THE MYTHOLOGICAL IMAGE OF THE LADYBUG AMONG THE PEOPLES OF THE URAL-VOLGA REGION

DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2023-3-43-52

УДК 398.95

ББК 63.5(2)

Alexander S. ILIKAEV

Key words

ladybug, the Russians, the Udmurts, the Mari, the Mordvins, the Chuvash, the Bashkirs, the Tatars

Abstract

The article is devoted to the mythological image of a ladybug among the Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic ethnic groups of the Ural-Volga region.

The purpose of the study is to reveal some of the origins of this mythologeme among the peoples of the region.

Materials and methods. The work mainly used the comparative historical method, as well as field studies. The materials drawn from the scientific literature on this subject, the author’s field studies, were supplemented with the materials of explanatory and etymological dictionaries, compared and analyzed.

Results. As a result of the research, the author revealed the following picture. The basis of the ladybug’s mythological image is likely to be made by animistic-totemic beliefs. So one of the Chuvash names of the insect deserves attention – “bird of the top”. Perhaps in the past, the ladybug could act as a totem-the progenitor of individual family lines. Among Russians, Udmurts, Mari, Bashkirs, the ancient image is concretized through the concept of “god” or the name of a certain deity (Marena, Inmar, Kilchin, Invu-mums, Kuaz, Humo).

Conclusions. It is worth agreeing with the researchers of the topic that among the Russians the ladybug is equated, as a rule, with the concept of a heavenly god, among the Mordvins and the Udmurts – with rain, water, among the Chuvash, the Tatars and the Bashkirs – with rainless weather and the sun. The latter may be due to the fact that in ancient Turkic mythology, the idea of the “primordial nature of heaven and earth” played an important role. On the contrary, the cosmogonic myths of the Finno-Ugric peoples anyhow include an element of the water primordiate. The Russian and Udmurt materials, as the researchers note, go back to the mythologeme of heavenly flocks. Some Udmurt and Mari materials are probably calques from the Russian language or motifs associated with a Proto-Indo-European source. At the same time, as the author of the article believes, in Mari mythology, the connection of the ladybug with wet young grass, forest, with water primordial, bottom (the earth, as opposed to the heaven), the creation of the world from an egg and a “heavenly wedding” is traced. The association of the ladybug with rainless weather can be traced mainly among the mountain Mari. The originality of the image of the “Mari” ladybug, as the author sees it, can be explained by the fusion of both Turkic and Finno-Ugric traditions. The author also believes that the ideas of the Udmurts and the Mari people about the “Inmar/Kylchina/Kuazya/Yumo cow” could have arisen independently on the basis of an already existing idea of bulls (cows) or horses of the heavenly god. In this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to another, perhaps Central Asian, source of legends about the animal-the messenger of God. This refers to the legend of the “eaten book”, common among the Russians, the Mari, the Udmurts, the Chuvash and the Tatars.

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Information about the author

Alexander S. Ilikaev – Candidate of Political Sciences, Associate Professor, Ufa University of Science and Technology, Russia, Ufa (jumo@bk.ru; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6773-9053).

For citations

Ilikaev A.S. THE MYTHOLOGICAL IMAGE OF THE LADYBUG AMONG THE PEOPLES OF THE URAL-VOLGA REGION. Vestnik Chuvashskogo universiteta, 2023, no. 3, pp. 43–52. DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2023-3-43-52 (in Russian).

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