Peshapay

Peshapay is the Lezgin numen of rain, embodied in one of the best-attested Daghestani rain-making rites. In time of drought the villagers made a figure of grass and rags, or dressed a masked man (more rarely a youth, boy, woman or girl), and led it in procession from house to house singing the rain-song; at each door the effigy was drenched with water to compel the sky to do the same. The Lezgin name Peshapay, most often derived from pesh 'leaf' and apay 'father-in-law' as 'the leafy father-in-law', alternates with the name Gudil (and the mummer-names Gudi or Gudu in the Gulgeri-Chai valley) used by Lezgins and their Azerbaijani, Tabasaran and Tat neighbours for the same rain-doll.

Domains

• rain

Powers

• brings the rain when carried in procession and doused with water

Sources

• Peshapay is the Lezgin rain deity personified in the rain-making rite; a masked man (occasionally a woman or child) or a grass-and-rag effigy called Peshapay in Lezgin and Gudil in neighbouring tongues was led from house to house with a rain-song and doused with water to summon rain.: A.G. Bulatova, Selskokhozyaystvennyy kalendar i kalendarnye obychai i obryady narodov Dagestana. St. Petersburg, 1999 (secondary); Obryady vyzova dozhdya v traditsionnoy kulture... yuzhnogo Dagestana (lezginy), cyberleninka.ru (secondary)
• A.G. Trofimova derived the name Peshapay from Lezgin pesh 'leaf' and apay 'father-in-law', 'the leafy father-in-law', an etymology followed by most researchers.: A.G. Trofimova, works on the agrarian rites of the peoples of southern Dagestan, cited in cyberleninka.ru rain-ritual studies (secondary)