GANTS INDIA AND GANESHA
Ganesha, or Ganapati (Sansk. Gaeśa)) in Hinduism, the god of wisdom and prosperity. This is one of the most famous and revered gods of the Hindu pantheon. Often before his name is added the respectful prefix Sri-. One popular way of worshiping Ganesha is by chanting the Ganesha-sahasranama, the thousand names of Ganesha), each of which symbolizes a separate aspect of God, and the Ganapati-sukta un Shiva and Parvati. At the same time, the Puranic myths contradict each other, describing the birth of Ganesha. In some cases, it is said that Ganesha was created by Shiva, in others it was created by Parvati, in the third jointly by Shiva and Parvati. Variants are known in which Ganesha appeared to the world in an incomprehensible way and was discovered by Shiva and Parvati, who adopted him.
Brother Ganesha Skanda (Kartikeya, Murugan). In the northern part of India, it is generally accepted that the eldest of the brothers is Skanda. In the southern part, the birth championship is attributed to Ganesha. Skanda was revered as an important warlike deity from the 5th century BC. e. according to the VI century AD e. Mass worship of Ganesha began after the sunset of the cult of Skanda. The opinions of myths also differ regarding the marital status of Ganesha. Some myths attribute Ganesha to the brahmacharyas who could not marry. This opinion is widespread in the south of India and, in part, in its northern part. According to another version, Ganesha is associated with such ideas as Buddhi (intellect, mind), Siddhi (success) and Riddhi (prosperity). Sometimes these ideas (concepts) were personified in the deities of the same name, which were recognized by the wives of Ganesha. Another option claims that the wife of Ganesha was the goddess of culture and arts of Saraswati, or the goddess of luck and prosperity Lakshmi. A version circulated in Bengal connects Ganesha with the banana tree of Cala Bo. According to one legend, the father of Ganesha was deprived of his father by the god Shiva. Ganesha did not let his father, inflamed with a passion for his wife, into the chambers where she was. Then Shiva angrily stripped his head, throwing it so far that no one sent could find her. The goddess was angry and refused to admit Shiva to him until he corrected the situation. To reassure his wife, Shiva sewed the head of a nearby elephant to Ganesha. According to another version, on the birthday of Ganesha they forgot to invite the god Shani (personification of the planet Saturn), and he, appearing without an invitation, incinerated the babys head with anger. Then the Brahmaposov advised Shiva to sew on the baby the head of the very first being that he met. This creature turned out to be the elephant of Indra Ayravat. According to oral Indian myths, Saturn (Shani), being one of the relatives, was invited to honor the newborn son of Shiva: the mother of Ganesha, Parvati certainly wanted to show the powerful relative a beautiful baby. With a deadly look that he was unable to control, Shani refused the invitation for a long time, but he was still persuaded. First Shanis look at the son of Shiva incinerated his head. According to another version, the head just fell off. Regarding the loss of one tusk, there are also several versions of legends. According to one of the legends of Ganesha, fighting the giant Hajamukkha himself broke his tusk and threw it at the enemy. The tusk possessed magical power, and Gajamukha turned into a rat, then becoming the animal of Ganesha. Another legend says that one day Shiva was visited by the sage Parasurama (avatar of Vishnu), but Shiva was sleeping at that time, and Ganesha refused to let him in. Then Parasurama threw his ax into Ganesha and cut off his right tusk. There is also a legend that, recording Mahabharata under the dictation of Vyasa, Ganesha broke his pen and, not wanting to miss a word, broke a tusk and began to write to them.
Ganesha is also the ruler of the Ghana (the army of Shivas retinue). There is a legend that Ganesha and Skanda (both are the sons of Shiva) fought for this post, and in the end Shiva decided that he would be the lord of the Ghana, who would run around the Galaxy faster. Skanda immediately took off and began his long journey, and Ganesha walked around his parents in a hurry in a circle, because it was Shiva and Parvati who were the personification of the Galaxy. And after that, Ganesha received the nickname Ganapati (the lord of the Ghans). Skanda (Sansk. Poured out), Kumara, Karttikeya, leader of the army of the gods, god of war in Hinduism. Depicted as a youth, often with six heads and twelve arms and legs. Other names: Sharavana, Mahasena, Guha, Subrahmanya. Its attributes are a bow, a spear and a banner depicting a rooster. His wahana (mount) is a peacock. It is also believed that Skanda protects not only warriors, but also thieves.
The origin of the name is due to one of the myths about his birth. According to this myth, the god Agni desired to unite with the wives of the seven sages, and the Matchmaker, burning with passion for Agni, took their image in turn (she could not accept the image of one of them, especially devoted to her husband). Each time after joining, she took Agnis seed, turned into a bird, flew up to a high mountain and poured it into a golden vessel. After some time, the six-headed Skanda was born. According to another legend, Skanda was the son of Shiva and Parvati, born to destroy the demon Taraka, who, according to Brahma, could not be killed by anyone other than the son of Shiva. At conception, the seed of Shiva fell into the fire, but the fire god Agni could not hold him and threw him into the heavenly river Ganges. After that, the Ganges carried the seed to Mount Khimavat, where the born boy was brought up by Krittiki the personification of the constellation Pleiades. Hence his middle name is Karttikeya. Over time, Skanda led the heavenly army, killed Taraka and many other demons.The cult of Skanda in the form of a special course of the kaumar is widespread in South India, where its image was identified with the Dravidian god of war Murugan.
The emergence and migration of Indo-Aryan tribes
Yamnaya culture
The yamnaya culture (more precisely, the ancient pit of cultural and historical community) is an archaeological culture of the late Bronze Age the Early Bronze Age (36002300 BC). It occupied the territory from the South Urals in the east to the Dniester in the west, from Ciscaucasia in the south to the Middle Volga in the north. The Yamnaya culture was mainly nomadic, with elements of hoe farming near rivers and in some hillforts. Hoes at the same time were made of bones (horns). Ceramic yamnaya culture is becoming more perfect. And blackened dishes appear, although, possibly, they are also milky (the film is formed due to milk)
Yamnaya men created wheeled carts (carts). The earliest finds in Eastern Europe of the remains of four-wheeled carts were found in the barbed burials of the pit culture (for example, the Watchtower on the Dnieper, the burial ground near the village of Yassky in the Odessa region, the Shumayevsky burial ground in Orenburg, etc.). A characteristic feature of the pit culture is the burial of the dead in pits under the mounds in a supine position with bent knees. The bodies showered with ocher. Burials in the mounds were multiple and often made at different times. Burials of animals (cows, pigs, sheep, goats and horses) were also found. In the steppe strip from the Danube River in the west to the headwaters of the Manych River in the east, there are approximately 160 graves of the pit culture with the remains of wheeled vehicles (wheels, carts), as well as their clay models and the remains of drawings. The oldest of the finds are dated on a calibrated scale to the 32th century BC. e.
Yamnaya men created wheeled carts (carts). The earliest finds in Eastern Europe of the remains of four-wheeled carts were found in the barbed burials of the pit culture (for example, the Watchtower on the Dnieper, the burial ground near the village of Yassky in the Odessa region, the Shumayevsky burial ground in Orenburg, etc.). A characteristic feature of the pit culture is the burial of the dead in pits under the mounds in a supine position with bent knees. The bodies showered with ocher. Burials in the mounds were multiple and often made at different times. Burials of animals (cows, pigs, sheep, goats and horses) were also found. In the steppe strip from the Danube River in the west to the headwaters of the Manych River in the east, there are approximately 160 graves of the pit culture with the remains of wheeled vehicles (wheels, carts), as well as their clay models and the remains of drawings. The oldest of the finds are dated on a calibrated scale to the 32th century BC. e.
Four-wheeled carts were discovered on the banks of the Yalpukh River in the south-west of Moldova, near the village of Mayaki on the left bank of the Lower Dniester, near the village of Sofievka on the Ingulets River, in another burial on Ingule. The remains of a two-wheeled cart come from the pit burial of the Watchtower grave near the Dnieper city. Another wagon was found in the Pervokonstantinovka burial ground near Kakhovka, and the remains of a two-wheeled wagon were found in the village of Akkermen in the Melitopol region. One wheel was found in a pit burial near the city of Rostov, in the burial of a mound 7 of the burial ground Gerasimovka I, Shumaevo II in the Urals. 3 wheels were found in Shumaevo OK II / 2, Abundant I 3/1 4 wheel simulations. Both wheels of a two-wheeled wooden arba from the Watchtower grave of the pit culture near the Dnieper city (III millennium BC) were made of a solid piece of wood, cut longitudinally, with round holes for the axle and thick hubs.
In the Samara region, a burial place was found for two people of antiquity 3,800 years old. The bodies are laid next to each other, face to face. As analysis of the genetic material showed, both people died from a plague stick, which had a genetic type similar to Justinians plague, and had the ability to live in fleas and thus be transmitted rapidly from person to person. Given that the plague stick from Samara is the oldest example of such a mutation in the plague, scientists have confirmed that massive population migration from the Yamnaya culture reached Europe, resulting in the culture of cord ceramics, and, in Central Asia and Altai, the Afanasyev culture. Analyzes of the remains of other European cultures Srubnaya, Sintashtinsky, Potapovskaya and Andronovskaya confirm that the plague stick has genetically linked lines to the one found near the village of Mikhailovsky.These cultures are an example of the reverse migration carried out by the farmers of these crops from Europe, up to Central Asia. The yamnaya culture originates from the Khvalynsk culture in the middle reaches of the Volga and from the Srednestogov culture in the middle reaches of the Dnieper, and it is also genetically called the funnel-shaped cup culture. Yamnaya culture gives way to Poltava. In the west, the pit culture is replaced by a catacomb culture. In the east there are Andronovo and carcass cultures. Kemi-Obinsky culture of Crimea is a derivative of the Yamnaya culture.
And in the Yamnaya culture there is already a rite of neutralization of the dead. Paired pit burial Tamar-Utkul VIII. The upper skeleton is abundantly sprinkled with ocher, the lower one is dissected and placed at the feet. Speaking about the dismemberment of the dead among the Yamnaya tribes, one should also mention something similar to the custom of demembration. The rite of demember, in its basic understanding, means the deliberate displacement of the bones of the human skeleton from its original position and placing them either in disorder or in the order directly opposite to the original position in which the deceased was at the time of burial. Not taking into account the cases when the dissected skeletons play an accompanying role in undisturbed bones, it can be reliably judged that the de-migration noted in the burials of the yamnaya culture of the region is a sign of a certain social stratum of society in the early Bronze Age.
However, the fact that to the east of the Dniester the yamnaya burial places with the use of reingumation is much less common than on the territory of the Prut-Dniester interfluve. This observation, to a certain extent, can serve as evidence that the demembration and the custom of laying the bones of a buried package is a narrowly local sign for the pit culture of the Dniester-Danube region.
No traces of the archaeological influence of the yamnaya culture in South Asia, including Tajikistan, were found. Linguistic studies also suggest that the languages of the Indo-Iranian group could come to South Asia not 3000 2500 BC, and later between 23001200. BC e. These findings triggered a new search for a source for languages that were distributed during that period. As a result, the study showed that there was no mass migration of steppe nomads to South Asia from the pit culture in the early Bronze Age and the like; however possible. there was a migration from the steppe cultures in the late Bronze Age. Ymnaya were mined for metal in the Kargaly mining and metallurgical center.
Catacomb culture
The Catacomb cultural and historical community is an ethnocultural association of the Middle Bronze Age (XXV XX centuries BC), spread in the steppe and forest-steppe zone from the Urals and the North Caucasus to the lower Danube. It was originally identified as an archaeological culture in 19011903. V.A. Gorodtsov.
Later, researchers identified local options that were identified as independent archaeological cultures. The concept of catacomb cultural and historical community was introduced into scientific circulation. It is represented by the monuments of the following catacomb cultures:
old katakombnoy (XXV XXIII centuries. BC.),
Donetsk (XXIII XX centuries BC),
Middle Don (XXVIII XXVII XX centuries BC),
inhulian (XXVIII XX centuries BC).
The pioneer of the catacomb culture is V. A. Gorodtsov, who in the years 19011903 in the process of studying the barrow antiquities of the Seversky Donets drew attention to the burials in the catacombs a specific funeral structure consisting of a vertical well (entrance pit), dromos (passage in the form of a corridor) and burial chamber (burial place). In accordance with the design features of the burial structure, the culture allocated by him was called catacomb. Catacomb graves are known in the same region and much later, both in the Sarmatian time and in the graves of the Salt-Maetsk culture. The very structure of the grave, consisting of a dromos and a burial chamber, often with a dome, has parallels in the famous grave of King Hinze in Germany, and probably with the construction of the famous domed tombs of Hellas. The most southern monuments are known in the steppes of Crimea, and the most northern near Kursk and Yelets. Catacomb settlements are known on the Don (near Rostov), Kibikinskoye near Lugansk, Ternovskoye near Kamyshin on the Volga, etc. Later, researchers turned their attention to the heterogeneity of the catacomb monuments in different territories, which contributed to the identification of a number in the 5060s of the XX century. local options. With the accumulation of archaeological material, prerequisites were created for understanding local variants as independent archaeological cultures of a single catacomb cultural and historical community, which was ultimately done in the early 1970s by researchers L.S. Klein and O.G. Shaposhnikova.