Dieva dēli

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The Dieva Deli ( lett . Dieva Deli »Dievs' sons"; lit . Dievo sūneliai "Dievas' son ') are in the Baltic mythology the sons of the god of heaven Dievs . They are not named individually and their number is usually given as two, but sometimes also three or five. Sometimes only one son appears and can then take on traits from Jesus . These differences stem from the fact that until the written canonization in the 19th century, only folkloric traditions took place, which in turn were strongly influenced by Christian overlays.

Essence

As the sons of Dievs, the father of the gods , they run the father's farm together with him, they plow the fields and mow the meadows, but on Sundays they go hunting for silver squirrels or hazel grouse. The sun daughters help them with the field work. The Dieva dēli have an erotic relationship with them and secretly observe them while bathing. But the mutual teasing does not always end peacefully and then the gods argue for three days. A story tells how Dieva dēls ("Son of God") marries the sun daughter Saules meita , and Auseklis exchanges wedding rings. In Latvian folklore, when the Dieva dēli mow the grass, the Saules meitas rake it together. The Saules meitas were originally identified with celestial phenomena: the dawn and the sunset.

In Lithuanian lore, the Dievo sūneliai are usually two sons of Dievas who are called Ašvieniai and are engaged to the sun daughter Saulytė , who is then kidnapped by the moon god Mėnulis .

Indo-European references

In addition to the linguistic parallels between the Baltic languages and ancient Indian Sanskrit, there are also parallels with Indian mythology: the concept of the "sons of God" was already known in the Indo-European religion . The Vedic twin gods Aśvinā are also called Divaḥ sūnū . The ancient Greek twin gods Dioscuri are essentially related to the Baltic Dieva dēli . The representation as a pair of twins can be explained from the original identification with the morning star and the evening star, which in truth form a unit as the planet Venus. However, it should be noted that Baltic sources never speak of twins. The Indo-European family of gods was evidently cultivated by the Greeks and Romans and has survived the longest with the Balts .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biezais (1975).
  2. ↑ Dievs is the equivalent of the Christian God in the modern Latvian language. In the Latvian Bible (Moses 1: 6), God's children are therefore referred to as Dieva dēli .
  3. ^ Biezais (1985).

literature