Болгарская космология в циркумпонтийском контексте
Circumpontic and other links in Bulgarian cosmology

Summary/Abstract: Cosmological motifs spread across the Balkans and best of all known thanks to Bulgarian data usually have precise and sometimes exclusive Caucasian parallels. Recent spread is probable in most cases. The areas of these motifs correspond to the interaction zone that included the Mediterranean (mostly Eastern), the Caucasus, Near East and part of Central Asia and began to form during the Hellenistic time. Most of these motifs probably spread along with Islamic expansion. These are “Milky Way as 201 a path of straw”, “Orion’s Belt as scales”, “The Pleiades as a chicken with chicks”, “Moon spots as dirt thrown into the Monn’s face by his or her sister, brother, or mother”, “Colors of rainbow predict harvest”, “Rainbow as a colorful belt on ones’s clothes”, “Rainbow changes sex of a person”. Most of these motifs are also known in other parts of the world but parallels between the Balkans and the Caucasus are more precise. “Girl with water-pails seen in the Moon” and “Belt of Orion as a yoke” can represent Thracian legacy in Bulgarian cosmonimy though these ideas could be brought from the north later. Long before Hellenism, there were intensive cultural links between the Caucasus and the Balkans known thanks to the large set of motifs shared by the Caucasian, Ancient Greek and (poorly recorded) Ancient Asia Minor mythologies. Was Thracia part of this cultural area is unclear. Several motifs link Bulgarian cosmology with Eurasian steppe zone.

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