Рыба и бык: зооморфная опора земли в фольклоре Евразии
The Fish and the Bull: zoomorphic support of the Earth in Eurasian folklore

Summary/Abstract: Bull holding the earth on its horns is an image is a popular image in Western Eurasian folk believes, Bulgaria included. In many cases, the bull itself stands on a fish or „whale”. No such images are known in ancient written sources or iconography, and their spread is usually ascribed to the influence of the Islam. To some areas such as North and East Africa or Malaya such a cosmological scheme was almost certainly brought with the Islam, but its absence in the Koran itself brings us to look for its sources somewhere else. In the South-eastern Eurasia (the North-East India, Indonesia, Taiwan) the images of the earth-supporting mammals are more diverse and better integrated into traditional mythologies than in Western Eurasia. The image of the earth-supporting fi sh is typical for Siberia and East Asia. The spread of the both, the bull and the fish earth supports, and their fusion into new standard cosmological scheme probably realized during the cultural integration of Nuclear Eurasia since about the time of Christ thanks to emergence of the „World-System” communicative network. With better opportunities for the inter-ethnic borrowing, the folklore motifs which had been lest integrated into their ethnic background were selected. Several other motifs typical for the Western Eurasian folk beliefs also demonstrate parallels in mythologies of the south-eastern Eurasia. Their diffusion across Nuclear Eurasia was largely independent from the spread of the „Abrahamic” religions.

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