Nart saga


The Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of the basic mythology of the ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin, Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar, and to some extent Chechen-Ingush folklore.

Etymology

The term nart comes from the Ossetian Nartæ, which is plurale tantum of nar. The derivation of the root nar is of Iranian origin, from Proto-Iranian *nar for 'hero, man', descended from Proto-Indo-European *h₂nḗr. In Ingush and Chechen, the word nart means 'giant'.

Characters

Some of the characters who feature prominently in the sagas are:
  • Sosruko or Soslan – a hero who sometimes also appears as a trickster
  • Batraz – the leader and greatest warrior of the Narts
  • Satanaya – the mother of the Narts, a fertility figure and matriarch
  • Tlepsh – a blacksmith deity
  • – a trickster figure compared by Georges Dumezil to the Norse god Loki
  • Pkharmat – in the Nakh peoples' Vainakh epos, a blacksmith figure who steals fire from the gods for the mortals
  • Akhsar and Akhsartag are twin brothers who are heroes in Ossetian mythology and sons of Warhag. Akhsartag is also the father of the narts Uryzmaeg and Haemyts.
  • Dzerassae – daughter of the sea-god Donbettyr, and mother of many Nart heroes.
  • Uryzmaeg is the hero of the Nart saga, son of Akhsartag and Dzerassae.
  • Haemyts is the hero of the, son of Akhsartag and Dzerassae, the father of the hero Batraz and the twin brother of Uruzmaeg, with whom they often went on conquest campaigns together.

    Study and significance

The first Westerner to take note of the Nart stories was the German scholar Julius von Klaproth, who traveled to the Caucasus during the first decade of the 19th century. The earliest written account of the material is attributed to the Kabardian author Shora Begmurzin Nogma, who wrote in Russian in 1835–1843, published posthumously in 1861. A German translation by Adolf Berge was published in 1866. The stories exist in the form of prose tales as well as epic songs.
It is generally known that some of the Nart corpora have an ancient Iranian core, inherited from the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans. However, they also contain abundant local North Caucasian accretions of great antiquity, which sometimes reflect an even more archaic past.
The Ossetes consider the Nart epic to be a central feature of their national identity. Based especially on the Ossetian versions, the Nart stories have been valued by scholars as a window towards the world of the Iranian-speaking cultures of antiquity, and as an important source for comparative Indo-European mythology. For example, the philologist Georges Dumézil used the Ossetian division of the Narts into three clans to support his Trifunctional Hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were similarly divided into three castes—warriors, priests, and commoners.
The Northwest Caucasian versions are also highly valuable because they contain more archaic accretions and preserve "all the odd details constituting the detritus of earlier traditions and beliefs", as opposed to the Ossetian ones, which have been "reworked to form a smooth narrative."

Connections to other mythology

Research shows that the core of the Nart Saga has Iranian cultural roots.A Russian comparative study, Shahnameh and the Nart Epic of the Ossetians: A Symbolic Comparison, highlights overlapping symbols and narrative structures.Comparative studies have identified similar symbolic motifs, e.g., the “winged bird” motif appears in both epics as a mythic symbol.
Some motifs in the Nart sagas are shared by Greek mythology. The story of Prometheus chained to Mount Kazbek or to Mount Elbrus in particular is similar to an element in the Nart sagas. These shared motifs are seen by some as indicative of an earlier proximity of the Caucasian peoples to the ancient Greeks, also shown in the myth of the Golden Fleece, in which Colchis is generally accepted to have been part of modern-day Georgia.
In the book From Scythia to Camelot, authors C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor speculate that many aspects of the Arthurian legends are derived from the Nart sagas. The proposed vector of transmission is the Alans, some of whom migrated into northern France at around the time the Arthurian legends were forming. As expected, these parallels are most evident in the Ossetian versions, according to researcher John Colarusso. For more details, see "Historicity of King Arthur – Lucius Artorius Castus and the Sarmatian connection".

Differences between Nart legends

There are some differences between the various versions of the Nart legends. For example, the Ossetian versions depict the Nartic tribe as composed of three distinct clans that sometimes rival one another: the brave Æxsærtægkatæ, the rich Borætæ, and the wise Alægatæ; the Circassian versions do not depict such a division. The Abkhaz versions are unique in describing the Narts as a single nuclear family composed of Satanaya's one hundred sons. All of these versions describe the Narts as a single coherent group of "good" heroes.
Some Nakh legends include a group called the Nart-Orxustxoi, which includes the most prominent Narts known from the other versions In contrast to the Ossetian and Abkhaz versions, the Nakh legends depict the Narts as warlike bandits who fight against local good heroes such as Koloi-Kant and Qinda-Shoa.
Shayan Javadi, the Persian translator of "Nart" by matching the Ossetian, Abkhaz, Abaza, Circassian, and Ubykh versions, has been able to identify the lineage of some characters who have only been named. For instance, by recreating a character named "Qânzezâd," he believes that he is the son of Azaukhan in the Ossetian version.

Circassian Nart sagas

  • , English translations
  • , Russian translations
  • Articles:
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  • *Rjabchikov Sergei V. The Greek God Hermes and Adyghe Nart Uazyrmes: About One Cultural Borrowing. Molodoy ucheny, 2022, Nr. 41, pp. 230-234.

    Ossetian Nart sagas

  • , three collections of legends. The first collection is also available in the form of and audio recordings
  • : a translation, with slight modifications, of the Dzhanayev edition at the previous link

  • Abkhaz Nart sagas

Karachay-Balkar Nart sagas

  • , detailed set of tales
  • Russian translations from
  • *,
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    Chechen-Ingush Nart sagas

  • Accounts of Chechen and Ingush beliefs by Ch.E.Akhriev
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    Miscellaneous

  • , Causcasian folklore articles
  • Дувакин Евгений Николаевич. "Кельто-кавказские фольклорные параллели и возможные сценарии их происхождения" . Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология, no. 23–1, 2019, pp. 295–307. URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/kelto-kavkazskie-folklornye-paralleli-i-vozmozhnye-stsenarii-ih-proishozhdeniya.