Dogs in the Traditional Worldview of the Chuvash People
Dogs in the Traditional Worldview of the Chuvash People
A.K. Salmin.
The dog has undergone a long process of domestication and in the mind of man has become a positive fi gure: people swore to dogs, composed eulogies to dogs and have created rules concerning the handling of dogs; dogs were even considered a means of delivering sacrifi cial gifts to the recipients. Etymologists associate a number of corresponding Turkic words with the Chuvash word jytă (dog). However, it is also possible that the etymology of the word jytă goes back to the Sanskrit idā, the name for food that modern Zoroastrians in Iran still feed dogs after the death of a relative. The dog is one of the most symbolic characters in the traditional beliefs of the Chuvash. It is believed that the dog is directly connected with the supreme deity Tură. At the semantic level, it has much in common with the wolf and man. The dog may be used as a sacrifi ce. According to traditional beliefs, the dog can also serve as a substitute for ancestral spirits and can communication with the other world.
