ІНДОЄВРОПЕЙСЬКЕ КОРІННЯ ЯЗИЧНИЦЬКИХ БОЖЕСТВ СХІДНИХ СЛОВ’ЯН

Abstract

The article reveals that the pagan deities of European nations come from more ancient images – the deities of the Indo-Europeans. ItIt is known that along with the disintegration of the Indo-European language community into smaller language families and languages, images of Indo-European deities continued to exist, spread and change. Nevertheless, several main deities were identified in which Indo-Europeans believed: the Heavenly Father – the main deity, the Thunderer God – the god of the warriors, the God of Earthly Forces – the god of the underworld, wealth and abundance, the Great Goddess, the River Goddess and the Wild Deity. Furthermore, the information about the pagan deities of the Eastern Slavs: Perun, Veles, Stribog, Veles, Khors, Dazhbog, Svarog, Simargl and Mokosh, was analyzed in order to reveal similar features with Indo-European deities. During the analysis, it was found that Perun is the same Thunder God. In turn, the Eastern Slavs have Strybog as their Heavenly Father, and Veles is the God of Earthly forces. At the same time, there are reasons to believe that Khors, Dazhbog, and Svarog were formed during the Iranian influence on the Proto-Slavs in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Regarding Simargl and Mokosh, we can state that we do not have enough information to confidently state that or other origin of these deities. However, we assume that Mokosh is a Indo-European River Goddess, and Simargl is the so-called «Wild Deity». The study concluded that the Indo-European language community believed in several deities before its disintegration: the Heavenly Father, the God of Thunder, the God of Earthly Forces, the Great Goddess, the River Goddess and the Wild Deity. Later on, their images changed along with the process of settlement and development of new languages. In the case of the Eastern Slavs, these deities appeared as Stribog, Perun, Veles. At the same time, it was found out that some of the deities: Khors, Dazhbog, Svarog were formed as a result of Slavic-Iranian contacts. About the last considered deities: Simargla and Mokosh, tthere is insufficient information to assert a certain origin of these deities.