БАЛКАНСКИ УСПОРЕДИЦИ. СУРВАЧКА
BALKAN PARALLELS. THE "SURVACHKA"

Summary/Abstract: Proceeding from the fact that parallel to the language phenomenon "Balkan language community" there exists an unity of the cultures of Balkan peoples, the author interpretes Bulgarian New Year custom "survakane" in the context of analogous contemporary and ancient ritual practices. The rite has been repeatedly studied in the ethnographic literature, different opinions about its origin and the meaning of its denomination have been expressed. In this article it is stated that some of peculiarities of the contemporary custom, still preserved in some Balkan traditions resemble the ancient feasts related to the tree-bough cults. The same ritual participants (adolescent and young people); similar texts of the songs; similar decoration of the boughs — all this draws close Balkan "survachka" to the ancient Greek "eresion". The differences in the choice of the tree for the ritual object — olive or laurel (for the eresion), and most frequently cornel-tree (for the survachka), are due to local differences in the tree or vegetation cults. Here are proposed two new possible etymologies of the word "survachka", which may be interconnected: 1) from i.-e. stem, denoting "sun", and 2) i.-e.* sen-/su "to produce, to give birth". Probably the denomination had been related to an ancient feast of the sun or/and fertility, which gradually was enriched with new ritual objects and magic practices. Bulgarian culture, developed in the specific Balkan conditions, may be properly interpreted only in the frames of Balkan cultural communion, and Bulgarian data may be viewed as a peculiar set of specifities in the Balkan folk traditions.

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