Div
Tat · numen · Tat traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
In Tat folk belief the div is a monstrous, mountain-dwelling demon of enormous size and strength, continuing the common Iranian daēva. Divs haunt ruins, gorges, and the wild uplands beyond the cultivated village, where they waylay travelers and carry off human women to hoard as captives in caves. They are shape-shifters able to appear as a whirlwind, a beast, or an ordinary man, and are driven off by iron, by fire, and by the name of God. In the wonder-tales shared across the eastern Caucasus the div is the great adversary whom the hero must overcome to free a captive pari.
Domains
- demons and monsters
- wilderness and mountains
Powers
- shift shape
- abduct and imprison humans
Relations
- enemy: PeriIn the shared tale corpus the div holds a captive pari whom the hero must free.Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. 'Pari'; and Tat wonder-tale corpus in A. L. Grünberg, Yazyk severoazerbaydzhanskikh tatov (Leningrad, 1963) (secondary)
Sources
- The div is the archetypal mountain-dwelling demon of Tat folk belief, a giant of enormous strength inherited from the common Iranian daēva.: Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. 'Div' (M. Omidsalar) (secondary); B. V. Miller, Taty, ikh rasselenie i govory (Baku, 1929) (secondary)