Deela-Malkh fylfot
Malkh is a festival dedicated to the Deela-Malkh in Vainakh mythology. 25 December was the birthday and the festival of the Sun. During the ceremonies suppliants turned to the east. Also in Nakh architecture temples and house façades were directed to east. Nakh people believed that Sun went to visit her mother Aza at the summer and winter solstices. The journey took her six months to complete. Nakh people used the fylfot as symbol of Deela-Malkh on their buildings and tomb-stones.
Etymology
The most commonly cited etymology for this is that it comes from the notion common among nineteenth-century antiquarians, but based on only a single 1500 manuscript, that it was used to fill empty space at the foot of stained-glass windows in medieval churches. This etymology is often cited in modern dictionaries (such as the Collins English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster OnLine).
Thomas Wilson (1896), suggested other etymologies, now considered untenable:
"In Great Britain the common name given to the Swastika from Anglo-Saxon times ... was Fylfot, said to have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon fower fot, meaning four-footed, or many-footed."
"The word [Fylfot] is Scandinavian and is compounded of Old Norse fiǫl-, equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon fela, German viel, "many", and fótr, "foot", the many-footed figure. The Germanic root fele is cognate with English full, which has the sense of "many". Both fele and full are in turn related to the Greek poly-, all of which stem from the proto-Indo-European root *ple-. A fylfot is thus a "poly-foot", to wit, a "many-footed" sigil.
Vainakh mythology
The Vainakh people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingush) were Islamised comparatively late, during the early modern period, and Amjad Jaimoukha (2005) proposes to reconstruct some of the elements of their pre-Islamic religion and mythology, including traces of ancestor worship and funerary cults. The Nakh peoples, like many other peoples of the Caucasus such as especially Circassians and Ossetians, had been practising tree worship, and believed that trees were the abodes of spirits. Vainakh peoples developed many rituals to serve particular kinds of trees. The pear tree held a special place in the faith of Vainakhs.
Jaimoukha (2005) on page 252 gives a list of reconstructed "Waynakh deities". Wiki
Unknown Chechnya
Comments