Erzya costume — the traditional dress of the Erzya, which in the Nizhny Novgorod villages outlasted the language itself. Its foundation is the linen shirt-panar, the chest fastener-syulgam, and the hip apron-pulay — a distinctly Erzya feature: the Moksha did not wear it. A complete women's ensemble weighed around fourteen to fifteen kilograms. The Teryukhane of Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd had their own variant of the dress, with a white shushpan and a crown of cowrie shells.[1][2][3]
Women's dress
The shirt-panar was sewn in a tunic-like cut from two lengths of linen, folded in half and stitched along the lengthwise thread: four seams at the center of the chest and back, two at the sides, straight sleeves, no collar, and a triangular neckline twenty to thirty centimeters deep. A dress shirt of the same cut, more often a bridal one, was called a pokay: its embroidery lay in an unbroken carpet, covering the linen entirely.[4][5]
Over this was worn the rutsya — an open-fronted linen garment that had three purposes and three names: istyek chin rutsya for everyday wear, avarkshnyema for mourning the deceased, and kuloma rutsya for funerals.[4][6]
The pulay is a hip apron on a quilted linen base, with rows of beads, buttons, tokens, and cowrie shells, and two rows of woolen tassels — long black ones and short red ones. A girl put it on for the first time at thirteen or fourteen as a mark of coming of age and wore it into old age; it weighed three to five kilograms and reached nearly to the backs of the knees. A distinction was made between the pulay with a padded roll and the pulokarks without one.[4][5]
The head was covered entirely: the Erzya headdress — pango, soroka, gilygan — was made tall, on a rigid birch-bark base up to thirty centimeters high, covered in linen and decorated with embroidery, beads, glass beads, and braid. Footwear consisted of linden-bast sandals-kart of the Mordva weave, with low sides and loops for leg ties; leather ankle boots-koty with copper studs; and boots-kemty.[4][5]
| Erzya name | Description |
|---|---|
| panar | an undergarment linen shirt of tunic-like cut |
| pokay | a festive, most often bridal shirt with all-over embroidery |
| rutsa | an open-front outer garment of linen, worn on both everyday and ceremonial occasions |
| pulay, pulagay, pulokarks | a hip ornament adorned with beads, tokens, cowrie shells, and tassels |
| syulgam | a chest brooch: among the Erzya, an oval hoop with a movable pin |
| karks, karks-chamaks | a belt with a woolen fringe, trimmed with coins among the wealthy |
| rutsyat | thin linen scarves tucked into the belt; they were worn twelve at a time |
| pango, soroka, giligan | a tall headdress built on a birch-bark frame |
| kart', koty, kem't' | bast shoes, leather ankle boots, boots |
Materials and ornamentation
Garments were sewn from white canvas — both hemp and linen — as well as from wool, broadcloth, and sheepskin. Ornamentation included beads (among them tin beads), glass beads and bugle beads, chains, cowrie shells, tokens, coins, jingle bells, small bells, sequins, and gold braid. Embroidery techniques had their own names: the Erzya star, the Mordva half-cross, herringbone stitch, diagonal stitch, and nabot stitch.[4][5][6]
In the everyday Russian usage of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, cowrie shells were called "snake heads" or "adder shells." Melnikov-Pechersky, who described the dress in his "Sketches of the Mordva," noted particularly the twelve kerchiefs tucked into the belt as the height of elegance, and the six-striped patterned shirt — three embroidered stripes on each side, from shoulder to hem.[7]
As a rule they gird themselves with a belt (karks-chamaks), to the back of which is sewn a great deal of wool fringe, sometimes with small shells known as "snake heads" or "adder shells," and among the wealthy even with silver coins[7]
Men's dress
The men's costume consisted of the panar shirt and ponkst trousers; the shirt was always worn untucked and belted. Everyday shirts were sewn from hemp canvas, festive ones from fine linen, and in summer a second shirt — a white open-front garment — was worn over them; among the Erzya this too was called a rutsyoya. Outerwear consisted of the suman kaftan, the chapan, and the or sheepskin coat; men wore felted hats and lambskin caps on their heads, and bast shoes on their feet.[4][5]
The Teryukhan variant
Among the Teryukhans of Teryushevskaya Volost, the dress differed so markedly that ethnographers of the 1920s found no direct parallels among neighboring peoples. The shirt was embroidered in red around the neckline and belted with a narrow woven sash "in boards," and over it was worn a shushpan — a long, open-front garment of white homespun canvas embroidered with small epaulette-like patches with triangles at the shoulders, around the neck, and above the slit. Old shushpans are distinguished by the restrained color of their embroidery in home-spun and home-dyed woolen thread — zhitsa.[1][2]
The cuffs of the shushpan were embroidered and stored separately: they were a required gift from the bride, made in large quantities, and a shushpan with cuffs featuring an especially dense, "carpet-style" embroidery was passed down from generation to generation. The edges of the shushpan were fastened by a single clasp — the sustug: an oval, open-ended base of copper alloy fitted with a movable pin, twisted wire, and chains hung with pendants, beads, and engraved tokens.[1][2]
The headdress was a venets — a ring of cowrie shells braided into four rows, with long temple pendants, a thick tassel to the right of the face, and a woolen fringe of paired-braided cowries and tokens. The closest counterparts are the headdresses of Chuvash and Besermyan women. In winter, a "painted sheepskin coat" of red sheepskin decorated with dyed-leather appliqué and embroidery was worn over everything.[1][2]
Ritual and Burial Clothing
Part of the attire was set aside for ritual use and kept separate from everyday wear. In addition to the mourning avarkshnyema and the burial kuloma rutsi, by the twentieth century the shushpan itself had settled into this role among the Teryukhans: women who already called themselves Russians kept it as "burial" clothing.[1][6]
The burial ensemble of a Teryukhan woman was recorded from recollections in the village of Makrasha: a white headscarf, a shushpan with a red pattern, a woven colored belt, white foot-wrappings, and over them "pokordонki" — foot-wrappings of an even whiter cloth, wound with cords — and bast shoes with laces. Burial in national dress ceased only toward the end of the 1960s.[1]
The attire was kept in a pair — a hollowed-out linden-wood chest, which also served as the wedding chest for the dowry.[1][2]
Where to See It
Teryukhan artifacts are held at the Dalnekonstantinovsky District Museum of Local History and at the museum of Lobachevsky University: shushpans, including some with swastika-pattern ornaments on the sleeves, belts, bast shoes, and pari. The Erzya costume is displayed at the Erzyanskoy Kultury Museum in Lukoyanov, and in Pikshen the panar shirts are on display at the museum of Erzya everyday life.[1][2][8]
Major costume ensembles — a young Erzya woman's outfit and a pula hip ornament from the early twentieth century — are held at the Mordovian Museum of Fine Arts and featured in its online collection.[8]
People did not abandon the costume all at once. From the 1920s onward, young girls switched to Russian-style clothing; elderly women continued to wear the shushpan on holidays until the 1970s, and during the war the embroidered sleeves were sewn into school bags for first-graders.[1]
The national costume of an Erzya woman weighed around fourteen to fifteen kilograms[3]
Sources
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text (archive)
- museum.unn.ru — Lobachevsky University Museum — Exhibition "Mordva-Teryukhane: Testimonies of the Past", June 30, 2017 (archive)
- Nizhny Novgorod Pravda — Land of the Erzya, June 2, 2016 (archive)
- natlibraryrm.ru — A. S. Pushkin National Library of the Republic of Mordovia — Mordovian National Costume (archive)
- nazaccent.ru — National Accent — Darya Kuzmina. The national costume of the Mordva, April 27, 2013 (archive)
- erzia-museum.ru — Erzya Museum — History of the Mordovian Costume (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text — P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. Sketches of the Mordva, Sketch VI: The Goddess Ange-Patyay, Her Festivals and Prayer Gatherings (archive)
- ar.culture.ru — Artefact — Costume of a Young Erzya Woman, first half of the 20th century. Mordovian Museum of Fine Arts