Water bulls of Balkan and other world’s traditions: Origins of conception
The efforts to determine the origin of beliefs in the aquatic daimon called water bull (which are ethnographically attested in Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria), and for which there have not been found parallels in other Slavic traditions, led the scholarship to see it as a recidive from the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade
2016-01-01
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| Series: | Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0861/2016/0350-08611601163T.pdf |
| Summary: | The efforts to determine the origin of beliefs in the aquatic daimon called
water bull (which are ethnographically attested in Serbia, Macedonia and
Bulgaria), and for which there have not been found parallels in other Slavic
traditions, led the scholarship to see it as a recidive from the Greco-Roman
period. The two major hypotheses tried to link the stories about killing of
the water bull with: 1) the Athenian bouphonia; 2) the mithraic scene of
tauroctony. The paper discusses these hypotheses and their weaknesses, and
proposes a new approach: shifting attention towards other worlds’ traditions
in which the water bulls are attested - those of Yakuts, Mongols, Celts,
Mapuche, Khoekhoe and San - with the aim to establish the level, and
determine the type of the possible similarities between them. The results of
the comparative analysis show a very high degree of overlapping of ideas -
those that probably were parts of a pristine concept of a water bull. They
concern: the appearance, habitat, characteristics, behavior, as well as a
number of phenomena associated with water bulls (predictions, thunder,
lightning, storm, medicine). This leads the author to conclude that the
conception of the water bull is very archaic and probably originating from a
same, although uncertain source, which cannot be explained by intercultural
contacts. The beliefs and the religious and magical practice of the Khoisan
show that water bulls operate functionally - with the fullness of their
religious potential - in animistic type of religious traditions (where the
origin of the concept should be looked for). This indicates that these
animistic ideas might lie at the root of the bull-like features of the storm
gods from the posterior polytheistic religions. Further investigation in this
direction is proposed. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br.
47016: Interdisciplinarno istraživanje kulturnog i jezičkog nasleđa Srbije.
Izrada multimedijalnog portala ‘Pojmovnik srpske kulture’] |
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| ISSN: | 0350-0861 2334-8259 |