Ethnoastronomy

Ethnoastronomy is a rare discipline. Its aim is to study popular conceptions regarding stars, planets, constellations, and other celestial bodies. It involves not only collecting their names and etymology but also gathering the myths associated with them, which are often etiological myths. Nowadays, few articles are published in this field throughout Europe, and even fewer in France. Folklorists occasionally publish articles, while dialectologists have generally neglected this subject. This abandonment is rather curious considering the prominent place occupied by the sky and stars in so-called "classical" mythologies.

The situation is scarcely better in the former Soviet space, where ethnological studies and surveys have been particularly rich. However, in recent years, the Belarusian researcher Tsimafei Avilin has been multiplying articles concerning his own country as well as neighboring countries. From this ongoing work, he has compiled a first synthesis in a book titled "Pamiž nebam i zjamlëj. Etnaastranomija: Entre Ciel et Terre. Ethnoastronomy," published in 2015.

This book is nothing short of a true ethno-linguistic atlas, consisting of 34 maps (pp. 253-286). It is evident that the author has a remarkably rich database as a foundation for his work. The wealth of Soviet investigations in Polesia was already known, but Tsimafei Avilin covers the entire national territory and even extends to neighboring countries such as Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, when necessary.

The author begins his book with a chapter on "scholarly" astronomy and its potential influence on its popular counterpart, tracing the timeline back to the 11th century. The second and most substantial part presents the corpus itself, with various names associated with celestial bodies and constellations in popular tradition. Here, the author attempts an initial classification primarily based on designations. For example, we learn that the Pleiades can be called "Tamis" or "Crible" (Sita), "Poussins" (Kury), or even have a name based on seven: "Sept Hommes," "Sept Vieilles Femmes" (Baby), "Sept Jeunes Hommes" (Mal'caŭ). However, the author does not neglect isolated forms such as "Couronne" (Korona), "Nid" (Gnjazdo), "Bouquet de Fleurs" (Buket cviatou), "Tas d'Étoiles" (Kuča zorak), and more. This allows him to subsequently outline the major distribution areas of these names.

However, it is in the third part that the author truly delves into the notions of popular astronomy and folklore before addressing meteors and, in the final section, etiological myths (or fragments of myths) proper.

The raw data is presented in an appendix, classified by type of celestial body. The entire book is not only extensively sourced but also benefits from beautiful illustrations, particularly in a central color booklet.

Undoubtedly, "Pamiž nebam i zjamlëj. Etnaastranomija" by Tsimafei Avilin is an important book whose significance goes beyond the borders of Belarus alone.


http://nouvellemythologiecomparee.hautetfort.com/archive/2022/04/18/tsimafei-avilin-pami%C5%BE-nebam-i-zjamlej-etnaastranomija-6377232.html

Patrice Lajoye

1Citons pour l'exemple un travail récent de nos confrères et amis Yuri Berezkin et Julien d'Huy, « How did the First Humans Perceive he Starry Night? On the Pleiades », The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, 12-13, 2017, p. 100-122.


2Par exemple Jacques E. Merceron, « Sur l'expression le Char saint Martin désignant la Grande Ourse 'en Normandie' : de Nicole Oresme aux traditions populaires », Bulletin de la Société Historique de Lisieux, 2019, 87, p. 45-65.


3Dans l'Atlas linguistique de la France publié par Jules Gilliéron et Edmond Edmont entre 1902 et 1910, on trouve une carte « Étoile » et rien d'autre.

The monograph by T. V. Avilina titled "Ukrainian Folk Astronymy: Sources, Materials, Areas" is dedicated to the overview and critical analysis of the main works containing mentions of dialectal Ukrainian names for individual stars and constellations. Based on these works, the Ukrainian folk astronymic "dictionary" was compiled. The author pays particular attention to the process of forming this corpus and the sources of origin of individual lexemes (section "Ways of Dissemination of Astronyms in Literary and Scientific Sources"). This is seen as the only way to distinguish genuinely folk astronyms from artificially created designations (e.g., "Orion" as a free translation of the Ukrainian dialect word "Chapiga"), which are the result of borrowing or calquing corresponding astronyms from other language traditions (e.g., "Kil," "Prikil," "Pivnichnyi Kilok" meaning "Polar Star" borrowed from Russian "Kol," "Prikol," "Nebesnyi Kol"). This, in general, leads to a distorted representation of the Ukrainian astronomic system. As a vivid example of what can result from a liberal treatment of the primary source, the author presents a detective story about the appearance of the (pseudo)name "Rake" for the constellation Orion among other Ukrainian astronyms (pp. 8-11). In 1899, during the translation of Camille Flammarion's monograph "The Starry Heavens and Its Wonders" into Russian, the amateur astronomer and popularizer of astronomy E. A. Predtechensky rendered the phrase "on les a nommées, dès une haute antiquité, 'les Trois Rois', et les habitants des campagnes voient là un rateau" ['they were called, since ancient times, "the Three Kings," and the rural inhabitants see a rake there'] as "их с глубокой древности стали называть 'Тремя царями', а жители наших деревень видят в них грабли" ['since ancient times, they were called "the Three Kings," and the residents of our villages see a rake in them'] (6. p. 403). Subsequently, in the work of D. O. Svyatsky titled "Under the Vault of the Crystal Sky" (1913), "our villages" transformed into "southern Russia" (5. p. 158), and in Y. O. Karpenko's article "Adventures of Astronomical Names" (1971), it became "Ukraine" (3. p. 89), despite no recorded evidence of such an astronym on Ukrainian territory (1. p. 90).In the following four sections of the monograph ('Sources on Folk Astronaming and Astronomy of the 19th to early 20th centuries,' 'Analysis and Critique of D.O. Svyatsky's Works,' 'Works of the Interwar Period,' 'Polish-Language Sources of the 19th-20th centuries'), the author provides a comprehensive overview of various sources (sketches, dictionary entries, specialized monographs) containing material on Ukrainian astronaming, starting from the earliest work 'Topographical Description of the Kharkov Governorate' (1788), which mentions the names of constellations such as Plow, Wiz, Chepiga, Volosozhar, and the Milky Way referred to as 'Gusynya doroga' (p. 13). In Appendix 1 (p. 60), all mentioned sources are presented by T.V. Avilin in the form of a diagram, visually demonstrating the specific works each subsequent author relied upon. In the section titled 'Ukrainian Astronaming System,' a sequential analysis of astronaming vocabulary found in the cited sources from previous sections allows the author to identify the core of the Ukrainian astronaming system, disregarding rare and questionable designations such as 'Smetannik' for the Milky Way or 'Polevaya mysh' for Alcor, a star in the constellation Ursa Major. The core consists of the following astronames: Viz (variants: Voz, Vozok, Garba) for the 'Big Dipper,' Viytse for the same constellation, forming separate areas for Valasazhar and Kvochka (Ky'rka, Kvi'chka, Kvo'chka with kyrats, Furashka, Haynusha (< Romanian Găinuşă, 'chick')) for the 'Pleiades,' Chepiga and Kosari for 'Orion'; Khrest (denoting different constellations), Chumatski shlyakh for the Milky Way, as well as northern Ukrainian designations with motivational basis such as 'ptichiy put' (e.g., Daroga ptushkam) or 'path to Kyiv/Jerusalem. All the 'core' astronames have been mapped (maps No. 1-7 in the Appendix) and placed in a broader context. The maps compiled by the author not only include Ukrainian terms but also corresponding West Slavic and East Slavic terms. In addition to the 'core' lexicon, the monograph provides names characteristic of certain local traditions for the constellation Orion (Dіvchina z vidramy, meaning 'a girl with buckets') and for Alcor in the Ursa Major constellation ('a dog gnawing at the harness'). For Venus, which in folk astronomy is interpreted as the morning and evening star, it is characterized by names like Svitova zorya/zora/zirka and Switiłka, also Hutsul Swikiwka, Rankova/Ranashna/Uranishna for the morning appearance, and Vechirova/Vechirna/Vechorna zorya/zora/zirka or Vechirka, Zoryanitsya (Zornychka, Zornítsa, Zoranítsa, Zora, Zirnytsya) for the evening appearance.

In the concluding section of the monograph, the author touches upon the history of areal research of the Ukrainian astronaming system, noting primarily the scarcity of East Ukrainian lexicographic material (West Ukrainian astronaming vocabulary is partly represented in the atlas by K. Moszyński 'Atlas of Folk Culture in Poland' with maps of 'Pleiades' (Vol. 1, sheet 3), 'Venus' (Vol. 1, sheet 4), 'Orion's Belt' (Vol. 3, sheet 1), 'Milky Way' (Vol. 3, sheet 2) [5], as well as in the Carpathian Dialectological Atlas). To fill this gap, T.V. Avilin presents maps showing the distribution of names for the Pleiades, Orion, Ursa Major and Alcor, the Milky Way, as well as a map of individually attested astronames. In particular, map 1 presents the results of mapping the folk names for the Pleiades star cluster. The eastern and western parts of Ukraine are characterized by two distinct types of nominations: Kvochka and Valasazhar, while in the northeast, Valasazhars blend with Vizhars, and on the border with Belarus, nominations like Sita are observed. Map 3 contains astronames used to denote the Ursa Major constellation. The nominations presented—Viz, Garba, Teleha—are based on the common European representation of the constellation as a wagon.

Regarding Ursa Major, it is worth noting the existence of a relatively large number of eschatological legends about the star Alcor, in which people see a dog struggling to break free, ultimately leading to the end of the world. The first written mention of such beliefs can be found as early as the mid-19th century in N.I. Kostomarov's "Slavic Mythology": "In the constellation of the Great Bear, people see horses, probably Sventovit [sic!]. Every night, the little black dog, the embodiment of Chernobog, tries to gnaw through the harness to destroy the entire creation, but it doesn't succeed because it runs to drink from the spring before dawn, and in the meantime, the harness grows back together" [4, pp. 54-55]. Later, without mentioning the names of pagan gods, A.N. Afanasyev mentions in "Poetic Views of Slavs on Nature": "They also tell the following: there are three little sisters-stars in the sky (evening, midnight, and morning), assigned to guard the dog that is chained to the Little Bear with an iron chain and tries in every way to gnaw through it; when the chain is broken, then the end of the world will come" [2, p. 501] (pp. 14-17).

The small monograph that we presented in the review makes a significant contribution to the development of Slavic astronaming and will be of interest not only to dialectologists and folklorists but also to anyone interested in Ukrainian folk culture and, more broadly, Slavic culture. Literature.

1. Авілін Ц. В. Паміж небам і зямлёй. Мінск, 2015. 2. Афанасьев А. Н. Поэтические воззрения славян на природу. Т. 1. М., 2014. 3. Карпенко Ю. О. Походження астрономічних назв // Українська мова і література в школі. 1971. № 4. С. 87–91. 4. Костомаров Н. Славянская мифология: извлечение из лекций, читанных в Университете Св. Владимира во второй половине 1846 года. Киев, 1847. 5. Святский Д.О. Под сводом хрустального неба. Очерки по астральной мифологии в области религиозного и народного мировоззрения. СПб., 1913. 6. Фламмарион К. Звездное небо и его чудеса. СПб., 1899. 7. Moszyński K. Atlas kultury ludowej w Polsce. Zesz. 1–3. Kraków, 1934–1936. О.В. Чёха, кандидат филологических наук, институт славяноведения ран (Москва) // Живая старина. 3 (115) 2022 С. 63-64