Светлана Жарникова – Ornamental complex of the Nort of Russia (страница 4)

A similar situation is typical for the image of the mother goddess, the central character of the plot compositions of North Russian embroidery and weaving. The semantics of this image, its changes and transformations in the process of historical development are traced and disclosed by B. A. Rybakov (Paganism of the ancient Slavs. M. 1981). One of the most significant moments in the images of the East Slavic goddesses - Rozhanitsy (in their North Russian version) is that very often these images in embroidery acquire zoomorphic-phytomorphic features. So widespread is the image of Rozhanitsa, whose body is transformed into a tree, and in the decor of women's hats it is always a golden tree with golden birds - swans (ducklings) on the branches - hands. To decipher this image, the author again uses materials of Indo-Iranian mythology ("Rigveda" and "Avesta"), as well as the circle of beliefs of the inhabitants of the Hindu Kush, as it is believed, the descendants of one of the first waves of Indo-Europeans in this region (Lelekov L.A. On the symbolism of burial vestments. Scytho-Siberian world. Novosibirsk. 1987. p.23). In the hymns of the Rig Veda (V, 78), the world tree is compared with a woman giving birth or is replaced by a woman-goddess-mother, and in the pagan beliefs of the inhabitants of the Hindu Kush, the supreme female deity Dizani (Disney, Dzhestak) was considered both a huge golden tree and a female creature. Referring to the Scythian tradition, the author of this work notes that the images of the serpentine goddess, the foremother of the Scythians, associated with the "childlike symbolism", are also marked with plant motifs. Analyzing the gold embroidery of North Russian women's headdresses, the author comes to the conclusion that the figurative solution of these embroideries does not originate from the Scythian tradition, but is much more archaic and not close to the anthropomorphic appearance of the Scythian goddess - Api, but to the goddess Aditi of the Rig Veda and to kafir goddesses - patrons of childbirth and women in labor - Dazani and Nirmali, embodied in the image of a golden tree.

Analyzing the relics of the cult of the bull and cow (widespread among many Indo-European and non-Indo-European peoples) associated with the worship of the moon and waters in the Indo-Iranian mythopoetic tradition, the author finds them numerous analogies in the folklore and mythopoetic traditions of the Eastern Slavs, in particular, the North Great Russians.

In the hymns of the Rig Veda (V, 78), the world tree is compared with a woman giving birth or is replaced by a woman-goddess-mother, and in the pagan beliefs of the inhabitants of the Hindu Kush, the supreme female deity Dizani (Disney, Dzhestak) was considered both a huge golden tree and a female creature. Referring to the Scythian tradition, the author of this work notes that the images of the serpentine goddess, the foremother of the Scythians, associated with the "childlike symbolism", are also marked with plant motifs. Analyzing the gold embroidery of North Russian women's headdresses, the author comes to the conclusion that the figurative solution of these embroideries does not originate from the Scythian tradition, but is much more archaic and not close to the anthropomorphic appearance of the Scythian goddess - Api, but to the goddess Aditi of the Rig Veda and to kafir goddesses - patrons of childbirth and women in labor - Dazani and Nirmali, embodied in the image of a golden tree. From the fact that the supreme male and female deities of the Indo-Iranian pantheon are associated with cows and bulls, it is concluded that a similar situation was probably characteristic of the archaic East Slavic pantheon. This, according to the author, is evidenced by the constantly emphasized horniness in the images of the goddesses - Rozhanitsy and the fact that the traditional form of East Slavic women's headdresses to one degree or another imitates horniness. It can also be assumed that the bull-shaped male masks depicted on the North Russian old women warriors were the visible embodiment of the image of the supreme East Slavic god Rod, whose analogues are Zeus, Dionysus and, above all, the great Vedic god Rudra in a zoomorphic embodiment by bulls. In the mythology of Hinduism, the bull is also inseparable from the image of the god Shiva-Rudra. The author concludes that in the north of Russian folk embroidery, swearing weaving and lace, not only in geometric ornament, but also in plot compositions, there are many motives that are absolutely identical to those in the ancient Indo-Iranian tradition. It is using such a richest source as Russian and, in particular, North Russian folk art that many mysterious images of the hymns of the Rig Veda and Avesta can be explained. This phenomenon of absolute uniformity of the most ancient layers of mythopoetic perception of the world, which makes it possible to decipher the poetic images of Indo-Iranian mythology with the help of visible images of North Russian peasant art up to the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. XX century, and vice versa, deciphering the images of peasant art, captured in North Russian embroidery, weaving and lace, with the help of the hymns of the Rig Veda and Avesta, mythological representations of mountain Tajiks and residents of the Hindu Kush, not explained by convergence alone, and even less explainable by unity economic and cultural type, can only be explained by the ancient ethnogenetic community of East Slavic in Indo-Iranian peoples.

The third chapter of this dissertation is devoted to the analysis of the archaic ornamentation of the trihedral-grooved carving, which has survived to this day among the Eastern Slavs and Indo-Iranian peoples.

The author pays the main attention to the decor of the North Russian spinning wheel, as a household item that carries a huge and versatile semantic load.

Based on the analysis of the trihedral-notched ornament of the North Russian spinning wheels, the following conclusions are drawn:

firstly, the spinning wheel was a sacred object in the East Slavic tradition, since derivative of the spinning wheel - the thread is sacred in almost all Indo-European peoples (thread of life, thread of fate, thread of thought, etc.) and this is especially clearly manifested in the hymns of the Rig Veda, which emphasizes the connection between spinning and weaving with the Creation of the Universe, the Earth and the act of conception human.

The phallic images present on the North Russian spinning wheels and carved or scratched inscriptions, which represent only one word denoting the male productive principle in the Russian profane vocabulary, indicate that the spinning wheel was probably a kind of symbol of the male principle participating in the process of spinning, similar to the act of creation life.

Second, the spinning wheel in the North Russian tradition, judging by the strictly fixed numerical ratios of the number of geometric elements (often a multiple of 7), was probably a kind of calendar, a symbol of an ordered, cyclical time.

Thirdly, the spinning wheel, closely associated with the symbolism of reproduction, fertility, should play a significant role in the worship of ancestors - the givers of fertility. In this capacity, she probably, for a long time, served as a grave monument. This is convinced by the fact that in Serbia back in the 18th century; Archbishop Pavel Nenadovich demanded that his flock put crosses on the graves instead of the spinning wheels “lifted up” according to the custom (Tolstoy N. I. About one Carpathian-South Slavic isopragma-linguistics. M. 1973). In addition, it seems that it is no coincidence that the Nuristan grave boards are completely identical in shape and decoration to the North Russian spinning wheels and seamstresses. And, finally, it is very significant that the carved trihedral-champled decor covering the entire surface of the stone gravestones of the Moscow Kremlin of the XIV-XV centuries is absolutely similar to the carved decor of the North Russian spinning wheels of the late XIX – early XX century.

Fourth, judging by the structure of the ornamental complexes of the North Russian spinning wheels, they were a kind of visible image of the Universe, the "tree of life" and embodied the idea of the first creation, or the first divine pair of the creators of the world. This finds a clear parallel in the hymns of the Rig Veda, which assert that the first creators of the world - Aditi (mother, father and son at the same time), bisexual Purusha and Rudra, consisting of two halves - male and female, are certainly associated with wood, wood, and the material of the Universe there were wood and yarn. (Mahabharata. Adiparva. M.-L. 1950. p. 53; Mahabharata, Issue V, Book I-II. Ashgabat. 1983-84; Guseva N. R. Hinduism: mythology and its roots. VI. 1973. No 3; Bongard-Levin G. M. Ancient Indian civilization. M. 1980. p. 42).

Fifthly, the author emphasizes that the traditions of trihedral-notched carving, preserved in the East Slavic area, and especially in the Russian North, up to the end of the XIX – early XX century, are just as typical for Ossetia, Armenia and Iran, as well as for the decoration of wooden products from Central Asia, especially Mountainous Tajikistan and, finally, for the Hindu Kush, Pakistan and North-West India. This fact seems to be very important due to the fact that the trihedral-notched ornamentation was, apparently, by no means a simple decor, dictated by the desire only to decorate a wooden product. The completely identical forms characteristic of the North Russian region, rich in forest, and of Central Asia (in particular the Pamirs), poor in construction wood, testify to the symbolic essence of the ornament. This is all the more obvious that in Central Asia (especially in Tajikistan) the wooden parts of the house (shutters, doors, gates, etc.) were necessarily ornamented with trihedral-notched carvings. Whereas in the rich forest of the Finno-Ugric area, such carving was completely absent (Sheleg V. A. North Russian woodcarving: areas and ethnographic traditions. Russian North. L. 1986. p. 55-60). Thus, the presence of the same attitude to the ornamentation of wood products and to the semantics of these ornaments also, in the author's opinion, testifies to the ancient community of peoples who preserve the traditions of trihedral-notched carving, and is not dictated by the presence of forests in their habitat.