Stribog
Stribog (Piorun) | |
---|---|
Member of Vladimir's pantheon | |
Stribog[a] is a god in Slavic mythology found in three East Slavic sources, whose cult may also have existed in Poland. The sources do not inform about the functions of the god, but nowadays he is most often interpreted as a wind deity who distributes wealth.[1][2]
Sources
Stribog appears for the first time in the 12th-century Primary Chronicle together with other gods for whom Vladimir the Great erected statues:
And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kyiv, and he set up idols on the hill outside the castle: one of Perun, made of wood with a head of silver and a moustache of gold, and others of Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, Mokosh. The people sacrificed to them, calling them gods. They brought their sons and daughters and sacrificed [them] to demons. They desecrated the earth with their offerings. And the land of Rus and the hill were defiled with blood. But the gracious God desires not the death of sinners. Upon that hill now stands the church of Saint Basil, as we shall later narrate.[3]
Old East Slavic textИ нача княжити Володимеръ въ Киевѣ единъ, и постави кумиры на холму внѣ двора теремнаго: Перуна дрезяна, а главу его сребрену, а усъ златъ, и Хърса, Дажьбога, и Стрибога и Симарьгла, и Мокошь. И жряху имъ, наричюще я богы, и привожаху сыны своя и дъщери, и жряху бѣсомъ, и оскверняху землю требами своими. И осквернися кровьми земля Руска и холмо-тъ. Ио преблагий богъ не хотя смерти грѣшникомъ, на томъ холмѣ нынѣ церкви стоить, святаго Василья есть, якоже послѣди скажемъ.[3]
— Primary Chronice
In The Tale of Igor's Campaign, the winds are called Stribog's grandsons:
Now the winds, sons of Stribog, blow from the sea like arrows on the valiant campaign of Igor.[4]
Old East Slavic textСе вѣтри, Стрибожи ⟨/Стьри-?⟩ вънуци, вѣють съ моря стрѣлами на храбрыѣ ⟨хоробрыѣ⟩ пълкы Игоревы.[4]
— The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The word of John Chrysostom also mentions Stribog:
Oh, perfidious devil’s deceit, not even pagans would do it! And others believe in Stribog, Dazhbog and Pereplut, for whom they drink from horns while cavorting, having forgotten God who created heaven and earth, the seas and rivers. And this way they rejoice in their idols.[5]
Legacy
After Christianization, the name was preserved in toponymy: Стрибожь, Stribozh' in Novgorod Governorate, Стрибоже, Strybozhe leak, Стрибожская, Strybozhskaya river in Kiev Voivodeship, Стрибож, Strybozh village in Zhytomyr Oblast, in Poland Strzyboga village and the Striboc (= Stribog) stream near Tczew, attested in the 1282,[6][7][2] and possibly Latin name for river from modern-day Germany Striboz (1122).[6]
Etymologies and interpretations
Modern etymologies
Wind interpretation
According to
According to Michał Łuczyński, Jakobson's etymology is linguistically correct,[10] however, according to him, the division of the theonym into stri- and -bog is unlikely, since hydronyms and personal names indicate that the consonant ⟨b⟩ belonged to the root, not the suffix, e.g., the Ukrainian hydronym Стриб, Stryb, or Polish names beginning with Strzyb-: *Strzybala, Strzybalska, Strzybna, Strzybny.[6]
Stanisław Urbańczyk, following Lubor Niederle and Alexander Afanasyev, linked the theonym with the Czech dialectal (Moravian) stři "strong wind, air", and explained the theonym as "god of creaking, swishing".[11]
Jakobson's etymology was supported by Aleksander Gieysztor. In his search for manifestations of the cult of wind in the Slavs, he pointed to the Bulgarian wind тъмичарин, tŭmicharin, which brings darkness and blinds, and in Serbia the southern wind is called "one-eyed" (чоравац, čoravac), which may be an echo of some ancient mythological motif, to which perhaps is related the one-eyed Odin,[2] who, like Stribog, is placed in the first group of Dumézil's tripartite,[12] and who is sometimes interpreted as the god of wind, breath.[13]
Water interpretation
Omelyan Ohonóvsʹkyy[14] and Aleksander Brückner[15] rejected the wind etymology as unwarranted. Instead, they related the theonym to the Ukrainian verb стриба́ти, strybaty "to jump" and explained it as "god-jumper, god who jumps". Brückner divided the word in terms of its structure into the segment strib-, and the suffix -og, in the likeness of Svarog (svar- + -og). He pointed to a whole family of words with the strib- segment connected with jumping: стриб, stryb "jump", стриба́ти, strybaty "to jump", стрибо́к, strybok "jump", стрибну́ти, strybnuty "to jump", etc. He further indicated that he could not say anything more about the theonym.[15]
Michał Łuczyński returns to such an etymology. He points out that the Ukrainian word about such a meaning is also found in some south-western dialects of Russian. In addition, he points out that while researching the etymology of this theonym, certain words were overlooked: Russian стрыбый, strybyy "rapid, swift ("fast-dripping")", Russian dial. стрива́ть, stribat' "to flash (of lightning)", and Ukrainian стрибати, strybaty in the meaning "to escape, fly", "to jump high and far". He reconstructs the Proto-Slavic form of these words as *strybati from the Proto-Slavic stem *strū-. According to him, "to jump", "to leap" as the meaning of this word family in Ukrainian and some Russian dialects developed late, and the original meaning of these words would be "to move at high speed", and "to flow". He points to the Baltic equivalent of the meaning of Russian strybyy "rapid, swift", Lithuanian sraujùs "rapid", Latvian stràujš "fast, quick, rapid", which may indicate the probable existence of Russian stryb- "current (water)", cf. Lithuanian sraujà, Latvian strauja "current (water)". Additionally, Russian dial. stribat' "to flash (of lightning)" bears a close semantic resemblance to Serbo-Croatian strujiti "to flow (of electricity)", and quotes other linguists, according to whom Serbo-Croatian strujiti can refer to water as well as air, and figuratively also to electricity.[16]
He reconstructs the Proto-Slavic form of the theonym as *Strybogъ, which would consist of the segment *strybъ (a verb noun from *strybati "to move quickly" from "to flow, run"), and the suffix -ogъ, which had no function. The segment itself would continue the Proto-Slavic stem *stry- "to flow, run", from the Proto-Balto-Slavic *srū-, from the Proto-Indo-European *srew- "to flow". This etymology is supported by the fact that after Christianization this theonym was preserved mainly in hydronyms, which proves that the meaning of the theonym was known to the Slavs.[17]
The Old East Slavic notation of the theonym (Стрибогъ, Stribogǔ) with the vowel ⟨i⟩ instead of the expected ⟨y⟩ is explained as a mixing of these vowels, which is attested in the texts of southern East Slavic since the end of the 11th century, which is connected with the influence of the grammar of the Old Church Slavonic/Bulgarian language on the Old East Slavic language. The mixing of these vowels also occurs in hydronyms (*Stir-/*Styr) and in Ukrainian, cf. Стрый/Стрий, Stryj/Strij, Стрына/Стрина, Stryna/Strina.[18]
Dated and other etymologies
According to Mark Vey, Stribog could in fact be originally an epithet meaning literally "father god", which was used in the religions of
Such etymology is criticized by most linguists.[22] The word *stryjь is derived from PIE *stru-io- and is cognate to Lithuanian strùjus "uncle, old man", Old Irish sruith "old, venerable" and Old Welsh strutiu "old man", and the process described by Vey did not occur in Slavic language.[23] Brückner in his Dictionary noted that the word stryj was sometimes referred to as "good wind" and connected it to the core stru- "to flow" (cf. Stryj in Ukraine).[24]
There are also other interpretations of the name:
Influences
- HD 75898 − star named after Stribog
- Stribog Mountains on the Brabant Island, Antarctica
- Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić: Šuma Striborova ("Stribor's forest") – a tale, part of her collection of tales titled Croatian Tales of Long Ago.[27]
- Grand Power Stribog − firearm by the Slovak firm Grand Power s.r.o named for the deity Stribog
- Striborg - Australian black metal musician named after the deity.
References
- Notes
- ^ Old East Slavic: Стрибо́гъ, Stribogǔ
Belarusian: Стрыбог, Stryboh [strɨˈbɔx]; Russian: Стрибог, Stribog [strʲɪˈbok]; Ukrainian: Стрибог, Stryboh [strɪˈbɔɦ]) - Prussian: tāws) may come from *ph₂tḗr by moving into *te.
- References
- ^ a b Trubachyov 2003, p. 197.
- ^ a b c d Gieysztor 2006, p. 184–186.
- ^ a b Alvarez-Pedroza 2021, p. 277-278.
- ^ a b Alvarez-Pedroza 2021, p. 302.
- ^ Alvarez-Pedroza 2021, p. 374.
- ^ a b c d Łuczyński 2020, p. 129.
- ^ a b c Энциклопедия „Слова о полку Игореве” 1995.
- ^ a b c d e Jakobson 1985, p. 30, 51.
- ^ Derksen 2008, p. 421.
- ^ a b Łuczyński 2020, p. 128.
- ^ Łuczyński 2020, p. 127-128.
- ^ a b Szyjewski 2003, p. 18, 20.
- ^ de Vries 1970, p. 93.
- ^ Ohonóvsʹkyy 1876, p. 57.
- ^ a b Brückner 1985, p. 162-164.
- ^ Łuczyński 2020, p. 130-132.
- ^ Łuczyński 2020, p. 131, 133.
- ^ Łuczyński 2020, p. 132.
- ^ Vey 1958, p. 96-99.
- ^ Łuczyński 2020, p. 131, 133..
- ^ Ivanov & Toporov 1988, p. 471.
- ^ Derksen 2008, p. 470.
- ^ Gippert 2002.
- ^ Brückner & 1927, p. 521.
- ^ a b Gieysztor 2006, p. 184-186.
- ^ Brückner 1985, p. 167.
- ^ Anatoliy 2016.
Bibliography
- Vey, Mark (1958). "К этимологии древнерусского Стрибогъ". Voprosy Jazykoznanija (PDF) (in Russian). Moscow: Nauka.
- "Стрибог". Энциклопедия "Слова о полку Игореве" (in Russian). Vol. 5. Слово Даниила Заточника — Я. Дополнения. Карты. Указатели. Petersburg: Дмитрий Буланин. 1995. pp. 68–70. ISBN 5-86007-030-6.
- ISBN 3706901641.
- ISBN 978-83-235-0234-0.
- ISBN 9780899250519.
- Mallory, James P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929668-2.
- ISBN 9789004155046.
- Brückner, Aleksander (1927). Słownik etymologiczny languagea polskiego. Krakowska Spółka Wydawnicza.
- Szyjewski, Andrzej (2003). Religia Słowian. Kraków: Wydawnictwo WAM. ISBN 83-7318-205-5.
- de Vries, Jan (1970). Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (in German). Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Łuczyński, Michał (2020). Bogowie dawnych Słowian. Studium onomastyczne. Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe. ISBN 978-83-60777-83-1.
- ISBN 8301062452.
- Váňa, Zdeněk (1990). Svět slovanských bohů a démonů. Prague: Panorama. ISBN 80-7038-187-6.
- Ivanov, Vyacheslav; Toporov, Vladimir (1988). Tokarev, Sergei (ed.). Мифы народов мира. Vol. 2. К—Я. Moscow: Больша́я росси́йская энциклопе́дия.
- Ohonóvsʹkyy, Omelyán (1876). Слово о полку Игореве. Lviv.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ISBN 5-02-032661-5.
- Anatoliy, Abrashkin (2016). Русские боги (in Russian). Aegitas. ISBN 9781773131597.
- Alvarez-Pedroza, Juan Antonio (2021). Sources of Slavic Pre-Christian Religion. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-44138-5.