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: AtsyrukhsReciprocated within this batch.Reference treatment of Atsyrukhs and Khur: Atsyrukhs is a character in the Nart sagas, the daughter of the god Khur (the Sun); the name is from Ossetian ацы (atsy) 'present, real, true' and рухс (rukhs) 'light'; in the Ossetian version the Sun's daughter Acyruhs becomes Soslan's wife, which reflects Soslan's connection with the solar cult in the Ossetian version of the Nart sagas; to win the Daughter of the Sun, Soslan had to fetch leaves from the aza tree, which grew only in the Land of the Dead; in some accounts the Daughter of the Sun sends the Wheel of Balsæg to kill Soslan. (secondary)
• spouse: BedukhaReciprocated within this batch. Bedukha is named the first wife of the widower Soslan, so the two marriages are successive, not concurrent.Reference treatment of Bedukha: Bedukha, also known as Vedukha, was the first wife of the widower Soslan and is described as one of the rulers of the Land of the Dead; Bedukha confesses to the hero that she regularly watches over him from the other world, protects him, and ensures his victory. (secondary)
• enemy: SyrdonReciprocated within this batch. The enmity is the cause of his death and of Syrdon's.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. (secondary)
• killer of: TotradzWritten within this batch; the episode is the one in which the sources say Soslan is shown in an especially unseemly light.Reference treatment of Totradz son of Ælbeg: Totraz, son of Albeg, is a hero in the Nart sagas, and Soslan is portrayed in an especially unseemly light in the episode of his fight with him — Soslan in battle against powerful enemies resorts to trickery and cunning, while with the weakest and defeated enemy he is stern and pitiless. (secondary)
• tempered by: KurdalægonWritten within this batch.Reference treatment of Kurdalægon: the heavenly deity of blacksmiths in Ossetian mythology and a close friend of the Narts, whose epithet is 'the heavenly one'; he shoes the dead man's horse and so helps him on his journey to the other side; he forged the body of the steel hero Batraz by quenching the white-hot infant in the sea after he was delivered from his father's back; he tempered Soslan's body in wolf's milk, which did not cover the knees; he is the Ossetian counterpart of the Circassian smith Tlepsh. (secondary)
• fostered by: SatanaNON-SYMMETRIC AND DELIBERATELY NOT GENEALOGY. The sources say Satana cut the glowing-hot child out of the stone; the pre-existing ossetian_satana record calls her his FOSTER-mother. Rather than choose between 'mother' and 'foster-mother' and write a parentId the tradition itself does not settle, this record leaves parentIds empty and states the split.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. (secondary)
• cross tradition counterpart of: Fire-Bringer Born of StoneNon-symmetric, written from this end only; circassian_sosruquo is a pre-existing record. FOUND BY THE SWEEP: 'Soslan' already resolved in the corpus — as an ALIAS on the Circassian record. The Ossetian hero had none of his own.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. (secondary)
• cross tradition counterpart of: SosurukNon-symmetric, written from this end only; see the note above.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. (secondary)

Sources

• One of the leading heroes of the Ossetian Nart epic: born from a stone, tempered by Kurdalægon so that only his knees were left vulnerable, husband of the Sun's daughter Atsyrukhs, and killed at last by the Wheel of Balsæg that Syrdon called down on those knees.: 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. (secondary)