Darchiev A.V. On the Military Cult of the Alans

The article considers the cult of the military deity that occupied an important place in the religious views of the Alans. Comparison of the ancient sources with folklore and ethnography of Ossetians, modern descendants of the Alans, clarifies some features of this cult. B. Bakhrakh’s long-standing assumption that the god of war, worshiped by the Alans in the form of a sword, was also the lord of another world, finds confirmation in the Ossetian epos. The Nartic hero Batraz, who is considered the epic hypostasis of the god of war, acts also as the lord of another world. Some specific elements of Ossetian memorial rites (a knife touching all food commemorating the deceased, stabbing the knife in the grave mound) testify in favor of that. The legend of the sacred sword of the Scythians (resp. Alans), found with the help of a cow, is interpreted as a transformation of the myth about the god of war, born of a cow, and about his zoomorphic incarnation as a bull. Some specific characteristics and actions of Nartic Batraz speak well for this interpretation: in the childhood he is fed by cows, he is able to turn into a bull, at the behest of Shatana he seizes with the Nartian herd of bulls, battling with them like a bull. A well-known hypothesis about the impact of the Alanian military cult on the formation of West European legends about Arthur is additionally supported in the article with some data of the Ossetian Nart epos. Already well-known Nartian analogies of the motif of the Arthurian legends about the “sword in stone” are supplemented by one more: Batraz thrusts in the ground an unusual weapon, which presents simultaneously a sword and a lance. Moreover, as the accordance to the motifs of the “sword in stone” and “sword from the lake” the examples from the Vedic mythology are given: the vajra, the miraculous weapon of the storm god, pierces the mountain / stone, and in some contexts is described as lying in the sea. It is suggested that ritual dances with swords existed in the Alanian military cult.

Keywords: Alans, sacred sword, God of War, Ossetians, Nart Epic, King Arthur, sword in stone.

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