Everyone remembers the story of Stenka Razin and the Persian princess captured by him, whom the brave robber threw into the oncoming Volga wave. However, few people know that the roots of this folklore episode go back to the archaic ritual of sacrifice to the water deity.
The collector of Russian folklore A. N. Afanasyev described numerous cases of sacrificing a live horse or a horse's skull to a "water" one, and this is only a small echo of much more ancient rituals, which included human sacrifice.
By the way, the modern custom of throwing a small coin into a pond goes back to the same ritual. Who is this mysterious "waterman" who requires a regular duty? To answer this question, let us move to India, where, according to some assumptions, human sacrifices to the "water" have survived to this day.
HOW OUR PADS BASED THE GANG RIVER
This is what happened in India with two Orthodox priests-orientalists Fr. Dionisy Pozdnyaev and Fr. Vitaly Zubkov. Accompanied by Natalya Lidova, an employee of the Society for Cultural Relations with India, Father Batiushka went to the most revered sacred center of Hinduism and the focus of Brahmin learning - the city of Varanasi, better known as Benares, or Kashi.
According to Hindu legends, the city was built by Shiva 5,000 years ago. Here, on the banks of the Ganges, there are ghats - places for ritual ablution and cremation of the dead, with steps leading down to the water. To see the legendary staircase, our heroes used the services of a local boatman.
Having approached the destination of their journey, they suddenly saw in the water the back of a huge animal or fish the size of a buffalo. Then a head appeared with a high forehead, a long, elongated mouth and a thickening at the tip of the nose, similar to an elephant's trunk. A serpentine tail with a fin appeared next. The creature was steel gray. The boatman was mortally frightened and, when asked who they saw, answered, chattering his teeth, that it was "a dolphin that eats unburnt and half-burnt corpses, and also sometimes grabs and takes with it living people who are bathing in the Ganges."
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Upon returning to the hotel, the priests decided to check the information received from the boatman, and began to inquire about the dolphins from the local minister. He told that these were not dolphins, but "suis". Subsequently, on one of the bas-reliefs of an ancient Buddhist stupa in the Central Museum of Calcutta, the priests found an image of their Gangetic acquaintance. Without a doubt, it was "suis" or "susamar" (which in Sanskrit means "the one to whom death is given as a gift", or "an evil demon to whom gifts are brought").
According to Hindu tradition, the body of the deceased must be cremated on the first day after death. The deceased are not completely burned, and the corpses of children under 5 years old are simply thrown entirely into the waters of the Ganges. According to Orthodox priests, burning on the first day after death can be viewed as a human sacrifice.
They believe that feeding the corpses of the "Mother Ganges" and the "beast" that dwells in it is the true essence of Hinduism, which is carefully hidden from ordinary Hindus. Fortunately, the caste system with a separate group of priests easily allows you to manipulate human consciousness, exposing harmless rituals of sacrificing flowers to everyone's admiration and modestly hushing up the terrible truth of "bloody pagan cults."
But there is another version of this incident. One of the priests who were in the boat decided to “christen the Ganges” no less. Without hesitation, the brave missionary took a bottle of holy water from his pocket and poured the contents into the river. Several giant creatures immediately emerged from the water and with their thin long noses began to kick the fragile boat, clearly intending to turn it over. For this reason, the boatman had the most natural stupor. After an unusual attack, our unlucky travelers, in no small measure thanks to the efforts of Natalia Lidova, managed to moor to the main ghat and successfully get ashore.
ABOUT BITCHES AND GAVIALS
To understand the intricacies of this amazing story, we should get acquainted with two amazing creatures living in the Ganges.
The first of these is a representative of the group of river dolphins known as the Ganges dolphin (Platanista gangetica), or susuk, so named because of the characteristic sound it makes when breathing. Apparently, this is the mysterious "suis" or "susamar", which was colorfully described by Russian priests.
Dolphin and gavial Ganga
The Gangetic dolphin has a small head, small brain and an unusually long narrow beak (18-20 cm), which thickens noticeably towards the end and is adapted to search for food in the bottom soil. Contrary to myths, the animal feeds on fish, crustaceans and molluscs. Susuk is the first representative of the cetacean family, which was officially banned from hunting (in the "Moral Edicts" of the Indian king Ashoka, more than 2,000 years ago, susuk was included in the list of protected species).
At the moment, the once large population of animals teeters on the brink of extinction. In the upper reaches, where the Ganges dolphin predominantly lives, monks and pilgrims consider it inviolable and literally feed it from their hands.
The second creature mentioned in the story of the priests fits much more into the description of a monster to whom human sacrifices are made. We are talking about gavial - the only species in the family of gavial crocodiles. Its habitat is also limited by the river system of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra basins. The crocodile eats fish, moreover, he does not disdain both birds and mammals that gape on the shore, and also corpses buried in the waters of the Ganges: in the stomachs of gavials, human remains and precious stones are sometimes found.
Jewels are swallowed by gavials for ballast and as gastroliths - stones for grinding food in the stomach. The crocodile spends most of the time in the water, preferring to keep calm areas in deep fast-flowing rivers. We do not know anything about the ritual worship of this reptile, if such takes place among the numerous Indian sects.
RUSSIAN TRACE
Well, the meticulous reader will say, let them worship reptiles or river dolphins in India, but to whom did they make sacrifices in Russia, about which Afanasyev wrote? Oddly enough, but it was in Russia in ancient times that the cult of the lizard-korkodel was very widespread, a detailed reconstruction of which belongs to the Soviet historian Boris Rybakov.
"Baba Yaga wooden leg rides with a korkodil to fight"
This cult was important for Novgorodians, who addressed their agricultural prayers mainly to women in labor, but requests for fish wealth and waterways were addressed to the lord of the waters, who acted in two guises: as the god of Ilmen and Volkhov and as the king of the "blue salty sea."
The thirtieth volume of the “Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles” tells about an incredible episode dating back to 1582: “In the summer, the Korkodil lutia came out of the river and the way of the shutter, a lot of people were eating, and people were sucking and praying to God all over the earth. And you will hide your packs, but you will beat others."
Academician Rybakov believed that this was a real invasion of river reptiles. But history, unfortunately, is silent about where these same lizards-corkodels came from on the Russian land.
Alexey KOMOGORTSEV