Zorya ( lit. "Dawn"; also many variants: Zarya , Zaria , Zorza , Zirnytsia , Zaranitsa , Zoryushka , etc.) is a figure in Slavic folklore, a feminine personification of dawn , possibly goddess . Depending on tradition, she may appear as a singular entity, or two or three sisters at once. Although Zorya is etymologically unrelated to the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂éwsōs , she shares most of her characteristics. She is often depicted as the sister of the Sun , the Moon , and Danica , the Morning Star with which she is sometimes identified. She lives in the Palace of the Sun, opens the gate for him in the morning so that he can set off on a journey through the sky, guards his white horses, she is also described as a virgin. In the Eastern Slavic tradition of zagovory she represents the supreme power that a practitioner appeals to.
49-526: The Slavic word zora "dawn, aurora" (from Proto-Slavic *zoŗà ), and its variants, comes from the same root as the Slavic word zrěti ("to see, observe", from PS *zьrěti ), which originally may have meant "shine". The word zara may have originated under the influence of the word žar "heat" (PS *žarь ). PS *zoŗà comes from the Proto-Balto-Slavic *źoriˀ (cf. Lithuanian žarà , žarijà ),
98-419: A diminutive meaning 'little star', 'starlet', 'asterisk'; зі́рнйця zirnitsa (or зі́рнйці zirnytsi , a poetic term meaning 'little star', 'aurora, dawn'. In a saying collected in "Харківщині" ( Kharkiv Oblast ), it is said that "there are many stars (Зірок) in the sky, but there are only two Zori: the morning one (світова) and the evening one (вечірня)". In an orphan's lament, the mourner says she will take
147-529: A Slovene folksong titled "Zorja prstan pogubila" (Zorja lost her ring), the singer asks for mother ( majka ), brother ( bratec ), sister ( sestra ) and darling ( dragi ) to look for it. According to Monika Kropej, in Slovene mythopoetic tradition, the sun rises in the morning, accompanied by the morning dawn, named Sončica (from sonce 'sun'), and sets in the evening joined by an evening dawn named Zarika (from zarja 'dawn'). These female characters also appear in
196-535: A Slovenian narrative folk song about their rivalry. Fanny Copeland also interpreted both characters as mythological Sun and Dawn, as well as mentioned another ballad, titled Ballad of Beautiful Zora . Slovene folklorist Jakob Kelemina ( sl ), in his book about Slovene myths and folk-tales, stated that a Zora appears as the daughter of the Snake Queen (possibly an incarnation of the night) in the so-called Kresnik Cycle . According to professor Daiva Vaitkevičienė ,
245-439: A distinction between two pitch accents, traditionally called "acute" and "circumflex" accent. The acute accent was pronounced with rising intonation, while the circumflex accent had a falling intonation. Short vowels (*e *o *ь *ъ) had no pitch distinction, and were always pronounced with falling intonation. Unaccented (unstressed) vowels never had tonal distinctions, but could still have length distinctions. These rules are similar to
294-682: A late-period variant, representing the late 9th-century dialect spoken around Thessaloniki ( Solun ) in Macedonia , is attested in Old Church Slavonic manuscripts. Proto-Slavic is descended from the Proto-Balto-Slavic branch of the Proto-Indo-European language family, which is the ancestor of the Baltic languages , e.g. Lithuanian and Latvian . Proto-Slavic gradually evolved into the various Slavic languages during
343-655: A later period speaks of three Zoryas and their special task: There are in the sky three little sisters, three little Zorya: she of the Evening, she of Midnight, and she of Morning. Their duty is to guard a dog which is tied by an iron chain to the constellation of the Little Bear . When the chain breaks it will be the end of the world. Zara-Zaranitsa Krasnaya Devitsa (aka "Dawn the Red Maiden") appears interchangeably with Maria ( Mother of God ) in different versions of
392-551: A macron above the letter, while in the latter it is not clearly indicated. The following table explains these differences: For consistency, all discussions of words in Early Slavic and before (the boundary corresponding roughly to the monophthongization of diphthongs , and the Slavic second palatalization ) use the common Balto-Slavic notation of vowels. Discussions of Middle and Late Common Slavic, as well as later dialects, use
441-590: A ring, and in her left hand she holds a torch resting on her shoulder, ending in a box from which emerges a light green stripe passing into dark green. This stripe ends in another woman's right hand, in green, signed as "evening zorya", with a bird emerging from her left sleeve. This should be interpreted as the Morning Zorya releasing the Sun on its daily journey, and at sunset the Evening Zorya awaits to meet
490-470: A threefold division of the day. They also function as Rozhanitsy : Another folk saying from Poland is thus: Żarze, zarzyczki, jest was trzy, zabierzcie od mojego dziecka płakanie, przywróćcie mu spanie . In a magical love charm from Poland, the girl asks for the dawn (or morning-star) to go to the girl's beloved and force him to love no other but her: Ukrainian also has words deriving from *zoŗà : зі́рка (dialectal зі́ра zira and зі́ри ziry ) zírka ,
539-477: A trio of deities named Zori) is also invoked in charms against illness. According to professor Daiva Vaitkevičienė , this "is a very popular motif of the Slavic charms". The word "Zorya" has become a loanword in Romanian as its word for "dawn" ( zori ) and as the name of a piece of music sung by colindători ( zorile ). The Morning Star is also known as dennica , zornica or zarnica . In Serbo-Croatian,
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#1732776785024588-533: Is invoked along with a "morning Irina" and a "Midday Daria" to dispel a child's sadness and take it away "beyond the blue ocean". Croatian historian Natko Nodilo noted in his study The Ancient Faith of the Serbs and the Croats that the ancient Slavs saw Zora as a "shining maiden" ( "svijetla" i "vidna" djevojka ), and Russian riddles described her as a maiden that lived in the sky ("Zoru nebesnom djevojkom"). As for
637-480: Is slight dialectal variation. It also covers Late Common Slavic when there are significant developments that are shared (more or less) identically among all Slavic languages. Two different and conflicting systems for denoting vowels are commonly in use in Indo-European and Balto-Slavic linguistics on the one hand, and Slavic linguistics on the other. In the first, vowel length is consistently distinguished with
686-484: Is the unattested , reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages . It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th century AD . As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages . Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during
735-803: The Virgin Mary most likely replaced deity Zaria in East Slavic charms. The Virgin Mary is also addressed as "Zaria" in Russian charms. In a charm collected in Arkhangelsky and published in 1878 by historian Alexandra Efimenko [ ru ] , the announcer invokes зоря Мария and заря Маремъяния, translated as "Maria-the-Dawn" and "Maremiyaniya-the-Dawn". In another charm, the "Evening Star Mariya" and "Morning Star Maremiyana" are invoked to take away sleeplessness. Goddess Zaria (alternatively,
784-818: The "keys of the dawn" ("То я б в зорі ключі взяла"). In a magical love charm, the girl invokes "three star-sisters" (or the "dawn-sisters"): Zorya also patronized marriages, as manifested by her frequent appearance in wedding songs, and arranged marriages between the gods. In one of the folk songs, where the Moon meets Aurora while wandering in the sky, she is directly attributed this function: O Dawn, Dawn! Wherever hast thou been? Wherever hast thou been? Where dost thou intend to live? Where do I intend to live? Why at Pan Ivan's, At Pan Ivan's in his Court, In his Court, and in his dwelling, And in his dwelling are two pleasures: The first pleasure—to get his son married; And second pleasure—to give his daughter in marriage In
833-563: The Evening Star, made the bed for solar goddess Saulė , and Aušrinė , the Morning Star, lit the fire for her as she prepared for another day's journey. In other accounts, Ausrine and Vakarine are said to be daughters of the female Sun (Saule) and male Moon (Meness), and they tend their mother's palace and horses. In Russian tradition, they often appear as two virgin sisters: Zorya Utrennyaya (Morning Zorya, from útro "morning") as
882-712: The Indo-Aryan Rigveda , or the Norse Edda , as well as in folklore: during the annual festivals of the Germanic peoples and Slavs, they lit a wheel which, according to medieval authors, was supposed to symbolize the sun. Similar images to the one from the Psalter and the Nashik appear in various parts of Slavic lands, e.g. On a carved and painted gate of a Slovak peasant estate (village of Očová ): on one of
931-558: The Morning Zoryushka". Such a motif was also found on the back of a 19th-century sled where the Sun, in the form of a circle, is in the palace and two Zoryas stand in the exit, and on a peasant rushnyk from the Tver region where Zoryas on horseback rides up to the Sun, one is red and the other is green. According to scholarship, Lithuanian folklore attests a similar dual role for luminous deities Vakarine and Ausrine: Vakarine,
980-532: The Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain
1029-570: The Proto-Slavic/Common Slavic time of linguistic unity roughly into three periods: Authorities differ as to which periods should be included in Proto-Slavic and in Common Slavic. The language described in this article generally reflects the middle period, usually termed Late Proto-Slavic (sometimes Middle Common Slavic ) and often dated to around the 7th to 8th centuries. This language remains largely unattested, but
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#17327767850241078-522: The Slavic notation. For Middle and Late Common Slavic, the following marks are used to indicate tone and length distinctions on vowels, based on the standard notation in Serbo-Croatian : There are multiple competing systems used to indicate prosody in different Balto-Slavic languages. The most important for this article are: The following is an overview of the phonemes that are reconstructible for Middle Common Slavic. Middle Common Slavic had
1127-536: The South Slavic languages, as well as Czech and Slovak, tended to preserve the syllabic sonorants, but in the Lechitic languages (such as Polish) and Bulgarian, they fell apart again into vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel combinations. In East Slavic, the liquid diphthongs in *ь or *ъ may have likewise become syllabic sonorants, but if so, the change was soon reversed, suggesting that it may never have happened in
1176-455: The Sun and its companions, the Dawns, have been preserved. These images date back to ancient concepts from the initially fetishistic (the Sun in the form of a ring or circle) to the later anthropomorphic . Chludov's Novgorod Psalter of the late 13th century contains a miniature depicting two women. One of them, fiery red, signed as "morning zorya", holds a red sun in her right hand in the form of
1225-466: The Sun. A very similar motif was found in a cave temple from the 2nd or 3rd century AD in Nashik , India . The bas-relief depicts two women: one using a torch to light the circle of the Sun, and the other expecting it at sunset. Some other bas-reliefs depict two goddesses of the dawn, Ushas and Pratyusha, and the Sun, accompanied by Dawns, appears in several hymns. The Sun in the form of a wheel appears in
1274-534: The Zorya cult is only attested in folklore, its roots go back to Indo-European antiquity, and the Zorya herself manifests most of *H₂éwsōs characteristics. Zorya shares the following characteristics with most goddesses of the dawn: L.A. Zarubin, who was a Slavonic scholar of the 20th century, undertook a comparison between Slavic folklore and the Indo-Aryan Rigveda and Atharvaveda , where images of
1323-448: The accent (moved it to the preceding syllable). This occurred at a time when the Slavic-speaking area was already dialectally differentiated, and usually syllables with the acute and/or circumflex accent were shortened around the same time. Hence it is unclear whether there was ever a period in any dialect when there were three phonemically distinct pitch accents on long vowels. Nevertheless, taken together, these changes significantly altered
1372-452: The accent was free and thus phonemic; it could occur on any syllable and its placement was inherently a part of the word. The accent could also be either mobile or fixed, meaning that inflected forms of a word could have the accent on different syllables depending on the ending, or always on the same syllable. Common Slavic vowels also had a pitch accent . In Middle Common Slavic, all accented long vowels, nasal vowels and liquid diphthongs had
1421-633: The beginning of the syllable. By the beginning of the Late Common Slavic period, all or nearly all syllables had become open as a result of developments in the liquid diphthongs . Syllables with liquid diphthongs beginning with *o or *e had been converted into open syllables, for example *TorT became *TroT, *TraT or *ToroT in the various daughter languages. The main exception are the Northern Lechitic languages ( Kashubian , extinct Slovincian and Polabian ) only with lengthening of
1470-472: The distribution of the pitch accents and vowel length, to the point that by the end of the Late Common Slavic period almost any vowel could be short or long, and almost any accented vowel could have falling or rising pitch. Most syllables in Middle Common Slavic were open . The only closed syllables were those that ended in a liquid (*l or *r), forming liquid diphthongs, and in such syllables,
1519-530: The etymology of the root is unclear. The Proto-Indo-European reconstructed goddess of the dawn is *H₂éwsōs . Her name was reconstructed using a comparative method on the basis of the names of Indo-European goddesses of the dawn, e.g. Greek Eos , Roman Aurora , or Vedic Ushas ; similarly, on the basis of the common features of the goddesses of the dawn, the features of the Proto-Indo-European goddess were also reconstructed. Although
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1568-490: The first place. Buyan In East Slavic folklore, Buyan ( Russian : Буя́н , sometimes transliterated as Bujan ) is a mysterious island in the ocean with the ability to appear and disappear with the tide. The island of Buyan features in many fairy tales; Koschei the Deathless keeps his soul of immortality hidden there, secreted inside a needle placed inside an egg in the mystical oak-tree ; other legends call
1617-479: The following vowel system ( IPA symbol where different): The columns marked "central" and "back" may alternatively be interpreted as "back unrounded" and "back rounded" respectively, but rounding of back vowels was distinctive only between the vowels *y and *u. The other back vowels had optional non-distinctive rounding. The vowels described as "short" and "long" were simultaneously distinguished by length and quality in Middle Common Slavic, although some authors prefer
1666-437: The goddess of dawn, and Zorya Vechernyaya (Evening Aurora, from véčer "evening") as the goddess of dusk. Each was to stand on a different side of the golden throne of the Sun. The Morning Zorya opened the gate of the heavenly palace when the Sun set out in the morning, and the Evening Zorya closed the gate when the Sun returned to his abode for the night. The headquarters of Zorya was to be located on Buyan Island. A myth from
1715-405: The goddess of the dawn: "Saint George was walking with Saint Nicholas and met Aurora". In folklore she also appears in the form of a riddle: Zara-zaranitsa, a beautiful virgin, was walking in the sky, and dropped her keys. The moon saw them, but said nothing. The sun saw them, and lifted them up. This is about the dew , which the moon does not react to and which disappears under the influence of
1764-450: The latter half of the first millennium AD, concurrent with the explosive growth of the Slavic-speaking area. There is no scholarly consensus concerning either the number of stages involved in the development of the language (its periodization ) or the terms used to describe them. One division is made up of three periods: Another division is made up of four periods: This article considers primarily Middle Common Slavic, noting when there
1813-561: The least in Russian and the most in Czech. Palatalized consonants never developed in Southwest Slavic (modern Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian), and the merger of *ľ *ň *ř with *l *n *r did not happen before front vowels (although Serbian and Croatian later merged *ř with *r). As in its ancestors, Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European, one syllable of each Common Slavic word was accented (carried more prominence). The placement of
1862-470: The parentage of the Dawn, she is referred "in a Russian song" as "dear little Dawn" and as the "Sister of the Sun". In Belarusian folklore she appears as Zaranitsa (Зараніца) or as Zara-zaranitsa (Зара-Зараніца). In one of the passages, Zaranica is met by St. George and St. Nicholas , who, according to comparative mythology, function as divine twins , who in Indo-European mythologies are usually brothers of
1911-404: The pillars is carved the Morning Zorya, with a golden head, above her is a glow, and even higher is the Sun, which rolls along an arched road, and on the other pillar is carved the Evening Zorya, above it is a setting sun. There are also darkened suns on this relief, possibly dead suns appearing in Slavic folklore. These motifs are also confirmed by the Russian saying "The sun will not rise without
1960-1039: The planet Venus is known as Zornjača , when it appears in the morning, and Večernjača when it appears at night. In a folksong, the Dawn/Morning Star is depicted as the bride of a male Moon. In some Croatian folk songs, collected and published in 1876 by Rikardo Ferdinand Plohl-Herdvigov, a "zorja" is used along with "Marja" in "Zorja Marja prsten toči"; and referred to as "Zorja, zorija" in "Marija sinku načinila košulju"; Proto-Slavic language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl. , PS. ; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic )
2009-414: The preceding vowel had to be short. Consonant clusters were permitted, but only at the beginning of a syllable. Such a cluster was syllabified with the cluster entirely in the following syllable, contrary to the syllabification rules that are known to apply to most languages. For example, *bogatьstvo "wealth" was divided into syllables as * bo-ga-tь-stvo , with the whole cluster * -stv- at
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2058-475: The restrictions that apply to the pitch accent in Slovene . In the Late Common Slavic period, several sound changes occurred. Long vowels bearing the acute (long rising) accent were usually shortened, resulting in a short rising intonation. Some short vowels were lengthened, creating new long falling vowels. A third type of pitch accent developed, known as the "neoacute", as a result of sound laws that retracted
2107-424: The same zagovory plots as the supreme power that a practitioner applies to. She was also prayed to as Zarya for good harvests and health: Ho, thou morning zarya, and thou evening zarya! fall upon my rye, that it may grow up tall as a forest, stout as an oak! Mother zarya [apparently twilight here] of morning and evening and midnight! as ye quietly fade away and disappear, so may both sicknesses and sorrows in me,
2156-557: The servant of God, quietly fade and disappear—those of the morning, and of the evening, and of the midnight! Professor Bronislava Kerbelytė cited that in Russian tradition, the Zoryas were also invoked to help in childbirth (with the appellation "зорки заряночки") and to treat the baby (calling upon "заря-девица", or "утренняя заря Параскавея" and "вечерняя заря Соломонея"). Zarya was also invoked as protectress and to dispel nightmares and sleeplessness: In another incantation, Zarya-Zarnitsa
2205-735: The sun. Zara is probably simply the goddess of the dawn, and can be translated literally as "Dawn", and Zaranica is a diminutive and may indicate respect towards her. In Belarusian tradition, the stars are sometimes referred to as zorki and zory , such as the star Polaris , known as Zorny Kol ('star pole') and polunochna zora ('star of midnight'). In Polish folklore, there are three sister Zoras ( Trzy Zorze ): Morning Zorza (Polish: Zorza porankowa or Utrenica ), Midday Zora ( Zorza południowa or Południca ) and Evening Zora ( Zorza wieczorowa or Wieczornica ), which appear in Polish folk charms and, according to Andrzej Szyjewski, represent
2254-460: The syllable and no metathesis (*TarT, e.g. PSl. gordъ > Kashubian gard ; > Polabian * gard > gord ). In West Slavic and South Slavic, liquid diphthongs beginning with *ь or *ъ had likewise been converted into open syllables by converting the following liquid into a syllabic sonorant (palatal or non-palatal according to whether *ь or *ъ preceded respectively). This left no closed syllables at all in these languages. Most of
2303-491: The terms "lax" and "tense" instead. Many modern Slavic languages have since lost all length distinctions. Vowel length evolved as follows: In § Grammar below, additional distinctions are made in the reconstructed vowels: Middle Common Slavic had the following consonants (IPA symbols where different): The phonetic value (IPA symbol) of most consonants is the same as their traditional spelling. Some notes and exceptions: In most dialects, non-distinctive palatalization
2352-447: The traditional definition of a proto-language as the latest reconstructable common ancestor of a language group, with no dialectal differentiation. (This would necessitate treating all pan-Slavic changes after the 6th century or so as part of the separate histories of the various daughter languages.) Instead, Slavicists typically handle the entire period of dialectally differentiated linguistic unity as Common Slavic . One can divide
2401-576: Was probably present on all consonants that occurred before front vowels. When the high front yer *ь/ĭ was lost in many words, it left this palatalization as a "residue", which then became distinctive, producing a phonemic distinction between palatalized and non-palatalized alveolars and labials. In the process, the palatal sonorants *ľ *ň *ř merged with alveolar *l *n *r before front vowels, with both becoming *lʲ *nʲ *rʲ. Subsequently, some palatalized consonants lost their palatalization in some environments, merging with their non-palatal counterparts. This happened
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