Academic literature on the topic 'Caucasian Mythology'

According to mythological data ancient population of Caucasus was represented by Giants. Among them are one-eyed Goliaths also. Theymainly appear as shepherds. Goliaths obtained all means for existence and the next generations used them. Later they lost their old dignityand transformed into evil creatures. There are women Goliaths-warriors in the Caucasian folklore and their activity is connected to the heroicweddingmotive.A special group of giants in the Caucasian mythology is made of Devs, which appeared here as a result of cultural-historical contacts with theOriental world. According to beliefs of the East Georgian mountain dwellers, the territory where their resided, used to belong to Devs earlier.Devs used to be involved in various economies: hunting, farming, sheep breeding. As the ancient settlers Devs are distinguished for specialabundance.

This article focuses on the etymology of Indo-Iranian gandharvá- and possible related words outside Indo-Iranian languages. Even though the old comparison of Skt. gandharvá- and Gr. κένταυρος is phonologically untenable and cannot bring us to any reconstructable Proto-Indo-European form, their phonetic similarity should not be neglected or considered accidental and is furthermore corroborated by evidence from comparative mythology. It seems very likely that both words were borrowed from some Near Eastern non-Indo-European language, possibly Kassite or a related language, being perhaps eventually traceable to a Proto-West-Caucasian etymon.

The paper makes an attempt to analyse the Indo-European cultural categories in the dimension of anthropological and cultural sources which have constituted the national epic of Ossetians, the descendants of the legendary Sarmatian Alans. As a result of studying the present state of knowledge about nomadism, the authors propose a way of understanding that concept as an intercultural penetration of ideas and values through the cultural texts (myths, literary works) in the history of the Indo-European family of Eurasian nations. The authors present the nomadism of Indo-European cultural elements which emerge from the studies of Galina Bieliakowa on Slavic mythology. The article discusses the nomadism of Indo-European ideas, values and cultural symbolism in the context of contemporary anthropological and archaeological knowledge. The authors focus on the phenomenon of preserving the Indo-European cultural heritage in the mythology of the North Caucasus (e.g. the Ossetian heroic epic). The authors also show the phenomenon of the literary image of the sword as an archetypal symbol of honor and purity on the example of the nomadism of that cultural image from the Caucasian epic to the medieval knight epic.

In 1935, the Russian linguist Prince Nicolai S. Trubetskoi and the French mythologist Georges Dumézil engaged in a vicious debate over a seemingly obscure subject: the structure of Northwest Caucasian languages. Based on unknown archival material in French, German, and Russian, this essay uses the debate as a pathway into the 1930s scientific and political stakes of IndoEuropeanism – the belief that European cultures emerged through the spread of a single IndoEuropean people out of a single “motherland.” Each of the two authors held strong commitments to visions of European order and its origins – in “Eurasia” for Trubetskoi and a Northern European Heimat for Dumézil. The North Caucasus, long a privileged site for Russian and European scholars, now became key to the renegotiation of the origins and reach of imagined prehistoric IndoEuropean conquerors, but also the 1930s’ debate over the value of different disciplines (linguistics, mythology, archaeology, folklore studies) for the origins of language, myth, and the European deep past. As a moment in the history of modern speculations about prehistory, pursued in the shadow of Nazi scholarship, the debate transformed fields of research – notably linguistics, comparative mythology, and structuralism – and the assumptions about the shape of Europe.

Jean-Sylvain Bailly, an eighteenth-century French astronomer and polymath, elaborated an original interpretation of the prehistoric origins of civilization which anticipated many of the details of the “Aryan myth.” Bailly argued that Atlantis was the root civilization of mankind, which had invented the arts and sciences and civilized the Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians. He situated this primordial people in the far north of Eurasia, and argued that as the cooling of the Earth buried their ancestral home beneath sheets of ice, the Atlanteans were lost to history. Bailly drew eclectically upon science, classical mythology, linguistics, and orientalism to substantiate his case, and argued that the Brahmans who shaped Indian civilization were Sanskrit-speaking Atlanteans. His theories reflected many of the prevailing ideas of the age, such as the climate determinism of Montesquieu and Buffon and the superiority of the dynamic West over the decadent Orient. Though Bailly did not racialize the Atlanteans, his works laid the foundations for the subsequent emergence of the Aryan myth.

Mythology is a necessary stage of cultural development in the history of any nation. When a person creates myths, he is in search of the meaning of life and tries to: 1) to fit your life into the framework of a larger whole; 2) to discover a certain structure underlying being; 3) to understand, despite everything, that life has meaning and value. The mythologeme "split stone" in the ethnoculture of the peoples of the North Caucasus, reflected in the novels of the Ingush writer I. Bazorkin, echoes the primitive ideas about the arrangement of the world among different peoples of the world. Since the ethnolinguoculture of the peoples of the Caucasus stands apart among various language classifications, we turn to the analysis of the concept-mythonym "split stone" to identify general and moments of interpretation of the meaning of this concept. Hypothesis: the concept of "split stone" is the basic ethnic idea of the Ingush about the structure of the world order, about the influence of moral qualities of a person on the properties of the surrounding world.

Mythology is a necessary stage of cultural development in the history of any nation. When a person creates myths, he is in search of the meaning of life and tries to: 1) to fit your life into the framework of a larger whole; 2) to discover a certain structure underlying being; 3) to understand, despite everything, that life has meaning and value. The mythologeme "split stone" in the ethnoculture of the peoples of the North Caucasus, reflected in the novels of the Ingush writer I. Bazorkin, echoes the primitive ideas about the arrangement of the world among different peoples of the world. Since the ethnolinguoculture of the peoples of the Caucasus stands apart among various language classifications, we turn to the analysis of the concept-mythonym "split stone" to identify general and moments of interpretation of the meaning of this concept. Hypothesis: the concept of "split stone" is the basic ethnic idea of the Ingush about the structure of the world order, about the influence of moral qualities of a person on the properties of the surrounding world.

Наиболее фундаментальным и типичным видом мифотворчества осетин являются космогонические мифы. Космогонические мифы повествуют о происхождении космоса в целом и его частей, связанных в единой системе. Основным начальным сюжетом творения мира в осетинской космогонии является происхождение космоса из хаоса. Часть космогонии составляют антропогонические мифы, в том числе о сотворении человека, первой человеческой пары или первых людей. Осетинская мифология, восходящая к индоиранскому наследию, испытала влияние христианства, ислама и кавказской культурной общности. Актуальность исследования мотива творения человека заключается в том, что изучение антропогонических мифов составляет значимое звено по осмыслению целостной мифологической картины мира осетин. На основе типологического сравнения в статье рассматриваются сюжеты, восходящие к библейским мифам о творении человека. Осетинские мифы об Атане и Амане, об Арыге и Магре, несмотря на использование фольклорных традиций осетин при их пересказе, в своей основе сохраняют библейские рассказы об Адаме и Еве, потопе и Ноевом ковчеге. Однако большинство вариантов с мотивом творения человека, хотя имеют типологические схождения в мировом фольклоре, не выходят за рамки традиционного мифотворчества. Сюжет про нартовского героя «Сауасса» представляет интерес тем, что инициатором его сотворения выступает Солнце. В целом, все варианты антропогонических мифов расширяют понимание мифологической картины мира осетин. Для анализа сюжетов с мотивом творения человека были применены историко-культурный, символический и семиологические подходы в рамках типологического и сравнительно-исторического метода. Несмотря на многочисленные работы по мифологии осетин, антропогонические мотивы остались вне поля зрения ученых, что определяет новизну настоящего исследования. The most fundamental and typical type of Ossetian myth-making is cosmogonic myths. Cosmogonic myths tell about the origin of the cosmos as a whole and its parts connected in a single system. The main initial plot of the creation of the world in Ossetian cosmogony is the origin of the cosmos from chaos. Part of the cosmogony consists of anthropogonic myths, including the creation of man, the first human couple or the first people. Ossetian mythology, which dates back to the Indo-Iranian heritage, has been influenced by Christianity, Islam and the Caucasian cultural community. The relevance of the study of the motive of human creation lies in the fact that the study of anthropogonic myths constitute a significant link in understanding the holistic mythological picture of the Ossetian world. Based on a typological comparison, the article examines the plots dating back to the biblical myths about the creation of man. The Ossetian myths about Atan and Aman, about Aryga and Magra, despite the use of Ossetian folklore traditions in their retelling, basically retain the biblical stories about Adam and Eve, the flood and Noah's Ark. However, most variants with the motif of human creation, although they have typological similarities in world folklore, do not go beyond the traditional myth-making. The plot about the Nart hero "Sauassa", although it has typological similarities, is of interest because the Sun acts as the initiator of its creation. In general, all variants of anthropogonic myths expand the understanding of the mythological picture of the Ossetian world. Historical-cultural, symbolic and semiological approaches within the typological and comparative-historical method were used to analyze the plots with the motive of human creation. Despite numerous works on the mythology of the Ossetians, anthropogonic motifs remained out of sight of scientists, which determines the novelty of this study.

The story of Herculesʼ achievements, like many others in Greek mythology, has undergone various changes since Hesiodʼs early transmissions helped to consolidate the essential elements of the myth and its characteristics. With the translocation of myths from Caucasian Iberia to Western Iberia, certain places, characters and events associated with the land were also transferred. The Fortunate Islands, the Garden of Hesperides, the place of the 10th and 11th labours of Hercules have been relocated, and the origin and meaning of the pillars set up by the hero have been identified and interpreted. The aim of this article is to show how one of these myths, namely that of Hercules and Geryon, was shaped in the classical and later periods. The transformation of three elements of this myth will be analysed: its location, the figure of Geryon and the description of Herculesʼ achievements.

This article examines the peculiarities of the functioning of symbolic images of stone and mountains in the folklore and literatures of the peoples of the North Caucasus and Abkhazia. The objects of analysis are myths, a heroic epic about the sledges shared by a number of Caucasian peoples, poetry by K. Mechiev, K. Kuliev, A. Keshokov, and R. Gamzatov, novels by B. Shinkuba (Dissected Stone) and A. Gogua (Nimbus). As shown in the article, the images of stone and mountains in each literature function differently within the structure of a literary text, depending on the author’s intention. At the same time, these images are initially closely connected with history, life, mythology, folklore of the people, and with thousand-year historical and spiritual experience of mountaineers. The process of creating a literary image, whose roots go deep into national history and culture, reflects the interaction of different types of thinking — historical, mythological, anthropological, and literary; the nature of the relationship and the dialogue of literature with folklore, historiography, and ethnography speak about the role of this interdisciplinary dialogue in the development of literature; this way, we can also speak of literary or artistic historicism which differs from historicism in historiography or philosophy of history.