Motives of qulpitas (gravestones) epitaphs (based on the monuments of West-Kazakhstan region)

Abstract

The article gives a detailed analysis of the motives of gravestone (qulpitas) epitaphs, based on the monuments of West-Kazakhstan region. Traditional funeral elegy when fixing at Qulpytas have been converted from full-scale oral-song genre in writing concise form, despite the compactness they also transferred sorrow and grief for the deceased, stored information of the person, who and what he was, about his origin, about his role into the community, about his heroic deeds. Despite the short and concise text, epitaphs has are of very great significance. Their main feature is that they give an idea of the spiritual and material culture of the peoples. Each epitaph dedicated to historical person, keeps the important information about the names, titles, assessment activities, as reflected in the epithet, the exact date of death of the deceased. Uniqueness and authenticity of epigraphic monuments is that the changes in the text, carved in stone, unlike than the manuscript variants of the original text.
Much attention is given to the deep content of epitaphs, based on religious concepts, primarily from the verses of the Qur’an, Hadith, the moralism of the Muslim sages recorded in the texts of funeral songs.