Soslan

THE CENTRAL HERO OF THE OSSETIAN NART EPIC, AND THE CORPUS DID NOT HOLD HIM. His name resolved, but to circassian_sosruquo, which carries 'Soslan' in its alias list — so a search for the Ossetian hero answered with the Circassian one. He is authored demigod to match the two records of the same hero already in the corpus under the Circassian and Karachay-Balkar keys, and with EMPTY parentIds, because the Ossetian tradition makes him stone-born of an unnamed shepherd and the corpus's own Satana record calls her his foster-mother, not his mother.

Domains

• nart championship
• stone birth
• invulnerability except at the knees
• solar cult associations
• the journey to the land of the dead

Relations

• spouse: Atsyrukhs
• spouse: Bedukha
• enemy: Syrdon
• killer of: Totradz
• tempered by: Kurdalægon
• fostered by: Satana
• cross tradition counterpart of: Fire-Bringer Born of Stone
• cross tradition counterpart of: Sosuruk

Sources

• Reference treatment of Soslan (Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ŠOŠLAN; Ossetian Nart sagas): one of the leading figures of the Ossetian Nart epic, called Soslan in the Ossetian tradition and Sosruko or Sozyryko in other versions; he was born in a miraculous way from a stone, his father being a shepherd whose identity varies between regional traditions, and Satana cut the glowing-hot child out of the stone nine months after the shepherd's seed reached it; the divine smith Kurdalægon then tempered his body in wolf's milk, leaving it invulnerable except at the knees, which the milk did not cover; in the Ossetian version the Sun's daughter Acyruhs becomes his wife, and Bedukha, also Vedukha, was the first wife of the widower Soslan; he is portrayed in an especially unseemly light in the episode of his fight with Totraz son of Albeg, resorting to trickery and cunning against powerful enemies while being stern and pitiless with the weakest and defeated; he was finally defeated by the jealous Syrdon, who, aware of the hero's weakness, incited the devils to fire their arrows from below ground into his horse's hooves and then called upon the Wheel of Balsæg, which sliced through his knees and left him for dead; the Narts buried him as he died, and his last act from the grave was the impalement of Syrdon; Dumézil considered the death of the Nart hero by an iron wheel an echo of the solar cult, the wheel symbolising the sun.