Köl Universities, and to all our authors. Without their understanding, supports and contribution the creation of this electronic resource would be impossible.

 

We welcome those interested people, who would be glad to share with their knowledge. Please write to the following address: office(at)aigine.kg.