Ideologija ir stabmeldystė

A series of articles has already been published in recent years by the author on the notion of cosmogony as implied by Lithuanian term for it, sutvėrimas. This polysemous term has at least three gross branches of meanings: not only the most usual ‘fencing (in, off, around)’ but also ‘coagulation, solidifying, hardening’ and ‘catching, clenching (by hand)’, and all of these meanings are reflected in traditional views of creation. However, both the very cosmogony and still more various processes of smaller scale corresponding to different meanings of sutvėrimas (and the verb sutverti) may have also negative sense, that of stagnation, hardening, stiffness, stop of the life flow. Hence the notion of freedom, conversely, as softening, thawing, melting and free flow. Therefore, human being either stays in this definitively hardened world which has become a prison to his soul or begins to loosen his grip on it and to thaw gradually himself. On the cosmic scale, this hope and objective is eschatological, and on the personal scale, soteriological, that is, aimed at deliverance and freedom which in this sense is the opposite of cosmogony. The very ‘createdness’ in its different hues then is conceived negatively, as ‘madeness’ and artificiality, as antithesis of freedom and obstacle to it. And its principal manifestations in the inner world, then, are ideology and idolatry, the two aspects of one and the same phenomenon looked at from slightly different angles. That is exactly the subject of this article (which continues two previous, “Without ground, without support” (Razauskas 2022a) and “Ideas, Ideals, and Ideologies” (Razauskas 2022b)).Per pastaruosius kelerius ar net jau keliolika metų autoriaus paskelbta ištisa eilė straipsnių, tiesiogiai ar netiesiogiai kalbančių apie pasaulio sutvėrimą ir paties šio žodžio pagrįstumą šiuo atžvilgiu: sutverti reiškia ne tik ‘pastatyti tvorą, apsupti tvora’ ar pan., bet ir ‘sutirštinti, sustandinti, sukietinti, sutvirtinti’, ir ‘pagauti, suimti, sugniaužti ranka’, ir visos šios reikšmių atšakos su atitinkamais mitiniais vaizdiniais sudaro tradicinį pasaulio sutvėrimo vaizdyną. Tačiau tiek pats pasaulio sutvėrimas, tiek mažesnio masto veiksmai bei vyksmai, nusakomi įvairiomis veiksmažodžio sutverti reikšmėmis, turi ir neigiamą pusę – mena sąstingį, sustabarėjimą, užkietėjimą, su(si)kaustymą, gyvybinės tėkmės stabdymą bei tvenkimą. Tokiu atveju tai, kas tapo pernelyg su-tverta, pasidaro būtina iš-tverti. Naglio Kardelio žodžiais tariant, pasaulį „žmogus gali iš-tverti dvejopai: pasitelkęs kalambūrą, pasakyčiau, kad žmogus pasaulį arba iš-tveria, t. y. iškenčia, pakelia, tiesiog išbūva kantriai atlaikydamas jo svorį, arba iš-tveria, t. y. išardo, suskaldo, papildamas į šipulius tai, ką Dievas buvo su-tvėręs“ (Kardelis 1998: 40; išskyrimai N. K.), arba veikiau ką pats buvo su-tvėręs Dievo vardu. Taigi žmogus arba pasilieka apibrėžtame tvariame pasaulyje, kartu įkalinęs jame savo sielą, arba nebeapsikentęs pagaliau paleidžia gniaužtus ir nubunda į nestveriantį sąmoningumą, nebestingstančią gyvą sąmonę, grįžta į pirmapradę nesutvertąją būtį. Tokia mąstymo ir vilties kryptis pasaulio atžvilgiu yra eschatologiška, t. y. nutaikyta į pasaulio pabaigą, o asmens atžvilgiu – soteriologiška, t. y. nutaikyta į išsilaisvinimą, į laisvę, kuri šia prasme yra tiesioginė sutvėrimo priešybė. Pats sutvėrimas ir sutvertumas įvairiais atžvilgiais tokiu atveju suprantamas neigiamai – kaip laisvės priešprieša ir išsilaisvinimo kliūtis. Esminės jo apraiškos vidiniame pasaulyje – ideologija ir stabmeldystė. Straipsnis tiesiogiai tęsia du ankstesnius – „Be pagrindo, be atramos. Dvasiniai su-tvėrimo ir iš-tvėrimo kontekstai“ (Razauskas 2022a) ir „Idėjos, idealai ir ideologijos“ (Razauskas 2022b)

Mitiniai vaizdiniai Kristijono Donelaičio Metuose: paukščiai

The article deals with the traditional (folkloric, mythological) images of birds in Kristijonas Donelaitis’ The Seasons, mainly in the first part, “Spring Joys”. The article consists of three sections: the first deals with lines 1.107–108 and 142–144 of The Seasons, which refer to the folkloric imitation of nightingales; second — lines 1.111–114 and 127–130 (taking into account 1.80–84 and 98–104), where the nightingale is compared to sparrows, while the singing nightingale is an equivalent to the būrai (Krizas) worshiping God; third — lines 1.155–201, where Donelaitis describes the election of the “bird king”. All of these topics are folkloric, and the latter two have direct links with mythology.Straipsnyje nagrinėjami tradiciniai (tautosakiniai, mitologiniai) paukščių vaizdiniai Kristijono Donelaičio Metuose, esmiškai pirmojoje dalyje „Pavasario linksmybės“. Straipsnį sudaro trys skyriai: pirmajame aptariamos Metų 1.107–108 ir 142–144 eilutės, kur minimas tautosakinis lakštingalos pamėgdžiojimas; antrajame – 1.111–114 ir 127–130 eilutės (atsižvelgiant ir į 1.80–84 bei 98–104 eilutes), kur lakštingala palyginama su žvirbliu, o giedančiai lakštingalai prilyginamas Dievą garbinantis būras (Krizas); pagaliau tračiajame – 1.155–201 eilutėse Donelaičio aprašomi „paukščių karaliaus“ rinkimai. Visos šios temos yra tautosakinės, o dvi pastarosios turi ir tiesioginių sąsajų su mitologija

Tapsmas “nuo šilimos”. Viena lietuvių ir indų kosmogoninė paralelė su atitinkamomis etimologinėmis užuominomis: liet. tàpti – sen. ind. tápati

Some semantic arguments for connecting Lith. tàpti ‘to become’ with Skr. tápati ‘warms, heats’, tapas– ‘(creative) heat’ (IE *tep– ‘to be warm’) are presented in the article. On the one hand, Lith. tàpti is used in the cosmogonic sense, on the other, cosmogony is unambiguously connected with warmth and heat in some Lithuanian sources (to begin with S. Daukantas). Skr. tapas–, as is well known, also means just cosmogonic heat in the Rig Veda (X.129.3).There are still some additional, secondary arguments. These consists of brooding connotations of Skr. tapas–. In its turn, the cosmogonic warmth in the mentioned and some other Lithuanian sources is expressed by the image of brooding too. The main concept underlying the “creation by heat” is that of hardening, consolidation, Lith. tvérti. And this Lithuanian verb has not only usuall cosmogonic notion but is used by village folk just in the sense of “hardening”, i.e. brooding of an egg as well. Etc.Straipsnio objektas – “kosmogoninės šilumos” vaizdiniai kai kuriose indoeuropiečių tradicijose, kaip antai senovės indų bei lietuvių, leidžiantys kelti klausimą apie lietuvių žodžio tàpti, vartojamo ir kosmogonine prasme (ir neturinčio vienareikšmės etimologijos), galimą ryši su sen. indų “kūrybine kaitra” tápas–, šaknies veiksmažodžio tápati ‘kaičia, kaitina, šildo’. Straipsnio tikslas – išdėstyti kai kuriuos semantinius (fonetika šiuo atveju nesudaro keblumų) argumentus, kuriais remiantis tokį klausimą, regis, galima kelti. Metodas – lyginamasis bei iš dalies tipologinis. Griežtų išvadų straipsnyje nedaroma, nes jo tikslas, kaip sakyta, – tik išdėstyti kai kuriuos argumentus ir iškelti patį klausimą, galutinį atsakymą į kurį galės duoti nuodugnesni tyrinėjimai

MAIRONIO MĮSLĖ

One strophe of the Lithuanian poetry patriarch Maironis is analysed in the article. Firstly, attention is drawn to some Lithuanian mythological notions used in the strophe, namely of the Sun as a personified heavenly queen, of the dawn as woven fabric, of the gold as a traditional attribute of the sun and dawn etc. Secondly, notice is taken of the formal features of the strophe (alliteration), one line of which, describing the sun as “wraped oneself into red veil woven with gold” (apsisupusi šydu, auksu austu, raudonu), almost precisely coinsides with the traditional riddle “warped blue, woven red, strewn with gold” (mėlynai austa, raudonai atausta, auksu išbarstyta). Furthermore, the solution of the riddle is aušra (“dawn”), and the title of the Maironis’ verse is Saulei tekant (“Rising of the sun”), i.e. “Dawning”. Thus, Maironis has in the verse presented a riddle and, taking into account this revelation of his previously unnoticed particulary close relation with the traditional lore, himself still remains a riddle.Straipsnio objektas – kai kurie Maironio poezijos mitiniai vaizdiniai, tiesiogiai vedantys į baltų mitologiją ir tautosaką, remiantis soneto „Saulei tekant“ antrojo posmo pirmosiomis dviem eilutėmis. Tikslas – parodyti, kad Maironis sekė senąja tradicija daug giliau ir atidžiau nei iki šiol apskritai buvo įsivaizduojama. Straipsnio pabaigoje atkreipiamas dėmesys į vieną kone pažodinį sekimą tradicinėmis lietuvių mįslėmis, ir ne tik turinio bei kalbos, bet ir žanro požiūriu – patį eilėraštį esant sudarytą kaip mįslę. Dėl to Maironis ir pats darosi vis didesnė mįslė

„Pasaulio sutvėrimo“ vaizdiniai – konceptualaus mąstymo mitinis pamatas

The paper aims at the psychological connotations of mythological images of the world creation. One of the most popular ones, for instance, that is, the image of creation as consolidation, solidifying, fastening of some liquid, watery primal matter amounts to the conscious ordering of the psychical data thus making a solid “cosmos” out of the “chaos” of unconscious perception. Sometimes the world creation is imagined also as fencing it around, enclosing from the surrounding chaos (cf. the Northern mið-garðr, Old English middan-geard etc.), in other words, as de-termining or de-fining it, that is, making a de-finition of it. Again, the world creation can be imagined as seizing and squeezing it by hand (out of clay, in particular), and namely this image constitutes the idea of “concept” and “conception” (Latin con-ceptio < con-cipio, capio “seize”, similarly in many languages) and, therefore, grounds conceptual thinking as such. On the other hand, mysticism refers “to the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is. The concepts are taken too seriously; they are used as tools to solidify our world and ourselves” (as expressed by Chögyam Trungpa, the representative of the Vajrayāna Buddhism). In its turn, the spiritual enlightenment and liberation are often representend figuratively by images akin to these of eschatology.Straipsnio objektas – tradiciniai pasaulio sukūrimo vaizdiniai kaip žmogaus psichinės raidos, jo sąmonėjimo figūratyviniai modeliai. Pirmiausia tai pasakytina apie patį populiariausią iš tokių vaizdinių – kosmogoniją kaip pasaulio sutvirtinimą, būtent sutvėrimą, iš skysto chaoso; jį galima laikyti atspindint pažinimą kaip sąmoningos tvarkos įvedimą suvokime. Tačiau kosmogonija kartais pavaizduojama ir kaip pasaulio aptvėrimas, jo sutvėrimas tvora, įsisavintos teritorijos, „kosmoso“ atitvėrimas nuo nepažįstamo, svetimo chaoso, o tokie vaizdiniai vėlgi eina būdingomis kognityvinės veiklos metaforomis. Pagaliau mitinis Kūrėjas pasaulį gali tiesiog sutverti ranka, pagniaužydamas ir suspausdamas, ir kaip tik tokie vaizdiniai daugelyje tradicijų grindžia koncepcijos, konceptualumo, konceptualaus mąstymo sampratą. Kita vertus, konceptuali pasaulėvoka, mistinių tradicijų požiūriu, stingdo, tvardo mąstymą ir yra kliūtis gyvam pažinimui, atviram sąmoningumui, tiesioginiam Būties patyrimui, o tokiai kliūčiai pašalinti skirtos dvasinės praktikos savo ruožtu pasitelkia vaizdinius, artimus eschatologiniams, t. y. vaizdiniams apie pasaulio galą

Vedų “širdies vandenynas”: įvaizdžio sąsajos

The image of the “ocean of heart” occurs in Rigveda IY.58.5 (sacrifice flows hṛ́dyāt samudrā́t “from the ocean of heart”), 11 (sacrifice grounds everything samudré hṛdy àntár ā́yuṣi “in the ocean, in the heart, in the midst of life”); X.5.1 (ékaḥ samudró dharúṇo rayīṇā́m asmád dhṛdó bhū́rijanmā ví caṣṭe “the one ocean, the bearer of riches, the producer of many, speaks from our heart”) and, according to J. Gonda and T. J. Elizarenkova, may be traced in X.177.1, perhaps also in 1.159.4.Firstly, as is well known and has been exhaustively shown by J. Gonda, the Vedic concept of the heart comprises the wide range of psychological meanings, such as (spiritual) perception, cognition, comprehension, sensation, intuition, vision etc., and, as H. Grassmann has already observed, is often paralleled by mānas-. (Such psychologically broadened concept of the heart is widespread and usual almost all over the world.) This allows us to look at the Vedic “ocean of heart” as an “ocean of soul”.Secondly, the meaning ‘ocean’ ascribed to Vedic samudrá- is quite arbitrary. The word consists of prefix sam- and the heteroclytic noun udán- ‘water’ (cf. its cognates Lettish udens, Lith. vanduō, -eñs ‘water’ etc.). Therefore, the Vedic samudrá- may be defined more broadly as ‘(large) body of water’ including ‘ocean’, ‘sea’, ‘lake’ etc.This, then, immediately reminds us of Germanic words for ‘soul’ (English soul, German Seele etc.) deriving from *saiwalō, which, in its turn, comes from *saiwaz ‘see, lake’, represented in English sea, German die See ’sea’, der See ‘lake’ etc.From the other part of the world, cf. description of the trigram “Lake” from the Chinese I ling (“The Book of Changes”) by Lama Anagarika Govinda: “[...] the Lake gives joy to the heart of man by responding to the smallest as well as to the largest thing, mirroring his world and his emotions through the transparent medium of its shining surface”. Expressive examples of the image of “reflecting surface of the soul” may be found, among others, in Taoist sources up to our days.In modern analytical psychology the images of the lake and of the sea are well known symbols of the soul too, namely of the collective unconscious, and partly quite for the same reason. In the words of C. G. Jung, “the sea is the symbol of the collective unconscious, because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface”. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, “the symbolisation of the unconscious by water with its mirror like surface is of course based in the final analysis on a projection. Nevertheless, the analogies are astonishingly meaningful. Just as we cannot ‘sce’ into the depths of the waters, so the deeper areas of the unconscious are also invisible to us; we can draw only indirect conclusions about them. But on the surface, on the threshold area between consciousness and the unconscious, dream images appear spontaneously, not only seeming to give us information about the depths but also mirroring our conscious personality”. Cf. also Mary M. Watkins: “Water itself originates no movement but is itself infinitely movable. It is able to receive and record impressions. Its colorlessness, odorlessness, and shapelessness make it the perfect element against which one can see other things. In order for us to be more receptive to the imaginal we can pretend that apart of us must become more like water. That would first mean that it must learn to cease the movement it itself originates. We are all the time initiating movement by thinking thoughts, doing activities, being involved in daydreams. We rise and fall, flow, and swirl. [...] When part of us tries to become as water it gains (through its own cessation of initiating movement) the ability to reflect. [...] You can actually pretend you are a body of water. At first notice how your usual thoughts and preoccupations create waves and ripples - flowing, curling, whirling activity. Gradually try to become still. Your ripples become slower and steadier. Feel yourself in these ripples”.As the ripples and waves on the surface of water destroy its capacity to reflect so the ripples and waves of soul hinder the mind’s capacity of reflection. Cf. in this sense the main Russian verb for ‘agitation, excitement’ волноваться, originally meaning namely ‘to rise in waves, to wave’ (from the noun волнá ‘wave’).Essentially the same image we find in Hinduist speculations on the concept of vṛttis as waves of consciousness producing kleśas and hindering the direct perception of the Self, as also in the similar images concerning the Buddhist ālaya vijn̄āna equated by Th. Stcherbatsky to the Western psyche, etc.After all, the Vedic udán- ‘water’ consisting in samudrá- can itself acquire the meaning ‘wave’ as, for instance, has appropriated its cognate Latin unda.We can maintain, therefore, that the Vedic “ocean of heart” has for its ground the same ancient and widespread (archetypal?) image of reflecting soul as a body of water reaching, as we can guess from its Germanic an Slavic examples, the Indoeuropean antiquity.Moreover, the same image expressed almost in the same words as the Vedic one occurs in Dante’s nel lago del cor “in the lake of (my) heart” (Inferno I.20). That at least makes an impression, independently of its particular relation to the Vedic equivalent.Straipsnio objektas - vedšikas “širdies vandenyno” įvaizdis. Tikslas - nubrėžti platesnį šio įvaizdžio sąsajų kontekstą, kuriame jį būtų galima interpretuoti tiek prasmės, tiek kilmės atžvilgiais. Pagrindinė straipsnio išvada - ta, kad šį įvaizdį reikia sieti su pasaulyje, skyrium ir vėliau Indijoje, plačiai žinomu sielos, psichikos, sąmonės prilyginimu vandens paviršiui, skaidriam bei atspindinčiam, kai jis ramus, ir drumstam bei sumišusiam, kai banguotas

Filosofai, poetai ir raganos

There are some metaphors used already in many ancient traditions on the ground of which the concepts of philosopher, poet, and witch, or wizard, can be compared. Two of them are shortly dicussed here. The first is the metaphor of “seeing’: ancient Greek philosophers, as also ancient Indian sages, speak of their occupation as consisting in the capacity of mental sight; poets from earliest times call themselves seers; many nouns for witch and wizard in different languages derive from the verbs meaning ‘to see’. The second metaphor discussed here is ‘flying’: ancient Greek philosophers, as also ancient Indian seers, speak of their mental flights; poets do fly and confess of having wings from the times immemorial until nowadays; and some of Lithuanian witches were accused of having flown and the bird’s feathers found in their hairs were considered as an evidence for that (not to speak of the well-known feathers in the garment of Siberian shamans, American Indian cheafs and wizards, etc.). It seems, then, that philosophers, poets and witches, or wizards, represent one and the same mental, religious, and cultural phenomenon the different conception and interpretation of which depends primarily on the conscious awareness of a methaphor.Straipsnyje iškeliamos ir aptariamos dvi metaforos, kurių pagrindu galima gretinti tradicines filosofo, poeto ir raganos (raganiaus, žynio) sampratas. Pirmoji iš metaforų – „regėjimas“: tiek senovės graikų filosofai, tiek senovės indų išminčiai savo užsiėmimą sieja su regėjimu, save vadina regėtojais; nuo seniausių laikų ligi dabar apie pakylėtus dvasios regėjimus kalba poetai; „regėjimo“ sąvoka remiasi žynių, pranašų bei raganų pavadinimai įvairiose kalbose. Antroji iš metaforų – „skrydis“ ir jo atributas „sparnai“: tiek senovės graikų filosofai, tiek senovės indų išminčiai mintimis „skraidė“; apie „dvasios sparnus“ bei „dvasios skrydį“ kalba poetai; skraidymas buvo vienas iš raganų teismuose joms prikišamų nusikaltimų, o plaukuose aptiktos plunksnos – vienas iš svarbių įkalčių. Susidaro įspūdis, kad filosofai, poetai ir raganos – tai vis to paties dvasinio reiškinio atmainos, kurias vieną nuo kitos esmiškai skiria metaforos reikšmės supratimas arba nesupratimas

Vediškojo puraṁ-dará- atitikmenys baltų tradicijoje: mitinė vaizdinio prigimtis

As is well known, Vedic thundergod Indra used to “break citadels (pur)”, therefore he was given a nickname puraṁdará- ‘the citadel-breaker’. This epithet is by some scholars connected with the downfall of such Hindu valley cities as, for example, Harapa, and ascribed to the invading Arian image. The others have criticised such a view on different grounds, one of which consists of the fact that the concept puraṁdará- deals not with historical material altogether but with the mythological one (and if it has some historical links at all, these might be only secondary projections of the mythological content). For example, the Lithuanian (and Lettish too) folk tradition presents some motives of the thundergod Perkūnas breaking the pilis ‘castle’ of his antagonist Velnias, whose habit to construct stone ramparts and dams is well known. As is also well known, Lith.pilis (and Lett. pils too) is the precise etymological equivalent of the Vedic pur- (cf. purí-); and, furthermore, the name of the mentioned antagonist of Lithuanian thundergod, that is Velnias (var. Velas), according to Russian scholars V. Ivanov and V. Toporov, is etymologically connected with the name of the Vedic thundergod Indra’s antagonist Vala-, meaning ‘rock’, which in Lithuanian again corresponds to uolá (lE *u̯el-). Moreover, Lith. uolá (cf. Lett. valnis ‘rampart’ from the same IE *u̯el-) can also indicate a ‘rampart’, or ‘wall of stones’ (cf. Lith.pýlimas ‘rampart’ : pilís), which, in its turn, corresponds to the primary meaning of the Vedic pur- (according to O. Schrader, W Rau etc.). Thus the epithet puraṁdará- becomes included into the main stream of Vedic images of Indra destroying Vala and, on a wider horizon, into the context of the so called “principal myth”. Furthermore, Lith. uolá has also the meaning of ‘hardened soil’ or ‘petrified ground’, and in RV IV.28.5, due to the Indra’s victory over his enemy and the destruction of their stone enclosures, “the earth opens”. Lithuanian Perkūnas (or his later substitutes), in his turn, as the first thunder in spring, used to “open the earth” for vegetation to sprout out. And the verb Lith. ati-daryti ‘open’, according to one of the main etymologies, is connected with Lith. dirti ‘flay, flog, thrash’ (cf. dirva ‘soil, field, arable land’) and, finally, with Vedic drṇanti ‘bursts, causes to burst, tears’ (ct. drti- ‘skin of leather’, dara- ‘hole in the ground, cave’ etc.), to which the second part of the composition puraṁ-dará- derives. Therefore, in different (though interconnected) mythological contexts, the Lithuanian equivalents to both parts of the Vedic compound noun puraṁ-dará- have be’en found, thus, by the way, altogether removing the ground for its historical interpretation.Straipsnio objektas - “Rigvedos” griausmavaldžio Indros epitetas puraṁ-dará-ir jo atitikmenys lietuvių tautosakoje bei kalboje. Tikslas - visų pirma tiesiog atkreipti dėmesį į tokius atitikmenis, o kartu, jais remiantis, pagrįsti ne istorinę (užkariautojai arijai triuškina senosios Indo slėnio civilizacijos miestus), bet įdėm mitinę kalbamo Indros epiteto prigimtį. Darbo, kadangi ji iš esmės sudaro vediškų ir baltiškų duomenų palyginimas, metodas - lyginamasis. Rezultatai, nekalbant apie aptiktas konkrečias įtikinamas sąsajas, kartu apskritai padrąsina ieškoti kur kas gausesnių ir gilesnių atitikmenų tarp vedikosios ir lietuviškosios tradicijų, kurie savo ruožtu leistų geriau apčiuopti abiejų bendrą indoeuropietišką branduolį, ne taip jau negrįžtamai užmirštą, kaip iš pirmo žvilgsnio galėtų pasirodyti

Indoiranėnų mitinio vėjo atitikmenys lietuvių tautosakoje (užuominos gilesniam tyrimui)

Firstly, attention is drawn to the formal correspondence between the Indo-Iranian denomination of wind *vās- (Sanskrit vāys-, Iranian vayu-) nil lE u̯ē-i̯ú- and the Lithuanian one véjas nil lE u̯ē-i̯̯o-, taking into account the Lithuanian dialect forms véjus and vėjùs in addition.Then two separate mythological themes are considered. The first is the Indian story of Hanuman, Vāyu’s son, in the Ramāyana VII.35-36, on the one side, and the Lithuanian folk story of Vėjas and his sons, on the other. Shortly, Hanuman was punished by Indra to death for some mischievous pranks, his father Vāyu retreated into a cave for mourning over his dead son, but this retreat of the Wind, who was the “life-force” at the same time, caused total destruction in the world, therefore Prajapati, the Lord of Beings, finally revived and resurrected Hanuman, Vāyu returned to the world, and the life flowed on. Concerning the Lithuanian Vėjas, his sons were punished by God (Dievas) to death for pride, their father Vėjas retreated into a hollow for mourning over his dead sons, but this caused total failure of crops in the world, so Dievas (cf. here the notion of Prajapati as replacing the old Vedic Dyaus, an equivalent of Lith. Dievas) finally had to promise Vejas his sons to be resurrected at the end of the world (supposedly the Christian influence), and the Wind went out from the hollow, and everything came to life again.The second theme consists in the Iranian (Pahlavi) Mēnōk i Khrat 1.73-74: a soul of a deceased at the bridge to paradise meets two Winds, the beneficial Vāy who blows from the paradise and and leads the good soul on its way to it, and the evil Vd)’ who blows the sinner’s soul off the bridge. In Lithuanian folklore, in its turn, there is a fable, written down in village Ožkabaliai in 1872, of a corresponding content: paradise (rojus) lies in the east, a narrow bridge leads to it, and two giants are waiting for a soul at the gate of paradise, the good Auštra, whose name could be interpreted either as the very “Dawn” or namely the “Wind of Dawn” (cf. auštrinis “the north-east wind”), and the evil Vėjas, who blows the soul of a sinner off the bridge.The mentioned correspondences remain uninterpreted in respect of origin, contenting this time with the usual remark that the Baltic folklore seems to be of worth for comparative Oriental, not to say the Indo-European, studies indeed.Straipsnio objektas - du indoiranėnų mitiniai siužetai, vienas iš senovės indų epo “Ramajanos” ir vienas iš pehlevio kalba užrašyto iranėnų šaltinio Mēnāk i Khrat, atitinkamai palyginami su dviem lietuvių mitologinėmis sakmėmis. Straipsnio tikslas - išryškinti minėtuose tekstuose slypinčius sutapimus ir eilinį kartą atkreipti dėmesį į lietuvių tautosakos svarbą lyginamiesiems Rytų-Vakarų ir apskritai indoeuropiečių tradicijų tyrinėjimams. Darbo metodas - lyginamasis iš esmės. Rezultatai liudija indoiranėnų ir baltų tradicijas turint kur kas daugiau ir smulkesnių panašumų nei įprasta tikėtis, kurių interpretacija (bendras paveldas ar tarpusavio įtakos, jei taip, tai tiesioginės ar tarpiškos, jų laikas bei geografija ir t. t.) yra tolesnių, gilesnių tyrinėjimų uždavinys

Medis – mergina, nuotaka. Dendromitologinė apybraiža

[article in Lithuanian; only abstract in English] This article is the third in a series on the same subject by the author. The previous articles dealt with the sexes of the trees, their sexual interrelations and the special case of the Girl-Tree (Woman-Tree) based on some tree species. In the present text, an overall image of the Girl-Tree – that is, a girl in the guise of a tree, or a tree in the role of a girl – is discussed, both by the means of a simple comparison and sheer identification. The point of reference are Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) and partly Eastern Slavic (Byelorussian and Russian) traditions, though some examples from different parts of the world are also presented for providing a wider context. [straipsnis lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Apie tai, kad mitiniame pasaulėvaizdyje medžiai turi „lytis“ (jos dažniausiai priklauso nuo medžio pavadinimo gramatinės giminės) ir gali sueiti į lytinius santykius, tuoktis, taip pat gali santykiauti žmonės su medžiais, jau buvo kalbėta1. Iš dalies jau kalbėta ir apie medžio-moters mitinį vaizdinį atskirai konkrečių medžių rūšių (ievos, verbos, blindės) pamatu2. Taip pat apie mitinių sąsajų prisodrintą medžio-motinos vaizdinį3. Tačiau medis gali būti lyginamas su moterimi ne tik minėtais atvejais, bet apskritai. Apie tai straipsnyje ir kalbama: apie medžio prilyginimą moteriai ir atvirkščiai – moters medžiui, nuo paprasto sugretinimo iki visiško sutapatinimo. Pirmiausia lietuvių, baltų ir artimiausių kaimynų tradicijose, bet nevengiant ir platesnių kontekstų