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Dazhbog

Dazhbog (Russian: Дажьбо́г, Дажбог), alternatively Daždźboh (Belarusian: Даждзьбог), Dazhboh (Ukrainian: Дажбог), Dažbog, Dazhdbog, Dajbog, Daybog, Dabog, Dazibogu, or Dadźbóg, was one of the major gods of Slavic mythology, most likely a solar deity and possibly a cultural hero. He is one of several authentic Slavic gods, mentioned by a number of medieval manuscripts, and one of the few Slavic gods for which evidence of worship can be found in all Slavic tribes.

A modern pagan altar with depiction of Dazhbog
Dazhbog by Andrey Shishkin

Dazhbog (or Dazhboh) is mentioned in the Primary Chronicle, a history of early Kyivan Rus' as one of seven gods whose statues Prince Volodymyr the Great erected in front of his palace in Kyiv in 980, when he came to the throne. The name is also mentioned in the Hypatian Codex, as well as in the medieval Old East Slavic epic The Tale of Ihor's Campaign .

Etymology Edit

The Proto-Slavic reconstruction is *dadjьbogъ,[1] and is composed of *dadjь, imperative of the verb *dati "to give", and the noun *bogъ "god". The original meaning of Dazhbog would thus, according to Dubenskij, Ognovskij and Niederle, be "giving god", "god-giver, "god-donor".

Morphologically this word is an old compound, that is particularly interesting because it retains the old meaning of the Proto-Slavic *bogъ "earthly wealth/well-being; fortune", with a semantic shift to "dispenser of wealth/fortune" and finally "god".[2] Due to the absence of convincing cognates in other Indo-European languages, Proto-Slavic *bogъ is often considered to be an Iranian borrowing, being related to Indo-Iranian Bhaga, or at least being semantically influenced by them; in both Slavic and Indo-Iranian cognate forms mean both "deity" and "wealth, share".[3] Thus, translated literally, Dazhbog would be "giving god".

In other languages, Proto-Slavic: *Daďьbogъ;[1] Church Slavic: Даждьбог; Old East Slavic: Дажьбогъ; Belarusian: Даждбог, Дажбог, or Дабог; Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Macedonian: Даждбог Дажбог, Дайбог, or Дабог; Polish: Dadźbóg, Dażbóg, Dabóg; Russian: Дажьбог, Дажбог, Дайбог, or Дабог; Serbo-Croatian: Daždbog / Даждбог, Dažbog / Дажбог, Dajbog / Дајбог, or Dabog / Дабог.

Characteristics Edit

 
Dazhbog (author: M. Presnyakov, 1998)

The most interesting passage about Dazhbog comes from the Hypatian Codex, a 15th-century compilation of several much older documents from the Ipatiev Monastery in Russia. The complete passage, reconstructed from several manuscripts, translates as follows:

[Then] began his reign Feosta (Hephaestus), whom the Egyptians called Svarog ... during his rule, from the heavens fell the smith's prongs and weapons were forged for the first time; before that, [all] fought with clubs and stones. Feosta also commanded the women that they should have only a single husband ... and that is why Egyptians called him Svarog ... After him ruled his son; his name was the Sun, and they called him Dazhbog ... Sun tsar, son of Svarog. That is Dazhbog.

This is, in fact, a Slavic translation of an original Greek manuscript of Malalin from the 6th century. In the Greek text, the names of gods are Hephaestus and Helios. Apparently, the unknown Rus translator tried to re-tell the entire story (set in Egypt) by replacing the names of classical deities with those that were better known to his readers.[4]

One can only hope that he indeed replaced the names of Greek gods with their fitting Slavic counterparts; however, at least one issue remains problematic: in all Slavic languages, the word for Sun, Suntse, is of neutral or feminine gender, never masculine (however, there is an Old East Slavic epic character "Volodymyr Beautiful Sun" or "Volodymyr Bright Sun" (ru)[circular reference][5] which has the same place as Arthur in English culture).

Also, in Baltic mythology, which is most akin to Slavic, Sun is a female deity, Saule, while the Moon is a male one. The same pattern can be observed in the folklore of many Slavic nations, where the Sun is most often identified with mother or a bride, and Moon with father or husband, their children being the stars. Where exactly this leaves Dazhbog as a possible male solar deity of Slavic pantheon remains questionable.

Furthermore, this passage has raised quite a few theories about family relations between Slavic gods. If we assume that indeed Svarog was believed to be Dazhbog's father, the question arises of his relation with Svarozhits, another deity who is mentioned as a god of fire and war in several other medieval documents describing the pagan beliefs of Slavs. Svarozhits is simply a diminutive of Svarog's name, i.e., "little Svarog", which implicates he was considered a child of Svarog. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov proposed a reconstruction of this mythical genealogy that Svarog, a deity of fire and forge similar to the Greek Hephaestus, had two sons; Dazhbog, who represented the fire in the sky (i.e., the Sun), and Svarozhits, who symbolised the flame on earth, in the forge.[4]

Henryk Łowmiański, however, theorised that Svarog was a Slavic sky god and personification of daylight sky itself, possibly a continuation of Proto-Indo-European *Dyēus Ph2ter, while Svarozhits and solar Dazhbog were the same deity, though, he concluded, two other aspects of Svarozhits also existed: fiery Svarozhits, as in the Sun (mentioned in Old East Slavic medieval manuscripts), and lunar Svarozhits, associated with the Moon.[6] Franjo Ledic, on the other hand, assumed that Svarog and Dazhbog are the same god.[7]

Many mythologists also believe Dazhbog to be identical with another East Slavic deity with possible solar attributes, Khors. Osip Maximovich Bodjanskij based this theory on the following passage from Primary Chronicle:

And Vladimir began his reign in Kiev alone and erected idols on the hill outside his palace with porch: Perun of wood with a head of silver and moustache of gold and Khors Dazhbog and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh.

Note that the names Khors and Dazhbog are the only two not clearly separated by the word "and" in the text. This could be an indication of a compound deity, Khors Dazhbog. On this basis, Toporov assumed that Khors could be an Iranian (possibly Sarmatian or Scythian) name for this god, and Dazhbog a Slavic one. Boris Rybakov compared Khors and Dazhbog to Helios and Apollo, respectively, concluding that both of them were solar gods, but while Hors represented the Sun itself, Dazhbog, as deus dator, rather symbolised the life-giving power of the Sun.[8] That Khors was indeed a solar deity was deduced from the following passage in the Tale of Igor's Campaign:[9]

Vseslav the prince judged men; as prince, he ruled towns; but at night he prowled in the guise of a wolf. From Kiev, prowling, he reached, before the cocks crew, Tmutorokan. The path of great Khors, as a wolf, prowling, he crossed.

In other words, prince Vseslav reached Tmutorokan before dawn, thus crossing the path of Khors, the Sun. In the mythical view of the world, the Sun has to pass through the underworld during the night to reach the eastern horizon by the dawn. This, and the fact that prince Vseslav is transformed into a wolf during the night, while "crossing the path of Khors", draws a parallel with the Serbian Dabog, who, as stated already, was believed to be a lame "wolf shepherd" who rules over the underworld.

Of particular interest is the fact that Serbian folk accounts describe him as being lame; lameness was a standing attribute of Greek Hephaestus, whom, as we have seen, the Hypatian Codex compared with Slavic smith-god Svarog, father of Dazhbog. (In fact, most of Indo-European smith-gods were lame; the reason for this was most likely arsenicosis, low levels of arsenic poisoning, resulting in lameness and skin cancers. Arsenic was added to bronze to harden it, and most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic workplace poisoning.)

Serbian Dabog, being lord of the underworld, was also associated with precious metals, and sometimes was said to have a silver beard. Veselin Čajkanović concluded that the chthonic character of Dabog in Serbian folklore fits very nicely with the solar Dazhbog mentioned in Old East Slavic sources, pointing out that in numerous mythologies, solar deities tend to have double aspects, one benevolent, associated with the Sun during the day, and the other malevolent, associated with night, when the Sun is trapped in the underworld.[10]

In his studies of Serbian folklore, Čajkanović also concluded that many more benevolent aspects of Dazhbog were passed on to popular saints in folk Christianity, in particularly onto St. Sava, Serbian national saint, who, although undoubtedly was a real historical person, in folk tales often appears in the role of culture hero.[10] The fact that in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, the Rus and their princes are being referred to as "Dazhbog's grandchildren", indicates that Dazhbog was considered as an ancestral deity, a common role of a culture hero archetype in mythologies.

Dazhbog is considered to be the husband of Zhiva, whose mother is Lada, the goddess of conjugal love.

In modern culture Edit

 
An early 21st-century depiction of Dadźbóg by Marek Hapon

A sculpture of the god was erected in Hola Prystan, Ukraine early in 2001. Some days later, it was broken up due to the objections by the church.[11]

On April 10, 2016, a Dazhdbog idol was installed by the Slavic pagans in a particularly revered place in the city of Astrakhan, Russia.[12] On April 12, 2016, information about the desecration of idols and destruction all the adjacent territories had become known.[13]

See also Edit

References Edit

  1. ^ a b Олег Трубачёв (ред.) (1974–), Этимологический словарь славянских языков, Москва: Наука, volume 04, page 182f
  2. ^ Petar Skok (1971), Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika, JAZU: Zagreb, volume I, page 178ff
  3. ^ Compare OCS bogatъ 'rich' as opposed to ubogъ 'poor'.
  4. ^ a b Vitomir Belaj "Hod kroz godinu, mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih vjerovanja i obicaja", Zagreb, 1998.
  5. ^ Dixon-Kennedy, Mike (1998). Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 44, 304. ISBN 9781576070635.
  6. ^ Henrik Lovmjanjski, Religija Slovena, Beograd 1996
  7. ^ Franjo Ledić. Mitologija Slavena, vol. I, Zagreb, 1970.
  8. ^ Boris Rybakov. Ancient Slavic Paganism. Moscow, 1981
  9. ^ . Archived from the original on 2006-09-23. Retrieved 2006-09-22.
  10. ^ a b Veselin Čajkanović, Mit i religija u Srba, Beograd, 1973.
  11. ^ В Херсонской области после протеста священников демонтировали скульптуру языческого бога Telegraf.by (11.07.2011) (in Russian)
  12. ^ In Astrakhan have established an idol of Dazhdbog
  13. ^ In Astrakhan have profaned an idol of Dazhdbog

Further reading Edit

dazhbog, confused, with, dabog, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, js. Not to be confused with Dabog This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Dazhbog news newspapers books scholar JSTOR September 2009 Learn how and when to remove this template message Dazhbog Russian Dazhbo g Dazhbog alternatively Dazdzboh Belarusian Dazhdzbog Dazhboh Ukrainian Dazhbog Dazbog Dazhdbog Dajbog Daybog Dabog Dazibogu or Dadzbog was one of the major gods of Slavic mythology most likely a solar deity and possibly a cultural hero He is one of several authentic Slavic gods mentioned by a number of medieval manuscripts and one of the few Slavic gods for which evidence of worship can be found in all Slavic tribes A modern pagan altar with depiction of Dazhbog Dazhbog by Andrey ShishkinDazhbog or Dazhboh is mentioned in the Primary Chronicle a history of early Kyivan Rus as one of seven gods whose statues Prince Volodymyr the Great erected in front of his palace in Kyiv in 980 when he came to the throne The name is also mentioned in the Hypatian Codex as well as in the medieval Old East Slavic epic The Tale of Ihor s Campaign Contents 1 Etymology 2 Characteristics 3 In modern culture 4 See also 5 References 6 Further readingEtymology EditThe Proto Slavic reconstruction is dadjbog 1 and is composed of dadj imperative of the verb dati to give and the noun bog god The original meaning of Dazhbog would thus according to Dubenskij Ognovskij and Niederle be giving god god giver god donor Morphologically this word is an old compound that is particularly interesting because it retains the old meaning of the Proto Slavic bog earthly wealth well being fortune with a semantic shift to dispenser of wealth fortune and finally god 2 Due to the absence of convincing cognates in other Indo European languages Proto Slavic bog is often considered to be an Iranian borrowing being related to Indo Iranian Bhaga or at least being semantically influenced by them in both Slavic and Indo Iranian cognate forms mean both deity and wealth share 3 Thus translated literally Dazhbog would be giving god In other languages Proto Slavic Dadbog 1 Church Slavic Dazhdbog Old East Slavic Dazhbog Belarusian Dazhdbog Dazhbog or Dabog Bulgarian Ukrainian and Macedonian Dazhdbog Dazhbog Dajbog or Dabog Polish Dadzbog Dazbog Dabog Russian Dazhbog Dazhbog Dajbog or Dabog Serbo Croatian Dazdbog Dazhdbog Dazbog Dazhbog Dajbog Daјbog or Dabog Dabog Characteristics Edit nbsp Dazhbog author M Presnyakov 1998 The most interesting passage about Dazhbog comes from the Hypatian Codex a 15th century compilation of several much older documents from the Ipatiev Monastery in Russia The complete passage reconstructed from several manuscripts translates as follows Then began his reign Feosta Hephaestus whom the Egyptians called Svarog during his rule from the heavens fell the smith s prongs and weapons were forged for the first time before that all fought with clubs and stones Feosta also commanded the women that they should have only a single husband and that is why Egyptians called him Svarog After him ruled his son his name was the Sun and they called him Dazhbog Sun tsar son of Svarog That is Dazhbog This is in fact a Slavic translation of an original Greek manuscript of Malalin from the 6th century In the Greek text the names of gods are Hephaestus and Helios Apparently the unknown Rus translator tried to re tell the entire story set in Egypt by replacing the names of classical deities with those that were better known to his readers 4 One can only hope that he indeed replaced the names of Greek gods with their fitting Slavic counterparts however at least one issue remains problematic in all Slavic languages the word for Sun Suntse is of neutral or feminine gender never masculine however there is an Old East Slavic epic character Volodymyr Beautiful Sun or Volodymyr Bright Sun ru circular reference 5 which has the same place as Arthur in English culture Also in Baltic mythology which is most akin to Slavic Sun is a female deity Saule while the Moon is a male one The same pattern can be observed in the folklore of many Slavic nations where the Sun is most often identified with mother or a bride and Moon with father or husband their children being the stars Where exactly this leaves Dazhbog as a possible male solar deity of Slavic pantheon remains questionable Furthermore this passage has raised quite a few theories about family relations between Slavic gods If we assume that indeed Svarog was believed to be Dazhbog s father the question arises of his relation with Svarozhits another deity who is mentioned as a god of fire and war in several other medieval documents describing the pagan beliefs of Slavs Svarozhits is simply a diminutive of Svarog s name i e little Svarog which implicates he was considered a child of Svarog Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov proposed a reconstruction of this mythical genealogy that Svarog a deity of fire and forge similar to the Greek Hephaestus had two sons Dazhbog who represented the fire in the sky i e the Sun and Svarozhits who symbolised the flame on earth in the forge 4 Henryk Lowmianski however theorised that Svarog was a Slavic sky god and personification of daylight sky itself possibly a continuation of Proto Indo European Dyeus Ph2ter while Svarozhits and solar Dazhbog were the same deity though he concluded two other aspects of Svarozhits also existed fiery Svarozhits as in the Sun mentioned in Old East Slavic medieval manuscripts and lunar Svarozhits associated with the Moon 6 Franjo Ledic on the other hand assumed that Svarog and Dazhbog are the same god 7 Many mythologists also believe Dazhbog to be identical with another East Slavic deity with possible solar attributes Khors Osip Maximovich Bodjanskij based this theory on the following passage from Primary Chronicle And Vladimir began his reign in Kiev alone and erected idols on the hill outside his palace with porch Perun of wood with a head of silver and moustache of gold and Khors Dazhbog and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh Note that the names Khors and Dazhbog are the only two not clearly separated by the word and in the text This could be an indication of a compound deity Khors Dazhbog On this basis Toporov assumed that Khors could be an Iranian possibly Sarmatian or Scythian name for this god and Dazhbog a Slavic one Boris Rybakov compared Khors and Dazhbog to Helios and Apollo respectively concluding that both of them were solar gods but while Hors represented the Sun itself Dazhbog as deus dator rather symbolised the life giving power of the Sun 8 That Khors was indeed a solar deity was deduced from the following passage in the Tale of Igor s Campaign 9 Vseslav the prince judged men as prince he ruled towns but at night he prowled in the guise of a wolf From Kiev prowling he reached before the cocks crew Tmutorokan The path of great Khors as a wolf prowling he crossed In other words prince Vseslav reached Tmutorokan before dawn thus crossing the path of Khors the Sun In the mythical view of the world the Sun has to pass through the underworld during the night to reach the eastern horizon by the dawn This and the fact that prince Vseslav is transformed into a wolf during the night while crossing the path of Khors draws a parallel with the Serbian Dabog who as stated already was believed to be a lame wolf shepherd who rules over the underworld Of particular interest is the fact that Serbian folk accounts describe him as being lame lameness was a standing attribute of Greek Hephaestus whom as we have seen the Hypatian Codex compared with Slavic smith god Svarog father of Dazhbog In fact most of Indo European smith gods were lame the reason for this was most likely arsenicosis low levels of arsenic poisoning resulting in lameness and skin cancers Arsenic was added to bronze to harden it and most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic workplace poisoning Serbian Dabog being lord of the underworld was also associated with precious metals and sometimes was said to have a silver beard Veselin Cajkanovic concluded that the chthonic character of Dabog in Serbian folklore fits very nicely with the solar Dazhbog mentioned in Old East Slavic sources pointing out that in numerous mythologies solar deities tend to have double aspects one benevolent associated with the Sun during the day and the other malevolent associated with night when the Sun is trapped in the underworld 10 In his studies of Serbian folklore Cajkanovic also concluded that many more benevolent aspects of Dazhbog were passed on to popular saints in folk Christianity in particularly onto St Sava Serbian national saint who although undoubtedly was a real historical person in folk tales often appears in the role of culture hero 10 The fact that in the Tale of Igor s Campaign the Rus and their princes are being referred to as Dazhbog s grandchildren indicates that Dazhbog was considered as an ancestral deity a common role of a culture hero archetype in mythologies Dazhbog is considered to be the husband of Zhiva whose mother is Lada the goddess of conjugal love In modern culture Edit nbsp An early 21st century depiction of Dadzbog by Marek HaponA sculpture of the god was erected in Hola Prystan Ukraine early in 2001 Some days later it was broken up due to the objections by the church 11 On April 10 2016 a Dazhdbog idol was installed by the Slavic pagans in a particularly revered place in the city of Astrakhan Russia 12 On April 12 2016 information about the desecration of idols and destruction all the adjacent territories had become known 13 See also EditSvarog Hephaestus Culture hero Heimdall List of solar deitiesReferences Edit a b Oleg Trubachyov red 1974 Etimologicheskij slovar slavyanskih yazykov Moskva Nauka volume 04 page 182f Petar Skok 1971 Etimologijski rjecnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika JAZU Zagreb volume I page 178ff Compare OCS bogat rich as opposed to ubog poor a b Vitomir Belaj Hod kroz godinu mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih vjerovanja i obicaja Zagreb 1998 Dixon Kennedy Mike 1998 Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend Santa Barbara California ABC CLIO pp 44 304 ISBN 9781576070635 Henrik Lovmjanjski Religija Slovena Beograd 1996 Franjo Ledic Mitologija Slavena vol I Zagreb 1970 Boris Rybakov Ancient Slavic Paganism Moscow 1981 This f2o org account is no longer in service Archived from the original on 2006 09 23 Retrieved 2006 09 22 a b Veselin Cajkanovic Mit i religija u Srba Beograd 1973 V Hersonskoj oblasti posle protesta svyashennikov demontirovali skulpturu yazycheskogo boga Telegraf by 11 07 2011 in Russian In Astrakhan have established an idol of Dazhdbog In Astrakhan have profaned an idol of DazhdbogFurther reading EditOleg Vladislavovich Kutarev 2021 Dazhbog The Ancient Slavic Pagan Deity of the Shining Sky In Studia Mythologica Slavica 24 October Ljubljana Slovenija https doi org 10 3986 SMS20212411 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Dazhbog amp oldid 1170179487, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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