The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is the epitome of Inner Asia. It navigates the vast mountain terrain across 12 range countries with aplomb. Surefooted and stealthy, its pelage enables it to blend in with its surroundings, whether the stark white of a snowclad landscape or the brown of a completely thawed one. No wonder then, that the humans it has shared its habitat with for so long, consider it a totem and a spirit animal.
The best example of this comes from The Epic of Manas. This national epic of the Kyrgyz people of Kyrgyzstan and one of the stellar works of literature produced by humans introduces the eponymous protagonist Manas as someone whose totem is the snow leopard.
In the epic, Manas goes on to unite the Kyrgyz tribes and lay the foundations of the Kyrgyz nation and identity. In 1995, Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000-year anniversary of the Epic of Manas and in December 2013, the epic was inscribed in UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“The Kyrgyz people of Central Asia place high spiritual value on the snow leopard. They designate specific locations to be “sacred snow leopard sites,” of which ICPs are designated Guardians,” Hannah Taub notes in her 2018 paper, The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Snow Leopard Conservation on and Around the Tibetan Plateau.
ICPs stands for indigenous cultural practitioners. Jipar Duyshembiyeva from the University of Washington, Seattle, notes in Kyrgyz Healing Practices: Some Field Notes that the Kyrgyz, like other peoples of Central Asia, had followed shamanistic practices before the spread of Islam. They had worshipped spirits of their ancestors, different animals, mountains, trees, running water, and fire, among other things.
Indeed, the Epic of Manas has many elements of shamanism. In The Kyrgyz Epic Manas, R Z Kydyrbaeva writes that “Many echoes of the shamanism so widely prevalent in the epic works of the peoples of Central Asia are also reflected in the Kyrgyz epic. These rudiments of shamanism are most often to be found in the set pieces which have become part of the work’s artistic system, such as alkis, kargish (blessings, curses), arman, kereez (pity, testament) and, to some extent, kosh ok (ritual lamentations). These set pieces may have constituted the basis, the primary material that has contributed to the formation of the epic genre.”
For humans who have lived in so challenging an environment such as Inner Asia and who followed shamanistic nomadism, the snow leopard is a natural choice for a totem and a spirit animal.
According to the portal truespiritanimal.com, “For the isolated Kyrgyz nomads in the Tian Shan mountains, the snow leopard symbolized the independent spirit needed to endure their harsh environment.”
It adds that, “For many Central Asian cultures, the snow leopard exemplifies the mental and physical stamina needed to overcome hardship and prosper.”
It is this special relationship then, between human and snow leopard, bound by centuries of sharing the same environment, that may ultimately hold the key for the survival of snow leopards in the future.
As Taub notes, “These existing belief systems create a society structured towards reverence and protection of the snow leopard. One ICP described a petroglyph at Lake Issykul in Kyrgyzstan that depicts a line connecting a human to a snow leopard as representative of the Kyrgyz reverence for and unity with snow leopards. Kyrgyz traditional beliefs align well with those of conservationists, and incorporation of indigenous thought and cultural elements into the discourse around protecting the snow leopard could strengthen conservation efforts.”