the Bear Motif

Even only three posts in, I can already say with confidence that a great portion of this blog will involve the comparative analysis of the European and Asian races and their civilizations, culture and languages. In analyzing anything, whether it is a physical object or abstract concept, we are immediately met with a number of conspicuous facts which are displayed outwardly. However, in every case there are a second set of latent facts, which exist hidden beneath the surface, but are no less true. Such is also the case in analyzing the European-Asian complex. In our case, what presents itself outwardly are the vast differences that are most commonly noted between the two, especially in the cases of culture and language. What more often eludes ready detection, on the other hand, is a common thread of fundamentals from which these two civilizations are ultimately derived.

The reader must not misinterpret me in this. I am not suggesting that the European and Asian races and their civilizations are not different. That is most certainly false; it is like saying a brother and his sister are not different. What I am saying is that the differences in reality merely represent two polar trajectories which emanate from a common source. They are different, but they are also related. Now that is an equally bold statement, but it shall not go without evidence. Analyzing into antiquity, and inspecting the mountain of archaeological and philological material left behind by both races, we are able to view the development of these two trajectories, and from this an observation many will find surprising emerges: the further back into history we inspect, the more these two "separate" races begin to resemble one another

In this post I will discuss one notion that manifests itself in the ancient prehistory of both Europe and Asia: the motif of the bear.

Among the proto-Indo-Europeans, the bear was most certainly regarded as a creature worthy of great respect and of great fear. Although the exact location has long been the subject of debate among philologists and archaeologists, that primeval nation, which was the seed of the European race, dwelt deep within the heartland of the Eurasian Steppe, and so would likely have had frequent encounters with the creature. A testament to this sentiment among the Indo-European peoples, which has apparently survived the test of time, is the naming taboo that emerged in many of the daughter languages of proto-Indo-European. In those languages, the PIE root for bear, h₂ŕ̥tḱos, was replaced by a euphemistic term. In English, for instance, the word 'bear' is ultimately derived from a different PIE root, namely bʰerH, which means 'brown' or 'the brown one'. Likewise in Russian, медве́дь (bear) means literally, 'the honey-eater', having replaced the original word. Certainly among the Indo-Europeans the bear was so revered and so feared, that there was the belief that even uttering its name was a sign of disrespect, and this lead to the development of the taboo among the northern IE diaspora groups, particularly the Germanics and Slavs. However, in most of the southern diaspora groups, occupying geographic areas where run-ins with bears would have been less common, this original strand had died out, which is why in Greek and Latin we find words derived from the original h₂ŕ̥tḱos: ἄρκτος and ursus.

The naming taboo for the bear, which certainly must have been congenital in Indo-Europeans back to the pre-migration era, tells us a lot about the greater cultic role of the bear in IE culture. According to Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, a voluminous tome that explores in-depth the proto-Indo-European language and the people who spoke it, the bear cult was second in significance only to the wolf cult among the proto-Indo-Europeans. The bear and the wolf represented the masculine, energetic element within two separate domains. The wolf was the master of the social domain. He brought order to and enforced the laws of the tribe, and consequently maintained the tribe's unity. Thus the wolf was personified as the king or the chief. The bear, in contrast, was the master of the biological domain. He was seen as a prolific force, an agent of fertility, whose seed brought forth the future generations. In this way, the bear was the bringer of life, but, being a frightening creature, he was also the bringer of destruction. In this way the bear embodied the greater cycle of creation: birth, life and ultimately death. Thus the bear was often personified as a father, a grandfather or some other kind of ancestor.

There are also notable cases where the bear is personified in a female sense, as a mother or ancestress. Clues regarding this facet of the bear cult show up from time to time in the folklore of various Indo-European peoples. For example, in the Latvian epic poem Lāčplēsis, the titular hero, whose name means 'bear-slayer', kills a bear by ripping apart its jaws. Later one finds out that Lāčplēsis' mother was herself a she-bear, from where he has inherited his superhuman strength. A she-bear cult was definitely alive among the Celts, who worshiped the goddess Artio. Her name itself is derived from h₂ŕ̥tḱos, and is very likely cognate with the name of the Hellenic goddess Artemis. In Greece, Artemis was originally worshiped as a bear goddess, but eventually this depiction of her fell out of favor and was lost in all places except Brauron, where rituals dedicated to the bear goddess Artemis were performed by girls who took on the appearance of bears by wearing bear skins. Artemis Brauronia was also known for her wrath--another echo of the original bear deity that was qualified as both a creator and a destroyer.

But, as we shall see, the bear cult and the entire mythological motif surrounding it was not limited to the Indo-Europeans. In fact, bear worship and the presence of 'bear totems' are found throughout the Eurasian Steppe and the lands which are proximal to it, particularly among the Altaic peoples. One of the most famous examples is the Korean foundation myth of Tangun. In this myth, a tiger and a bear pray to the supreme god Hwanung, who in response orders them to eat an herbal concoction and retire into a cave for 100 days. While the tiger gives up early on, the bear persists in the cave, and is transformed into a woman, known as Ungnyeo (熊女), literally 'bear-woman'. Later Ungnyeo sleeps with Hwanung and begets Tangun, who founds the first Korean kingdom and as a result is held to be the supreme ancestor of the Koreans. The bear in this myth shares many similarities with the bear in Indo-European myths. For one, Ungnyeo is an ancestress, and therefore cannot but be associated with sexual proliferation and the germination of the future generations. Further, she also is a manifestation of the she-bear motif which also was present in Greece and Gaul, and her myth is very reminiscent of the Latvian epic where the son of a she-bear becomes a legendary hero.

Primordial China also seems to have its own version of the Tangun myth. The legendary first emperor of China, Huangdi (黄帝), whose name means the 'Yellow Emperor', may have been a reflex of the same bear totem that we find in Korea. According to the myth, Huangdi is the leader of a tribe named Youxiong (有熊), which literally translates to 'having-bears' (The prefix you- (有) is found in many of the names of ancient Chinese tribes, such as Youshen (有莘) and Youge (有鬲), so it might represent a phonological value belonging to an ancient language rather than the literal meaning of 'have'). The main rival of Huangdi is Yandi (炎帝), the 'flame emperor', but the two end up uniting their tribes in order to defeat Chi You (蚩尤). The victorious Huangdi during his rule of the united tribes lays the foundation of a modern civilized society. While I have much more to say on the prehistoric figures who are central to this myth, and their identities, I will leave that to a future post and stick to the aspects of the myth which reflect the bear motif. It is clear that there is a strong association between the clan of Huangdi and bears, as is indicated by its name, which is highly suggestive of the presence of a bear totem. Numerous Western and Chinese authors, such as Remi Mathieu and Ye Shuxian/叶舒宪 (who wrote a book, the Bear Totem: the origins of the Chinese ancestral myth/熊图腾：中华祖先神话探源, about it), have suggested the same thing, lending credibility to the theory. I may also suggest that Huangdi's association with the color yellow may be representative of the bear's skin, as was also the case in the rituals of Artemis Brauronia, whose participants wore chitons of saffron-yellow to symbolize bear skins when real bear skins were not available.

To conclude, when we analyze some of the origins stories and mythologies of various European and Asian nations, we find that the motif of the bear and the bear totem is exceedingly common. The bear evidently occupied a very important position in the universe of Eurasian peoples. Bears are most commonly associated with the concept of sexual proliferation, which is why bear figures are often depicted as the progenitors of races and bringers of life and strength. On the other side of the coin, the bear was also respected and feared for its fierce nature. Overall, the bear motif, clearly native to the Eurasian Steppe, represents a uniquely Eurasian facet of spirituality and of society itself. In future posts I will be discussing a few more of those facets that various ancient European and Asian societies had in common.