Stribog

Stribog (Russian Стрибог Stribog, Old East Slavic Стрибогъ, possibly Polish Strzybóg) is the god of Slavic mythology mentioned in three East Slavic sources, whose cult could also exist in Poland. Nowadays he is interpreted as a god of wind who distributes wealth.

Stribog
god of wind
Stribog, Andrey Shishkin, 2014.
Equivalents
Greek equivalentAeolus, Anemoi
Roman equivalentVenti
Hinduism equivalentVayu

Sources

Stribog appears for the first time in the 12th-century Primary Chronice together with other gods to whom Vladimir the Great erected statues:[1]

And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kiev, 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.

Old East Slavic text

И 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.

— Primary Chronice

In The Tale of Igor's Campaign winds are called Stribog's grandsons:[2]

O Russian land! You are already far beyond the hills. Here the winds, grandsons of god Stribog, blow the arrows from the sea against the regiments of brave Igor. The earth groans. the rivers become turbid. Dust covers the prairie.

Old East Slavic text

О Руская землѣ! Уже за шеломянемъ еси! Се вѣтри, Стрибожи внуци, вѣютъ съ моря стрѣлами на храбрыя пълкы Игоревы. Земля тутнетъ, рѣкы мутно текуть, пороси поля прикрываютъ.

— The Tale of Igor's Campaign

The word of John Chrysostom also mentions Stribog:[3]

... others believe in Stribog, Dazbog and Pereplut, who drink in their corners, forgetting the Creator God (...) and so cheerful of their idols

Additional evidence for the cult of Stribog is to be found in Stribož (Стрибоже) in Novgorod Oblast and a village in Zhytomyr Oblast, the Stribožskaya river (Стрибожская) in Kiev Oblast, Stribože lake (Стрибоже) in Russia and the Polish village Strzyboga and the Striboc stream discovered in the 13th century near Tczew. The Polish toponyms can also be proof of the Pan-Slavic range of the cult of Stribog.[4][2]

Etymology and interpretations
Christian propaganda performance of Stribog, Georg A. Schleusing, La religion ancienne et moderne des Moscovites, 1698.

There are many interpretations of the name of this God. According to Mark Vey, Stribog could in fact be originally an epithet meaning literally "father god", which was used in the religions of Indo-Europeans to describe the god of the bright sky. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European term for "god father" is *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr (cp. Roman Jupiter (Iūpiter, Diespiter), Greek Zeus (Zeus Pater) and Vedic Dyaus (Dyáuṣ-pitṛ́); sometimes in reverse order) and its local variety *ph₂tḗr bhagos. After the so-called Iranian inversion, Slavic peoples abandoned the word *dyḗus and replaced it with the word bog, which is borrowed from Iranian languages (from the PIE. *bhagos) and which appears as a second part of the name. Proto-Indo-Europan *ph₂tḗr ("father") is generally also considered to be absent in the Slavic languages (replaced by the synonym *átta → otec) or even in the Balto-Slavic languages,[lower-alpha 1] but according to Vey, *ph₂tḗr turned into the Slavic word *stryjь, which now means "uncle, father's brother" (*ph₂tḗr → *ptri- → stri-) and is the first part of the name. Stribog could therefore be the Slavic god of sky.[5] The probability of such an etymology of the first term is also indicated by other religious and Slavic scholars,[2][6] but such etymology is criticized by most linguists.[7][lower-alpha 2] 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).[8]

According to Roman Jakobson, the stri- root can be derived from the Proto-Indo-European core *ster-, which in Latin appears in the verb sterno meaning "spread", "distribute", "extend", "sow", and in Slavic languages it appears, for example, as Polish rozpostrzeć, or Russian простереть/prosteret'.[9] In such a case, Stribog would be a dividing god [of wealth], a complementary god to Dažbóg – the god of wealth. Jakobson ties the pair of Dažbog and Stribog with the Vedic couple Bhaga and Amça or the Greek couple Aisa and Poros. The proof of the relationship of Stribog with the wind is to be his Iranian counterpart Vayu, who in Avesta says "I'm called the one that spreads".[2] Ivanov i Toporov placed Stribog in first group of the Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis, which groups the chief deities, deities who look after the community, deities who watch over the distribution of goods.[10] In Bulgaria, the tъmičarin wind carries darkness and blindness, and in Serbia, the southern wind is called "one-eyed" (ćoravac), which may be an echo of some ancient mythological motif and may be related to the one-eyed Odin,[2] who, like Stribog, is also placed in the first group of Dumézil's hypothetical tripartite[10] and who was sometimes interpreted as the god of wind, breath.[11] Berneker took the root out of the word stroj (within the meaning of "to make, do") and interpreted the name as "the manager of the good". Schütz derived the name from the same word, but interpreted it as "the recipient of the good", which could correspond to the role of the Stribog in The Tale of Igor's Campaign.[12]

There are also other interpretations of the name: Zelenin connected the stri- root with the word стрити/stryty (Proto-Slavic *sъtьri) "to annihilate, destroy," and considered Stribog to be "annihilating, destroying god," the god of war. This view was supported by Orlov and Borovsky,[4] this may also be indicated by the fact that Vayu is also worshipped as the god of war, of the dead, of the harvest, but also of the good and bad fate, as he connects sky and earth.[2] The name was also associated with the nickname of Ahura Mazda Śribaya/Stribaya ("god of beauty", "god worthy of honor", cf. Sanskrit śri (श्री, "beauty")), which is supposed to be an Iranian influence and ultimately come from *ph₂tḗr bhagos,[4][13] but this etymology is problematic. Brückner also suggested a connection with the strib- root related to jumping (cf. Ukrainian стрибати/strybaty "to jump"),[14] but it was also translated as "a god who revives nature".[4] Pisani reconstructed the name as *strigo-bogъ, in which *strigo- would correspond to the Latin frigus ("frost, cold") and in that case Stribog would be the god of cold.[2]

Legacy

Notes
  1. According to some linguists, Baltic words for "father" (Lithuanian: tėvas, Latvian: tēvs, Prussian: tāws) may come from *ph₂tḗr by moving into *te.
  2. The Slavic word stryj is derived from Proto-Indo-European *stru-io- and is cognate with Lithuanian: strujus "uncle, old man", Old Irish: sruith "old, honorable" and Old Welsh: strutiu "old man"

References
  1. Brückner 1985, p. 248.
  2. Gieysztor 2006, p. 184-186.
  3. Brückner 1985, p. 165.
  4. "ФЭБ: Соколова. Стрибог // Энциклопедия "Слова о полку Игореве". Т. 5. — 1995". feb-web.ru. Retrieved 2020-11-02.
  5. Vey 1958, p. 96-99.
  6. Mallory & Adams 2006, p. 431.
  7. Derksen 2008, p. 470.
  8. Brückner & 1927, p. 521.
  9. Derksen 2008, p. 421.
  10. Szyjewski 2003, p. 18, 20.
  11. de Vries 1970, p. 93.
  12. Váňa 1990, p. 78.
  13. Brückner 1985, p. 167.
  14. Brückner 1985, p. 164.
  15. Анатолий, Абрашкин (2016). Русские боги (in Russian). Aegitas. ISBN 9781773131597.

Bibliography
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