Rukh bav

Rukh bav ('grandmother Rukh') is the benevolent household spirit of the Tabasarans, most often seen as an old woman. When she lies upon a sleeping person that person becomes fortunate and rich, whence the proverb 'Happy is he on whom Rukh bav has lain'; when she settles on the family's food-stores they never fail. She is petitioned in domestic formulas urging her toward the oil-jug, the money-chest and the flour-barrel, and in the tale-tradition she carries a cap of invisibility and a magic ball of thread. She may also appear in zoomorphic, anthropomorphic or formless shape. Ethnographers classify her only loosely as a house-spirit, since her dwelling and her patron role are weakly defined; unlike the clearly hostile birth-demon Al, she is generally kindly, though narratives also know a darker, oppressive Rukh.

Domains

• household fortune

Powers

• makes the household's stores inexhaustible
• presses upon the sleeper to bless him

Sources

• Rukh bav is the Tabasaran house-spirit imagined as an old woman who brings fortune: she lies on the sleeper to make him prosperous and settles on stores to make them inexhaustible, and is addressed with invocations bidding her go to the oil-jug, money-chest and flour-barrel.: R.I. Seferbekov, Personazhi nizshei mifologii narodov Dagestana (Institute of History, DFRC RAS) (secondary); M.R. Khalidova, article on Tabasaran mythological prose, Vestnik Dagestanskogo nauchnogo tsentra, no. 58 (2015) (secondary)