I send my uncle info from time-to-time on what I’ve found in our genealogy and was beginning to write him an update of our family name before New Year’s. Looking for some clarification on a troublesome feminine element I noticed existing in Hohn/hon as well as attempting to find out more of the ‘bog/god’ connection, I did a search and got three Slavic deities that caught my interest: Svarog and his two sons Dazhbog and Svarozhits.
Svarog is a sky god, god of fire and blacksmithing and is equated with Hephaestus and Vulcan. His son,
Dazhbog, is a major solar deity in slavic mythology. The wiki mentions that “Proto-Slavic
*bogъ [god] is often considered to be an
Iranian borrowing, "being related to Indo-Iranian Bhaga…”. And
Svarozhits (
-its,
-ich = ‘son of…’) is also a god of fire, protection and war. The etymology of his name is interesting with translations from many languages as: quarrel, to argue, to swear, storm clouds, darkness, cloud, fog, cloudy sky, and heaven. But the one that caught my attention was from the
Sanskrit svarati, “to sing”, “to sound” “to praise” (
svara/svāna - “sound”). His father’s name, Svarog, consists of the stem
svar (“heat”, “light”) which in turn was derived from the earlier
*sur (“shining”).
I was most interested in Svarozhits since he was given the local nickname Radogost (Radagast) by the Polabians, a slavic tribe who had migrated from Czechia up the Elbe river to the same area where my family name is found.
Now, for some reason, after reading about these three, I started to get a strong feeling of Zoroastrianism focusing on the two personified deities Sraosha and his companion Parodarsh, the rooster (‘one who foresees the dawn’; ‘bird who sings (for sunrise)’ (
*hanan/*hanon)).
But that’s kinda where it ended, for a time. I thought that
srao and
svar felt similar, and then to find “to sing” in the slavic mix… but I had no direct link. Still, I got sucked back in and revisited an article that I had forgotten I had read before and remembered I discarded because I couldn’t see any relevance at the time.
As a side note, it was around this time, right after finding the three Slavic deities, that I had an experience. After my bedtime routine, I lay down to sleep. I closed my eyes and, after a short while, before falling asleep, a light appeared that grew and grew in 'my mind' until it was quite bright. It was white with a yellow glow, warm, with the accompaniment of a pleasant feeling. It lasted for about twenty seconds then slowly dissipated. I can't say it was directly or indirectly related to the timing of this discovery since I have had a (very) few of these before.
I say ‘troublesome feminine element’ because it’s elusive, and in that regard I realise that I misread the etymonline entry for ‘cock’. I understood the Old Teutonic word for ‘cock’ to be
*hanan while the word for ‘hen’ to be
*hanon. But this is not the case. Both
*hanan and
*hanon are masculine while the entry for the feminine ‘hen’ (
henn, henne, henna) is
*hannjo. This entry goes on to mention that the original masculine (
Hahn ‘cock’) survives in German, Swedish, Danish, etc., but the feminine does not. However, if I look up
hohn on Glosbe, the Low German translation is ‘chicken’, but if capitalised (
Hohn), the first translation is ‘hen’. That confused me a lot. Also, if I look up
hon in Swedish, it means ‘she/her’,
höna = ‘hen’,
han = ‘he/him’, and
hane = ‘male, cock, bull’; in Norwegian:
høne = ‘hen/chicken’,
han = ‘he’, and
hane = ‘rooster/cock’; Danish:
hone = ‘hen’,
han = ‘he’, and
hane = ‘rooster/cock’. So, if
Hohn is supposed to be masculine, where is this feminine element coming from? I didn’t know. Retrospectively, I also saw ‘odd wording’ as well. I would see the neutral term ‘chicken’ used where I would expect to see the word ‘hen’- ‘rooster and
chicken’ rather than ‘rooster and
hen’. The point is that I was now aware of this feminine element discrepancy and was on the lookout for it.
The format challenged article that I revisited was
A Thematic and Etymological Glossary of Aquatic and Bird Genera Names in Iranian Bundahism (download the six page pdf for a much easier read) by Golnar Ghalekhani and Mahdi Khaksar. This time, I paid closer attention to some words that turned out to be quite important.
3. xorus (cock) [DYLKA] xrōs (Mackenzie, 2011 p. 164)
... ud xrōs kē Parōdarš xwānēnd. (Pakzad, 2005 p. 174)
…the cock which is called Parvadarsh (Bahar, 2011 p. 79).
…
Description:
The word cock is derived from √xraos meaning to roar and cry and roaring and crying.
This word has changed into xrōs , xrōh in Pahlavi language.
Using this description the Middle Persian word
xrōs/xrōh refers to the “rooster, cock’ and is a cognate with the Sanskrit
kruś meaning ’to call’. To hear examples of the pronunciation of
xros (a few of which are ridiculous), go
here. One of the pronunciations starts to sound like ‘cross’ which I thought was interesting, though it’s unpopular. There is
another example of this found in Bengali and Urdu. It seems that the
xr- changed to
kr- (and also to
gr-).
Another article sent me to a book called
Dictionary of Khotan Saka by H. W. Bailey. On p. 93 there is an entry for
grus- ‘to call’ which comes from:
xraus- :xrus- 'to make noise, cry out', Av.
xraos- … N.Pers.
xuros ‘cock’. There are also many examples from Middle Parthian and Middle Persian that translate to ‘call’ and one example to ‘preacher’.
A search on Etymonline shows the PIE root for ‘to call, shout’ is
*gal-, with a supported example from the Latin
gallus “cock”. The root also forms the word
Gallic, “of or pertaining to the French…Gaul or the Gauls”.
Now, Parodarsh is the companion of the major Zoroastrian deity Sraosha who exists in the Gathas, the oldest hymns of Zoroastrianism. Parodarsh does not. Sraosha's popularity has retained him into Iranian Islam as the angel Surōš. The Avestan
SRAOŠA:
...is derived from an s-extension of √sraw-/sru- “to hear.” … As a common IIr. verb, the basic meaning is “to obey, be compliant, ” that is, “to hear and obey.”
It looks like
√sraw-/sru- might be coming from the Sanskrit
zrotum [zru] ‘to hear’. Incidentally, the Latin word ‘
ausculto’ (
obsculta) also means ‘hear, obey’. In an article titled
In Search of the Message of Srōš: Investigation of the Deity Srōš and his Iconography During the Sasanian Period the authors suggest one of the motifs for Srōš (Sraosha), besides the rooster, is
the ear (as well as a charioteer).
In the Avesta Yasna, Sraosha (
mentioned 56 times) is translated as 'obedience' (mentioned 59 times) and is the most invoked when it comes to ritual sacrifices being a messenger angel between humans and Ahura Mazda. When reading through some of these, there are some interesting lines, but generally feels quite robotic. Also, Parodarsh does not show up. I haven't read them all, but out of all the mentions of Sraosha, this line stands out, for me, as the quintessential mindset:
7. (Yea), we sacrifice to Sraosha, Obedience the blessed.
However, putting all the liturgical stuff aside, if I put
xraos and Sraosha/Sraosa (compare MPers.
Srōš with
xrōs) side by side, they are basically identical. So, one ‘hears and obeys the call’? But it felt more appropriate for 'the call' to belong to the rooster not Sraosha. So if I removed the rooster and looked at just the meaning of ‘Parodarsh’, would that reveal anything?
For reference, Parodarsh makes it's first appearance in the Vendidad,
Fargard 18, II:22-26:
22. 'On the third part of the night, Atar, the son of Ahura Mazda,calls the holy Sraosha for help, saying: "Come thou, holy,well-formed Sraosha, [then he brings unto me some clean wood with his well-washed hands24.] Here comes Azi, made by the Daevas, who consumes me and wants to put me out of the world."
23. 'And then the holy Sraosha wakes up the bird named Parodarsh, which ill-speaking people call Kahrkatas, and the bird lifts up his voice against the mighty Ushah:
24. '"Arise, O men! recite the Ashem yad vahistem [Ashem Vohu] and the Naismi daevo 25. Lo! here is Bushyasta, the long-handed, coming upon you, who lulls to sleep again the whole living world as soon as it has awoke: 'Sleep!' [she says,] 'O poor man! the time is not yet come.'"
25. '"On the three excellent things be never intent, namely, good thoughts, good words, and good deeds; on the three abominable things be ever intent, namely, bad thoughts, bad words, and bad deeds."
26. 'And then bed-fellows address one another: "Rise up, here is the cock calling me up." Whichever of the two first gets up shall first enter Paradise: ...
The understanding is that the rooster wakes up people (on the third part of the night, so, before dawn) by scaring away Bushyasta, the demon of sloth and laziness, so that people can go to prayer. Bushyasta is the cause of procrastination that keeps people from their productive tasks.
The Ghalekhani and Khaksar paper provides the general translation of Parodarsh:
In Avesta the words Paro.darƏs (Pahlavi: Parodarš) means the foreseer (Parvad = Para) meaning to see the dawn before anyone and tell about the dawn (Abdullahi, 2002: 339).
Mahin Ahbabi from
The Holiness of “Rooster” in Mithraism says:
In Avesta, the rooster is written as the Parodarsh (Paravdarš), which is composed of two parts of “Paroh” meaning “before”, and “Darash” meaning “to see” (Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques (1988)) . This religious word means to predicate, it means that it has seen the light of the day in advance and gives the tiding of its entrance (Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques (1988)).
The translation of ‘to see’ looks like it comes from the Avestan, Old Persian and Old Indian word
dars-/drs- (embedded in the entry
dirsūjsinä 'wishing to see') found on
p.159 of Bailey's
Saka. There is another meaning of
dars- (embedded in the entry
darv- 'to dare') found on
p.153, that means ‘to dare’ and a suffix (
-dar) meaning ‘to tear, split’ and ‘to scrape’.
Paro- becomes
para- very quickly and there are a lot of entries. On
p.214, there is
para- ‘around, beyond’,
para- ‘food’ and
para- ‘going, journey’. On
p.215, there is
parā ‘sold’,
parā ‘you are to deign to’, and
parā ‘late for
parau ‘order’’. On
p.217, the Av. word
parō shows up with
parā, both embedded in the entry
pare, all meaning ‘beyond’ and is the main definition for
parō. Then, on
p.230-1, there’s
pāra- ‘cake’,
pāra- ‘a measure’,
pāra- ‘debt, to be paid’,
pāra-/pārrā- ‘heel, end’, and
pāra-/pārra- ‘wing, feather; leaf, petal’. On.
p.239,
pära- ‘worm’.
Out of all of the
para- choices, the idea of ‘before, in advance, foresee’ may be coming from the definition of ‘beyond’ but there is no specific sense of ‘rooster’ anywhere except perhaps by association with ‘wing, feather’. There is zero immediate sense of ‘dawn’ or ‘light’.
However, there are even shorter versions of
para that come into play. These words, also on p.230, make up a lot of other words but they have base meanings. First is
per- ‘cross’, ‘cross over’, ‘pass’, ‘to hand over, give’, ‘convey over’, and ‘through’, ‘penetrate’. There's also
par- 'to fill', 'to nourish' and 'to cause, effect'. Then there’s
pär- with the ‘lesser’ meaning of ’convince, believe’ and it’s main meaning of ‘rear, feed’, ‘nourisher, parent’:
The personified female nurturer is Av. pārəndi-, parə̄ndi-, Zor.P. pārand, the chief of women (ratu-) named from her chief function to produce and rear children. The corresponding O.Ind. RV. pūraṃdhi- is similarly 'nurturer' as the quintescence of woman. … As the nourisher with pārāka- [‘nourisher, parent’], see Zor.P. pit parvarēt 'the father rears', and the Zor.P. gloss parvart ku vēh hart to Av. θraosta. IE Pok. 81S per- 'to rear', Lat. pariō, peperī, partus, parens, Lit. per- 'to brood over young', periu̇ perēti…
Here I finally find a reference to the feminine and, as it happens, poultry, specifically the hen in terms of ‘brood’, even if it’s through the Latin.
Then I found this line in the Greater Bundahisn that
should allude to the hen. (
Ch. XV, A:11):
11. The peacock is the only one of the male birds which rears and lays eggs; for there is even a time when he lays the egg in the sight of men.
I've seen the peacock and cock get smeared together all over the place and here, as elsewhere, some authors interchange ‘cock’ and ‘peacock’. But here, the line clearly says ‘peacock’. Regardless, the line makes no sense since peacocks are male and cannot lay eggs. Pea
hens can. And, obviously, roosters don’t lay eggs either. Hens do.
But just a few lines
previous in Ch. XV, 15 as it states:
15. The hen, which one calls the bird 'parodarsh' and also “foresighted," rears the egg every day. And there is a time when it lays the egg clandestinely, and there is a time when it does so openly in the midst of men; among the birds the hen alone is of this kind.
Besides the fact that this sounds like line 11, the
hen is Parodarsh? Well, that’s a complete switch since Parodarsh is supposed to be male!
Anyway, Iranicaonline gave a
little thought on these passages.
COCK
...
The Vidēvdād prefers the name parōdarš to xrōs, claiming that the bird would be more effective if people did not use the latter term; xrōs in the Bundahišn is used of a bird that lays eggs (TD 2, p. 115.1), so perhaps confusion with chickens was a reason to prefer the Avestan name.
Notice the word
prefers and that the word
xrōs is referring to the hen! And it specifically says in
Fargard 18, II:28 of the Vendidad:
28. 'And whosoever will kindly and piously present one of the faithful with a pair of these my Parodarsh birds, a male and a female, O Spitama Zarathushtra! it is as though he had given a house with a hundred columns, a thousand beams, ten thousand large windows, ten thousand small windows.
So, Parodarsh is
both male and female but the focus is being kept on the male with the female pushed to the background.
I realise now that Parodarsh is not a real bird especially when, on p. 64 of Saka, the word for ‘cock’ is
kṛṅga,
pakṣiṇaḥ,
kukkuṭāḥ,
kṛṃgga,
krriṃgä and
čuš (among others) and the ‘hen’ is
k’arǰ,
čirga,
kerk and
čaš (among others). It's not even close. The meanings from
para and
dars got zoomorphised onto the rooster as having ‘foresight’, in terms of 'dawn', as did
xraos/xrōs, ‘the call’. So, if the ‘xrōs bird’ lays eggs then it is a hen, and since
xraos means ‘call’ then that is female too, which means there are
two calls. I wonder if, perhaps, in the spirit of ‘waking up’, the male ‘call’ is to ‘hear and obey’ while the female ‘call’ is one of ‘many are called, few choose to heed the call’? It's a bit unfair of me to separate male and female like this but I'm doing it just as an illustration.
There is also a possible connection, of sorts, with the widely revered Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, flowing water, abundance and wealth, art, speech, wisdom, and learning, named
Saraswati (Sanskrit: Sarasvati) found in the Rigveda. Her name is a combination of
saras ('pooling water', 'speech') and
vati ('she who possesses'). In a 2018 list of
25 Lesser Known Facts About Saraswati, it is promoted that ‘she who has pooling water’ (ie: river, speech) is either known as (#3)
Sraosha from Zoroastrianism, or is suggested to be akin either as his wife or the wife of Ahura Mazda. Her symbol is the (#4) peacock “whose crowing calls the pious to their religious duties,” which sounds remarkably similar to Parodarsh’s crowing at dawn to awaken people for morning prayers. In the Sanskrit,
one of the words for ‘herald’ (
nartaka) also means ‘peacock’
and ‘peahen’, though it’s main meaning appears to be ‘dancer’. There are some similarities between Sraosha/Parodarsh and Sarasvati/peacock.
So: Sarasvati- goddess -> svarati- ‘sound, sing, shine, praise’ -> Svarog and Svarozhits- Slavic deities. Maybe?
Getting back to the Saka dictionary, there is one final entry that really caught my attention. On
p.231-2, there is this:
pāra- ‘boundary’… Av.
pāra- from par- 'to cross' , Pašto
pore 'beyond'; Zor.P.
parr (pl) <
*parna- ‘boundary’.
IE Pok. 816 per- 'cross', O.Ind.
pāra-.
Pāra also exists in Sanskrit:
Para: n. (rarely m.) the further bank or shore or boundary, any bank or shore, the opposite side, the end or limit of anything, the utmost reach or fullest extent etc. (dūr/e pār/e-, at the farthest ends ; pāraṃ-gam- etc. with genitive case or locative case, to reach the end, go through, fulfil, carry out [as a promise], study or learn thoroughly [as a science] etc.; pāraṃ-nī-, to bring to a close.
That can’t be a coincidence, can it? Not when the
‘rooster’ (
Hahn (L.Ger.) and
hana (O.Eng.)),
‘boundary’ (
han (O.Eng.) ‘boundary (stone)’) and
‘cross, to cross’ (
hon (O.Eng.) ‘hang, suspend, crucify’) are paralleling?
As a side note, there was something that made me cock my head (
) and say "Huh?". In the story of the death of Socrates, his apparent
final words were, “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” I thought it was rather odd that Parodarsh is represented as a cock and that one of the definitions for
pāra- is ‘debt, to be paid’. The Sanskrit
para also carries a definition of 'carry out [as a promise]'.
Cont...
