The analysis of the sources on Slavic deity Dazhbog: Hypatian Codex; Serbian legends of Dabog (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dazhbog: The Ancient Slavic Pagan Deity of the Shining Sky
Studia mythologica Slavica, 2021
The paper is concerned with a detailed consideration of one of the most well-known and frequently mentioned Slavic pagan deities: Dazhbog (or Daž(d)bog). Historiographic stereotypes full of contradictions and problems have been fixed in research concerned with the deity, for example, defining Dazhbog as the deity of the sun; its proximity to another solar deity (Chors) and vagueness, why are there two solar deities; Dazhbog’s relation to the deity Svarog/Svarozhich; Dazhbog’s belonging only to the East Slavic area; the etymology of his name as a “giving deity”. An alternative view on Dazhbog (overlooked rather than new) that can solve these problems is given in this paper.
[2015] Dabragezas and friends: a celebratory note on 6th-century Slavic
The note, which is an informal contribution to the celebratory website for Andrej Zaliznjak (http://inslav.ru/zalizniak80/list.html), discusses the six Slavic personal names contained in the fragments of the sixth-century Byzantine historians Agathias and Menander. The names allow us to catch a glimpse of a stage in the evolution of Slavic that was later than the monophthongization of diphthongs, but earlier than the second palatalization and the final normalization of the msc o-stem Nsg. They suggest a date shortly before the middle of the sixth century as a terminus post quem for these developments, corroborating other evidence for the chronology of these developments.
Review of Judith Kalik and Alexander Uchitel, Slavic Gods and Heroes
International Journal for the Study of New Religions, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2021, pp. 145-148.
This book is of interest to scholars of new religious movements, and in particular those who focus on nationalist and ethnic forms of Paganism in central and eastern Europe. Slavic Pagan mythology is fragmentary; the “Introduction” notes that complex mythological texts are available from Iceland, Ireland, and Finland, but the Slavic medieval texts are exclusively written by Christians, and texts authored in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were forgeries, the most important of which was the Book of Veles, published in 1957, which remains popular and the subject of attempts to establish its authenticity. Judith Kalik and Alex- ander Uchitel are equally dismissive of the efforts of the “Mythological School” (p. 2) who “tried to fill the vacuum that the absence of authen- tic pagan texts created by using medieval and early modern anti-pagan compositions written by Slavic clerics and mythological motives (sic motifs) in Slavic folklore” (pp. 2-3). They argue that their study is inno- vative and will succeed where others have failed by looking for Slavic religion/ mythology in the right rather than the “wrong place” (p. 4).
New researches on the religion and mythology of the Pagan Slavs 2 (Ed. by P. Lajoye and S. Zochios). Paris: Lingva, 2023
This article attempts to list all the names of the Slavic Pagan deities, which may with confidence be driven back to pre-Christian antiquity: the deities that the Slavs really revered. At the same time, those characters, which accidentally and without reason became a part of Slavic pantheon and gained some popularity (for example, gods from hoax texts) are briefly described. Such a pantheon, which belongs to different Slavic groups, is divided in the article into several parts. For each of them a brief historical background is given and the current case with the sources is described.
This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the Slavic pagan religion made on the basis of a thorough re-examination of all reliable sources. What did Slavic pagan religion have in common with the Afro-American cult of voodoo? Why were no Slavic gods mentioned before the mid-tenth century, and why were there no Slavic gods at all between the Dnieper and the Order? Why were Slavic foundation legends similar to the totemic myths of the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian Steppe, and who were Slavic Remus and Romulus? What were the Indo-European roots of Slavic hippomantic rituals, and where was the Eastern Slavic dragon Zmey Gorynych born? Answers to these and many other provocative questions can be found in this book.
Slavic demonology. A brief survey
New Researches on the Religion and Mythology of the Pagan Slavs. 2., 2023
The article attempts to give a full picture of the characters (creatures) of Slavic demonological system. Nowadays there are 12 individual mythological traditions and some areal (polessian, carpathian, northrussian, kashubian, ruthenian), covering vast territories of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe and part of Asia. There is a genetic affinity, conceptual and typological unity of these traditions. Nevertheless they differ more of less because of the geographical and climatic conditions, contacts with neighbouring peoples and cultures, the temporal “depth” of the independent existence etc. In general the traditional way of describing mythological characters is used – by the place of habititat (the forest, water, air demons etc.) and by the genesis (the souls of the dead or the spirits of nature or the demons created by people etc.). Much attention has been paid to the names of the demons (spirits) and mythological phraseology, because, as one of the ethnolinguistic postulates goes, the language reflects the inner form of the character and the mode of thinking of the nation, reveals the genesis of the character etc.
Slavic and Greek-Roman Mythology, Comparative Mythology, Brukenthalia Acta Musei, No. 3, 2013
, as a field of scientific research, is a set of stories, mythos in Greek meaning ‗story' or ‗legend' and logos ‗word'. Usually, the myths are works of literature. The term mythology may include all the myths of religion or culture. Throughout history, these stories have circulated as works of literature, folk tales (ballads, odes, songs, songs of bravery) or based on historical sources written at different ruler's courts or monasteries. In this paper I will present a number of similarities between Greek and Roman deities and the slavic ones, basing my research as much as possible on the information provided by an etymological analisys, a description of the deity as well as rituals, offerings, sacrifices and celebrations dedicated to the deities. As a main source for Slavic deities, I used a compilation of medieval and religious texts written in the Kievan Rus' by monk Nestor, called the Russian Primary Chronicle or Nestor's Chronicle. This script presents Russian history and Kievan Rus between 850-1110 years, written in Kiev during Iziaslav Sviatopolk the second's (Grand Prince of Kiev 1093-1113) reign. The Chronicle is German-Scandinavian inspired, since the Prince Sviatopolk's (the principality's ruler) policy was pro-Scandinavian. Also, I could list following volumes: Dictionary of Slavic mythology by Ilie Danilov and Slavic mythology by Sorin Paliga. In addition to these works, information about Slavic mythology can be found in the following books:
Reassessment, Unification, and Enlargement of the Sources of Slavic Pre-Christian Religion
Russian History, Volume 40, Issue 1, pages 27 – 40, 2013
This article discusses the texts included in a new compilation entitled Sources of Slavic Pre-Christian Religion produced by scholars at the University Complutense in Madrid, Spain. This compilation responds to the challenges of previous historiographical difficulties inherent in the indirect sources available and in the previous incomplete collections of sources. Thus, this is the first work to consolidate all known sources on pagan practices of all the Slavic peoples—East, West, and South—and to include all known provenances of sources, including Latin, Greek, Slavonic, Old Icelandic, Arabic, and Persian. The resulting compilation reveals a more complex and sophisticated pre-Christian religion than previously assumed. In this article, Santos Marinas explains the reasoning behind the selection of the texts for this compilation and offers notable examples of some of the included sources on Slavic pre-Christian practices, particularly from Byzantine and Latin texts, that provide new insights into the sacred practices of the early medieval Slavic peripheries of Christendom.