Understanding myths requires special methods of interpreting them, first of all, methods of identifying the content that can be considered as cognitive information, as well as methods of reconstructing the events and phenomena behind mythological images. Thus, the problem of understanding myths is the approach to them as sources of knowledge, the search for real referents represented by esoteric content. The author applies this attitude to one of the central myths of the great monument of world literature of the Rig Veda (hereinafter - RV), created by ancient Indian poets-rishis - to the myth of the demon Vritra, about his evil deeds and about the murder of this demon by the god of thunder and lightning Indra.

Keywords: Rig Veda, myth, Vritra, Indra, ancient Indian mythology, mythological perception.

CONTENT OF THE MYTH

This myth was of such great importance to the Indo-Aryans and occupied such a significant place in their minds that its content is repeatedly reproduced in various variations in the Russian Orthodox Church. Here is the most complete of them, as set forth in Hymn I, 32 1:

Indra's heroic deeds now I want to proclaim:
The first ones that the thunderer did.
He killed the serpent, he drilled the channels of the waters,
He cut through the bowels of the mountains.

He killed the serpent that rested on the mountain.
Tvashtar had carved him a noisy club.
Like lowing cows rushing toward their calves,
The waters run down directly to the sea.

Furious as a bull, he chose soma for himself,
He drank soma squeezed in three vessels,
and the Generous One grabbed a vajra projectile.
He killed him, the firstborn of the serpents.

When you, Indra, slew the first-born of the serpents
And outwitted the tricks of the sly ones,
And gave birth to the sun, the sky, the dawn,
You haven't really found an opponent since.

1 Meanings of the names and titles found in the hymn: Tvashtar-God-creator of all forms in the universe, living and inanimate. Soma is an intoxicating drink obtained by squeezing from the plant of the same name. Vajra-thunder club, a powerful weapon of Indra. Manu is the mythical ruler of humans. Danu is Vritra's mother. Danava is the metronymic name of Vritra, i.e. "derived from Danu". The Dasa are native tribes. Pani-demons who hide cows and riches from the Aryans, also probably an ethnonym of a non-Aryan tribe.

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He killed Vritra, the most terrible enemy, the shoulder-less one,
Indra is a club, a great weapon.
Like branches chopped off with an axe,
The snake lies flat on the ground.

Like a bad fighter in a drunken stupor, he caused
A great hero, conquering by force, drinking catfish pomace.
He couldn't stand the onslaught of his weapon:
Faceless from the breach, he is crushed-he to whom Indra is an enemy.

Legless, armless, he fought against Indra.
The man hit him on the back with a club.
The ox who wanted to become the bull's opponent,
Vritra lay scattered in various places.

Through him, lying as lifeless as a broken reed.
The surging waters of Manu flow.
Those whom Vritra once bound with force,
The serpent was now lying at their feet.

The life force of one whose son is Vritra has fallen.
Indra dropped a deadly weapon on her.
The parent was on top, and the son was on the bottom.
Danu is lying like a cow with a calf.

Among the non-stopping, non-stopping
The body is hidden by water tracks.
The waters flow through the secret place of Vritra.
In the long darkness, the one to whom Indra is an enemy has sunk.

Dasa's wives, guarded by the serpent , are the waters
The Panis, shackled like cows, stood hidden.
A water passage that has been plugged, -
He opened it by killing Vritra.

At that moment, O Indra, you became a horse's hair.,
When he punched you in the fang. One God,
You have conquered the cows, you have conquered soma, O hero!
You released seven streams for running.

Neither lightning nor thunder helped him,
Not the fog that he spread, not the hail.
When Indra and the serpent fought,
For all future times, the generous one won.

What avenger of the serpent did you see, O Indra,
That fear has entered your heart, the murderer,
When there are ninety and nine streams
Have you traversed space like a startled eagle?

Indra is the king of the moving and the resting,
the Hornless and the horned, the thunderer.
It is he who rules the nations as a king.
Like the rim-spokes of a wheel, it covered them all 2.

Not everything is clear in this hymn. RV commentators pay attention to the presence of a number of dark places in it. You can understand the hymn if you can understand what reality is reflected in it in a mythical form. So the problem boils down to

2 The Rigveda is quoted from the publication: Rigveda / Translated by T. Ya. Elizarenkova. Mandalas I-IV. Moscow, 1989; Mandalas V-VIII. Moscow, 1995; Mandalas IX-X. Moscow, 1999.

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to find a way to interpret the myth, to decipher it. We cannot be satisfied with the directly perceived content of the myth. In this case, it would take on the character of a fairy tale, created solely to evoke an aesthetic, emotional effect. But the functions of the myth are broader, in addition to this effect, it always has a pragmatic significance, it concerns some important side in the life of society. It can have this quality only when it contains some real content. The task is to find the real content behind the external form, which is nothing more than a metaphor for us, thanks to which the myth became significant for the practically oriented consciousness of archaic people. We can say that the myth always solved some real practical or cognitive problem by its specific means. Therefore, it has a double structure - a real core and an external, fictional superstructure, or shell. So what is the real core of the Vritra myth? In other words, what knowledge can be extracted from this creation of the Aryan sages? We can assume the following: since this myth occupies one of the central places in ancient Indian mythology, then, therefore, it must have reflected some extremely important phenomenon or event in the life of the Aryans.

COSMOGONIC INTERPRETATIONS

In mythology, this approach to the interpretation of this myth is most common. Its essence is that the battle of Indra with Vritra is interpreted as the actions of the demiurge, who defeated the forces of chaos and inertia and created an organized cosmos. This interpretation was shared by the well-known religious scholar Mircea Eliade. In his work "Prolegomena of Religious Dualism: Dyads and Opposites" we read: "Vedic mythology is dominated by the theme of the struggle between Indra and the dragon Vritra. I have already pointed out the cosmogonic structure of this myth. By freeing the waters trapped by Vritra in the mountains, Indra saves the world; symbolically, he creates it anew. In other versions of the myth, the beheading and dissection of Vritra expresses the transition from virtuality to the actuality of creation, since the snake is a symbol of the unmanifested. Being a model myth, this struggle between Indra and Vritra serves as a model for other forms of creation and many activities" (Eliade, 1987, p. 239).

One of the most passionate proponents of the cosmogonic approach was the famous Dutch indologist Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuyper. In the article "The Fundamental Concept of the Vedic Religion", he wrote: "The key to understanding this religion is to be found, I believe, in its cosmogony, i.e., in the myth that tells us how the world once came to exist. What made this myth so important was the fact that every important moment in life was seen as a repetition of this primordial process. So the myth was not just a story about something that happened a long time ago, nor a speculative explanation of how this world came to be what it is. The origin of the world was a prototype of the infinitely repeated process of constant renewal of life and the world "(Kuyper, 1986, p. 28).

The German researcher of ancient Indian mythology G. Luders represented Vritra as a dragon that swallowed a kind of stone casket, or vessel. In this stone gate is enclosed a closed celestial ocean, in which there are waters, soma and stars. Indra, in his battle with Vritra, seeks to break the stone vessel and free the heavenly waters (Luders, 1951, p. 170). Kuyper is positive about this interpretation, emphasizing that Lueders correctly understood the situation of Indra's battle with the dragon (Kuyper, 1986, p. 122).

Thus, Luders transfers the events described in the myth to the space of the cosmos and connects them with the beginning of the creation of the world. So does Caper.

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But he builds a different picture of this event and moreover developed in more detail. This is Kuiper's interpretation of the Vritra myth, which for him is a creation myth.

In the beginning, there was only water. These primordial waters carried the seed of life within them. A small lump of earth rose from the bottom, then it expanded and became a mountain, the beginning of the Earth. The world was still an undivided unity. There were no contrasts that characterize our manifest world at that time. There was no sky, no earth, no day, no night, no light, no darkness. The state of undifferentiated unity ended abruptly in the second stage of the cosmogonic process, which began with the birth of the god Indra outside the primordial world. In the world of unorganized matter, he begins the process (the demiurgic act) by which the potential world becomes the real world. Indra's demiurgic act consists of two distinct parts. First, the hill that still floats on the original waters must be split to the ground and cut open. However, there is a considerable force of resistance in it, and Indra's heroic struggle, although sometimes described as directed against the hill, is more often directed against this force, denoted by the word wrtra. Wrtra means "obstacle, resistance". In the myth, the power of resistance is represented by a dragon. Indra kills the dragon, and life bursts out of the hill in two forms-water and fire. Water is represented by four rivers flowing from the top of a hill in four different directions, and fire is represented by the sun rising from the hill and from the waters. The hill begins to grow in all directions until it reaches the size of the Ground. At the same time, it remains the center of the cosmos and the nail that attaches the Earth to its place. As for the second part of Indra's act, Indra functions here as a pillar supporting the sky that had hitherto lain on Earth. Thus, the cosmic mountain was not only the place from which the Earth originated, but also began to function as a "peg" that provided the Earth with a solid support [Kuyper, 1986, pp. 28-30, 125].

Kuiper's interpretation conflicts with many elements of the myth's content. By raising the meaning of this myth to the level of a picture of the creation of the world, being carried away by describing the grandiose cosmogonic process, he thereby obscured for himself those moments in the myth that indicate that this world, according to the content of the entire Rig Veda, has long been created, that many of its elements already exist, including the Earth.

Ignores these points and the American researcher W. Norman Brown. He represents Vritra as one of the factors that prevented the creation of the Universe. According to his interpretation, this myth reflects the following ideas of the ancients about the cosmogonic process. In the beginning, there was chaos. It contained all the elements necessary for the creation of the universe, but they remained in a disordered and inactive state. The cosmic waters and the sun were encased or wrapped in a kind of solid covering, symbolized in myth by Vritra. Heaven and Earth also already existed, but were not yet separated from each other. The world as a whole was at a standstill. And this continued until the Heavens and Earth gave birth to an active force, represented by Indra. This force separated the Heavens and Earth and filled the space between them. Then, with the help of a mobile fire, the force overcame the inertia of chaos, penetrated the solid shell (Vritra), and emptied the vault that contained the waters and the sun. All parts of the Cosmos were put in order, and an organized world was created [Norman Brown, 1977, pp. 288-290].

Norman Brown's translation of the events of the myth into Space also comes into sharp contradiction with the many terrestrial phenomena contained in this myth, and therefore leaves the problem of an adequate interpretation of this narrative unresolved. It is necessary to turn to these elements of myth and, by analyzing them, look for more adequate referents of mythical images.

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CHTHONIC APPROACH 3

Let us single out elements from the myth that suggest the need for a different approach to the interpretation of this myth, namely, taking into account the fact that the events described in it actually took place on Earth, moreover, on a long-existing Earth. These elements will allow us to show the reality of the grandiose, but nevertheless mundane incident that underlies the myth. As a result, among other things, it will become clear that the picture drawn by Kuiper does not actually represent an interpretation of the myth of Vritra, but is itself a new myth, far removed from the earthly nature of the content of the RV myth and representing another version of the panorama of peacemaking.

To begin with, we note that the Indo-Aryans had a different creation myth, and it is completely unrelated to the Vritra myth. Unlike the latter, it describes the process of creating the world in a very clear, non-esoteric way. This myth is described in RV (X, 7) and in the Atharvaveda (X, 7; XIX, 6). According to it, the gods created the universe from the cosmic giant man Purusha, dismembering him into parts. Each of these parts has been transformed into a part, an element of the world. In the Vritra myth, there is no correlation between this demon and its parts, on the one hand, and the corresponding parts - or characteristics - of the universe, on the other. In this respect, this being is completely tied to the Earth, endowed with signs of a phenomenon of exclusively earthly nature. We will indicate some of these features.

The authors of RV describe Vritra as a " dam of rivers "(III, 33, 6), "rock-dam" (IV, 18, 6). The word "vrtra" literally means "jam", "barrier", "obstacle". We have no reason not to take these meanings in the literal sense and give them some kind of cosmic meaning. They may reflect a completely natural event, which with a huge degree of probability could have occurred in the region where the Aryans were then located - in Central Asia. The epithets used in relation to Vritra - shoulder-less, armless, legless - can just be applied to a dam, to a dam. It was in the place of the dam that such phenomena as the appearance of stormy streams, which are mentioned in the myth, could occur (I, 52, 2). This feature allows the authors of the myth to call Vritra " raging "(I, 80, 5)," hissing "(I, 61, 10)," roaring serpent " (VI, 17, 10).

Poets describe Vritra with the most derogatory epithets, expressing an extremely hostile attitude towards these phenomena, which in their view have become evil, an obstacle to the implementation of vital and great goals. Vritra for the Aryans is the serpent lying carelessly, the mighty beast (V, 32, 2-3), the godless (I, 32, 6), the lowest of all beings (V, 32, 7), filled with rage (V, 32, 4), the insatiable mouth, the legless slanderer (V 32, 8), the snorting swallower (V, 29, 4). Such an immoral monster, of course, could not be the germ of the Earth, as Kuyper believed. Earth, on the other hand, was considered a divine phenomenon by the Aryans themselves. And this phenomenon was produced by the Vedic rishis not from any demon, but from a giant man, as the Purusha myth suggests.

That the Earth, contrary to Kuyper, was not created out of Vritra is also shown by the passages in the RV hymns, which make it clear that the Earth existed before Indra and Vritra, with all the variety of beings and objects on it. Indra did not need to create the universe and the Earth from a primordial hill. When he was born, they were already there.

Irresistible, formidable, overwhelming in battle,
At birth, which is wide-flowing
Rivers, cash cows, roared together,
The heavens and the earth roared (VIII, 70, 4).

All the dams and numerous streams,
The heavens and earth shook due to the huge noise at his birth:
After all, the violent wind of both mothers (heaven and earth. - A.M.) carries away from the bull.
The winds roared like men all around (IV, 22, 4).

3 Chthonic-from the Greek. chthon - earth.

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The earth already existed in its full form (with seas, mountains, rivers, animals) and at the moment when Indra was fighting Vritra.

It shook the earth, the foundation mightily,
Like wind to water, Indra with her own powers.
The strongholds were crushed by him, playing with the force.
He cut off the mountain tops (VIII, 6, 16).

All the objects listed in these lines are characteristic of the Earth, which is another confirmation of the terrestrial nature of the events described in this myth.

THE GREAT CATACLYSM

Having established that the event associated with Vritra is a purely terrestrial phenomenon and is nothing more than a huge dam blocking a large river, we can assume that another similar terrestrial phenomenon must have occurred after this - a flood, and on a huge scale. At the same time, the flow of water below the dam should have stopped. This would cause drought and devastation on land previously flooded by river waters. Let us look for confirmation of these assumptions in the hymns of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The dam was formed by the "great, wide mountain" (I, 57, 6).Seven rivers were" bound " (IV, 28, 1). In the words of the poet, "the waters stood bound like cows" (I, 32, 11).

How could one dam block seven rivers at once? The rivers merged into a single stream and stopped flowing "separately" (II, 17, 3). On a large space there were "great waters "(VIII, 3, 15). They no longer flowed into the sea as before. It was a "closed", " great bound waterfall of rivers "(VI, 17, 12). The waters began to spread over the earth (III, 31, 16; IV, 30, 12). The flood was so extensive that one poet called it the ocean (I, 174, 9), another actually spoke of a flood when he called this flood "the waters of Manu" (I, 32, 8). As you know, in Indian mythology, the name of Manu is associated with the legend of a flood, from which only one escaped. this man alone, who became the progenitor of the Aryans. So "waters of Manu" is a synonym for the flood. Below the dam, on the contrary, there was no water; there the "thirsty deserts and fields" suffered from lack of moisture (IV, 19, 7).

The picture drawn looks quite possible in reality. Therefore, we can say that the RV in this case reproduces the situation not of a mystical, but of a real cataclysm. A similar picture is described in Zoroastrian texts, primarily in the Avesta. As you know, the Iranians who professed Zoroastrianism were an offshoot of the once unified Indo-Iranian community that settled Western Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Then this community was divided into Indo-Aryans who moved to India, and Iranian Aryans who went to the Iranian Highlands. The latter took with them and preserved many myths from their common ancestors, among which was the myth of the great flood of rivers. It has a number of similarities with the description of this event in the RV. It is represented, however, by other characters and images. Here are some of the fragments of this description.

In one of the yashts of the Avesta, it is said that the waters "did not flow in all places for a long time", plants "did not grow in one place for a long time" (Avesta, Yasht. 13.53, 55). All this happened because of the water serpent Gandarva, which stood "in the rippling waters at the brega Vorukashi"4. This "adherent of deception" was great. The sea was knee-deep and his head reached the sun. He depopulated twelve villages, devouring their inhabitants ("Rivayat", 18, p. 9).With his mouth open, the Gandarva rushed at all righteous beings ("Yasht", 19.41).

4 Vorukasha-avest. "the sea with wide bays" ("Yasht", 5, 38).

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SEARCH FOR A VRITRA PROTOTYPE

To solve this problem, first of all, it is necessary to determine the river on which the cataclysm described in the RV could have occurred. This book says that Vritra lay "on a great river "(II. 11. 9). Such a river here was the Amu Darya. In addition, the MOAT indicates another sign of this river: the waters released by Indra flowed to the sea. Indeed, the Amu Darya flows to the sea-the Aral Sea. Let's turn to another source - the Avesta. It describes the delta of the river that the Avestan hero-warrior Karsaspa went to kill the serpent Gandarva, i.e. Vritra:

From edge to edge worries
The whole sea of Vorukash.
And waves in the middle
They rise when
He pours in his own water,
Flowing into it, Ardvi
The whole thousand channels
And a thousand lakes... (Ardvisur-yasht. 4)

(Quoted from: [Avesta in Russian translations, 1998])

Ardvisura in ancient Iranian texts was called the Amu Darya. The picture shown in the above lines completely coincides with what the Amu Darya Delta looks like.

But now we need to prove with information not from myths, but from other more reliable sources, including scientific ones, that it was on this river that a dam once formed and caused serious consequences for people. Such information may be contained in the writings of ancient authors. Indeed, some of them, starting with the Greek historians Herodotus and Aristobulus (V-IV centuries BC) and ending with the Arab and Persian geographers (X-XIV centuries AD), contain information about the rivers of Central Asia, including the Amu Darya, which is important for the study of our problem. 5 Our attention is drawn first of all to the indications that in ancient times the Amu Darya River repeatedly changed the direction of its flow: it flowed into the Caspian Sea, then into the Aral Sea. What was her reason for doing this? Were there any obstacles in its path, such as dams, etc.?

More informative in this respect is the story about the nature of the flow of this river, which we find in the Khorezmian encyclopedist Abu Reyhan al-Biruni (973-1048). He was born and lived for some time in Khorezm, located in the Amu Darya Delta, and studied the river valley, its course, and history. In Biruni's essay " Defining the boundaries of places to clarify the distances between settlements "(1018), we learn about the extremely turbulent nature of the Amu Darya, which in ancient times moved vigorously through the deserts of Central Asia, moving from one sea or depression to another sea or depression. Let's read this passage, paying attention to the repeated turns of the river under the influence of various obstacles. In this fragment, Biruni uses Arabic and Turkic names of places that need to be clarified first. The Amu Darya is called Jeykhun; the Caspian Sea is called Hyrkan, Khazar, or Jurjan; Hiz Tankizi is Lake Sarykamysh, located to the west of the Amu Darya; Drurjan, Khazar, and Balkhan are cities near the Caspian Sea. Zemm, Amuye - cities on the Amu Darya; Mazdubast-the ancient dry riverbed of the Uzboy. Biruni speaks of "fish ears"at the beginning of this passage. These are shells found in the Karakum desert, which indicate that there was once standing water here. In the text of the fragment, I insert several phrases in square brackets in order to make it easier to understand. So this is Biruni's picture of the volatile Amu Darya.

5 A selection and analysis of this information is available in the work of the outstanding Russian orientalist V. V. Barthold "Information on the Aral Sea and the lower reaches of the Amu Darya..." in 1902 [Barthold, 1965, pp. 23-55].

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"We can find stones like those with fish ears in the middle in the sandy desert between Jurjan and Khorezm. In the past, it looked like a lake due to the fact that the Jeyhun riverbed... it passed along it to the Khazar Sea through the city known as Balkhan. Thus, Ptolemy mentions in the book" Geography " the place of the confluence of this river, saying that it flows into the Hyrcanus, i.e., the Djurdjan Sea. There are now approximately 800 years between us and Ptolemy. At that time, Jeyhun passed through this area, which is now a desert, deviating from the place located between Zemm and Amuye; it watered the former cities and villages as far as Balkhan and flowed into the sea between Djurjan and Khazar.

Then there were obstacles at Jeyhun, which caused its water to deviate to the outskirts of the land of Guz [i.e., to the Aral Sea], but the mountain blocked its path... Sikr ash-Shaitan. The water accumulated and overflowed, so that traces of wave impacts were preserved on the upper part of this mountain. When the water exceeded the limits of gravity and pressure sustained by these loose rocks, it broke through and cut through them for about one transition distance. Then Jeyhun turned to the right, towards Farab... [i.e. towards Syr Darya]. People built more than three hundred towns and villages on both sides of it, the ruins of which have been preserved to this day.

Soon the same thing prevented this current that prevented the first one. It was blocked, and the water diverted to the left to the land of the Pechenegs along a channel known as the Wadi Mazdubast [i.e., the dry Uzboy riverbed], which runs through the desert that lies between Khorezm and Djurjan. This channel caused numerous sections to flourish for a long time, but again became empty. The inhabitants of these areas moved to the coast of the Khazar Sea, and they are a kind of Alans and Ases, and their language is now made up of Khorezm and Pecheneg.

Then all the water flowed in the direction of Khorezm, whereas previously only its remnants flowed to it, seeping through a place dammed with rocks, which is now located at the beginning of the Khorezm plain. The water broke through the rocks and flooded the area, turning it, starting from there, into a lake. Due to the abundance and speed of the current, the Jeyhun water became muddy due to the silt it carried. As the channel widened, it began to deposit the soil it contained; gradually, land began to build up in the mouth, and it became dry land. The lake began to recede until Khorezm completely emerged from the water. As the lake receded, it reached the mountain that blocked its path. It was unable to move it and moved northward, toward the land now inhabited by Turkmens [i.e., back to the Aral Sea]. There is a short distance between this lake and the one formed at Wadi Mazdubasta. The last lake became a mud impassable salt marsh, called in Turkic "Hiz tankizi", i.e. "Sea of the maiden" "[Biruni, 1966, p. 95-96].

In this passage, the main changes in the course of the ancient Amu Darya River are outlined in short strokes. The river, rapidly flowing down from the mountains and passing through the deserts of Karakum and Kyzylkum, turned at least twice in the direction of the Caspian Sea and the same number of times in the direction of the Aral Sea. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that it cut through two mountains on the way to the Aral Sea, forming relatively narrow gorges in them. They do exist. One of them, which Biruni calls Sikr Ash-Shaitan, is the modern Dul Dul Atlagan gorge. It is located about 560 km south of the sea. Down the river in 45 km is another gorge, which is also cut through the Amu Darya. This is the Chuyamuyun Gate. Further on, according to Biruni, the Amu Darya encountered another mountain, but it was no longer able to cut through it. It turned out to be much larger, so the river had to go around it. There is actually this mountain. This is the Sultanuizdag massif, which forced the Amu Darya to turn right. But how did it continue on its way, because there, too, it was necessary to somehow lay a channel? Here we come to the heart of the mystery of the demon Vritra. But to solve it, we need more complete information.

We find them in the scientific works of the Khorezm archaeological and ethnographic expedition. This expedition of Soviet archaeologists, geomorphologists and geographers began its work in the southern Aral Sea region in 1937 and conducted it with a break during the Great Patriotic War for 60 years. Its task was to study the history of irrigation in this region and, of course, to study the cultures that existed here in the distant past, which developed in the 3rd-1st millennium BC.

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an outstanding archaeologist, later a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences SP. Tolstoy. The discoveries made by these scientists represent one of the most brilliant achievements of archeology and paleogeography. The results of their work are reflected in more than thirty volumes of scientific materials and works. Especially fruitful were the years 1952-1957, when excavations in the Amu Darya delta led to the discovery of the Suyargan and Tazabagyab archaeological cultures that are related to the history of the Aryans (see: [Itina, site]).

As a result of long and large-scale research of the expedition, in addition to the above, it was possible to reconstruct the entire history of the Amu Darya, restore the picture of the deltas created by it, and thereby reproduce the geographical and ecological conditions in which the life of Aryan tribes who came here from the Urals and Kazakhstan in the 2nd millennium BC, then went further south - to India. In this picture, I believe, we can find material for interpreting the myth of Vritra. For this purpose, the works of S. P. Tolstov, M. A. Itina, A. S. Kes, B. V. Andrianov, A.V. Vinogradov and others will be used. (see: [Lower reaches of the Amu Darya..., 1960; Tolstov, 1962, etc.]).

In the distant past, the Amu Darya River flowed into the Caspian Sea. But she did it in different places. The peculiarity of its current was that it continuously moved through the Karakum Desert from south to north, thereby changing the place of its confluence with the sea. This unusual behavior of the river is explained by the fact that its waters are saturated with a large amount of alluvium, which is deposited in the form of sediments in its bed and thereby obstructs the path of the river, so that it consequently moves to the side and begins to form a new channel. This continued until the Upper Pleistocene (about 15 thousand years ago), when the Amu Darya River blocked its way to the Caspian Sea so thoroughly that it was forced to turn north and flow towards the Khorezm Basin. On the way, it drilled through two mountains and formed the gorges named above. After filling the depression, the river ran into the ridges of Sultanuizdag and could not flow any further directly north. Then it began to make its way east of these mountains through the sands of Kyzylkum and laid a long corridor through them. After passing through it, the river began to fan out across this desert, heading for the next depression - the Aral one. The Aral Sea began to form in it.

On the territory of Kyzylkum to the north of the corridor there was a wide delta with many channels, channels between them, old trees. When the bulk of the water left the Khorezm basin, the river also formed the same wide delta there. As a result of these processes, two deltas emerged - the southern one (on the territory of the Khorezm Basin) and the northern one (directly in front of the Aral Sea), which were connected by the mentioned corridor. This entire system was about 270 km long from south to north from the modern city of Turtkul to the Aral Sea. From west to east, in the widest places, it reached 90-120 km. Both these deltas were collectively called Akchadarya. The southern delta also consists of a large number of channels, channels, and starits, i.e. it has the appearance described in the Avesta and in the MOAT. The Akchadarya River was formed at the end of the Pleistocene (about 15 thousand years ago). In this form, the delta existed until the beginning of the Holocene (approximately until the 7th millennium BC). Meanwhile, alluvium carried by the river was intensively deposited here, so that it blocked the Akchadarya corridor with a dam formed by it. The river blocked its own path here, too. The northern delta was left without water, while in the southern one the water content significantly increased.

Excess water began to break through the uplands of the Ustyurt plateau lying to the west to the third major depression - Sarikamysh. On the way to it, the river again laid many channels and channels, forming a new delta - Prisarykamyshskaya. Having filled this depression, water flowed from it to the south-west into the Caspian Sea, forming the Uzboy River. But gradually, even here, the sediments did their job, blocking the path of water to

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Sarykamysh. And then it accumulated in large quantities in the Khorezm basin, broke the dam in the Akchadarya corridor, filled the channel and channels of the northern delta and flowed back into the Aral Sea. This happened at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. The parched lands got water again. Akchadarya began to be intensively populated by people. From the southern agricultural regions of Central Asia came tribes that laid the foundation for a new culture - Suyargan. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, numerous tribes of pastoralists from western Kazakhstan, the southern Urals and the Volga region appeared here. They were carriers of the Andronovo and Srubnaya cultures, which most researchers identify with Indo-Iranians, i.e. Aryans (see, for example: Tolstoe, 1962; Smirnov, 1977, etc.).

Mixing with local aborigines, these tribes created the Tazabagyab culture, of which many archaeological sites remain [Itina, 1977; Vinogradov, Itina, and Yablonsky, 1986], which provide important information about the Aryan lifestyle in Akchadarya. During their stay here, the water regime of Akchadarya changed more than once. There were major flooding events. This could be a consequence of a new damming of the outlet from the southern delta, which, in turn, could lead to waterlessness in the northern delta. Such a situation would force people to leave these places. And indeed, this fact was established by archaeologists. Participants of the Khorezm expedition M. A. Itina, B. V. Andrianov and T. A. Zhdanko write about it as follows: "An extremely important observation is the fact that in the southern part of the northern delta... no Tazabagyab, Tazabagyab-Suyargan, or Late Suyargan sites have been recorded at all. We should say the same about the Akchadarya corridor in the south... The thoroughness of a two-time study of this area makes it certain that since the second half of the 2nd millennium, this area has not been inhabited by humans... It is possible that this is due to a new drift of the channels of this part of the Akchadarya river by alluvial deposits..."[Lower reaches of the Amu Darya..., 1960, p. 131]. S. P. Tolstov emphasizes that in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, large periodic flooding occurred in the southern delta. Thus, the cultural layers of all the excavated dwellings were covered by a thick loamy lens formed as a result of flooding of these dwellings and long standing of water in them (Tolstov, 1962, p. 54).

After some time, the excessive water content began to decrease, which could have occurred as a result of the water breaking through the dam in the Akchadarya corridor and the resulting flow of a huge body of water into numerous channels and channels of the northern delta and further into the Aral Sea. Indo-Iranian tribes came from the north-west to the water-free surface of the southern delta and the newly flooded northern delta, and began to engage in cattle breeding and primitive agriculture. Along the banks of riverbeds and channels, many parking lots appeared.

An impressive picture of the breaking of the dam and the rapid flow of water through it to the sea was observed, apparently, by Aryan poets and reflected in hymns. Yes, it is this earthly phenomenon, and not a phenomenon in the aboveground world, that is discussed in the following verses:

He (Vritra - AM) could not withstand the onslaught of his weapons:
Faceless from the breach, he is crushed-the one to whom Indra is an enemy (I, 32, 6).

He (Indra. - AM) killed the serpent, let seven rivers flow,
He opened the holes that seemed to be locked (IV, 28, 1).

The Great Chained Waterfall of rivers,
Closed, you let out a leak-a wave of water.
By their sloping channels, O Indra, by their path
You let the active waters flow down into the ocean (VI, 17, 12).

Released by Indra, who stands on a chariot and drives
mace horses,
Living rivers rush forward to a common goal, but separately (II, 17, 3).

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He filled the thirsty deserts and fields with moisture (IV, 19, 7).
For, O Indra, the earth increased tenfold,
And all the days the nations spread out,
That is your famous strength, O bountiful one,
Power and destructiveness became equal to the sky (I, 52, 11).

...You have accomplished the first great feat... (II, 17, 3).

PROTOTYPES OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS

So the thunder god Indra killed the serpent Vritra and freed the captive waters. The release of the waters caused rejoicing both in nature and in people, and enthusiastic singing of this long-awaited joyful event by the singers of the then impoverished Aryan tribes.

It was not easy for Indra to kill Vritra. The battle between them was fierce and terrifying. Its moments are colorfully and impressively described by poets. The battle between a god and a demon caused a shock on earth. Not only the dam was destroyed, but also the mother of Danu-accumulated water in front of the dam, which brought sediments.

The life force of one whose son is Vritra has fallen.
Indra dropped a deadly weapon on her.
The parent was on top, and the son was on the bottom.
Danu lies like a cow with a calf (I, 32, 9).

But the battle wasn't limited to earth. As for Indra, he operated both in the air and in the sky.

The very threatening sky because of the roar of this snake
Receded from fear when your vajra, O Indra,
Intoxicated with the squeezed soma, she forcefully cut off her head
Vritra, who oppressed both worlds (I, 52, 10).

If we remove the references to Indra and Vritra from the description, we will get the picture that occurs during an earthquake. It is so real that it is the earthquake that can be considered the force that destroyed the dam. At the moment of the earthquake, it seemed that not only the earth, but also the sky swayed and could fall. But Indra calmed both the earth and the sky:

He strengthened the mountains facing up with his power,
He directed the waters ' activity downwards.
He supported the all-feeding earth.
With magic power, he strengthened the sky so that it would not fall (II, 17, 5).

It would seem that the establishment of the real cause of the end of the cataclysm could have been satisfied if Vishnu had not been mentioned in the RV in this connection. It turns out that he was also involved in the battle with Vritra. And if so, then the myth suggests that some other factor was involved in this dramatic event. Note that there isn't much to say in the RV without a real subtext. Therefore, we need to look for a real prototype and involvement of Vishnu. In this case, our assumptions will be very hypothetical, since the information related to this god is extremely scarce.

FROM THE CHTHONIC TO THE COSMOLOGICAL APPROACH

Since Vishnu, according to the RV texts, is in the sky, performing his famous three steps there, we will have to involve certain cosmic phenomena in the analysis.

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The Aryans had many gods. But when their help was needed in the fight against Vritra, only Indra decided to do this deed.

Reeling back from the snort of Vritra,
You (Indra. - AM) were abandoned by all the gods that are your friends (VIII, 96, 7).

Then Indra turned to Vishnu for support:

O friend of Vishnu, step forward!
O heaven, give the vajra room to flourish!
We two will kill Vritra, we will free the rivers.
Released, let them move at Indra's instigation (VIII, 100, 12)!

And Vishnu helped:

Indra increased his own bull power
When intoxicated with the squeezed soma of Vishnu.
Today it is his greatness ayu
They are glorified as before (VIII, 3, 8).

All Asura power has been ceded to you
By the gods, completely, O Indra, as well as by the power of heaven,
When the serpent Vritra bound the waters,
You have killed in alliance with Vishnu, O god who drinks soma from pomace (VI, 20, 2).

What is the power of the sky here? It is also mentioned in another hymn:

When Vritra and your sling
...you made them fight vajra,
O Indra, thou who wouldst slay the serpent,
Power was imprinted on the sky (I, 80, 13).

It was some kind of powerful weapon thrown by Indra from mid-air:

After all, he was standing right in the air
Then he threw a deadly weapon at Vritra,
Because the man hurried toward him, swathed in the fog.
Wielding sharp weapons, Indra defeated the enemy (II, 30, 3).

Perhaps it was his vajra? No, elsewhere it is characterized as:

At that Vritra who grew up from such sorcery,
You were hit by a mountain as quick as a thought,
O possessor of your own power.
Even the unshaken strong strongholds, O thou very strong one,
Thou hast boldly broken through, O bountiful one (VI, 22, 6).

What kind of mountain could fall from the sky, and fly at high speed? If we look for some real denotation behind these words, we can only assume that a meteorite fell from the sky, the consequences of which were disastrous, as can be seen from the previous description of the course of Indra's battle with Vritra. The assumption of such a development can explain the fear that even Indra experienced:

What avenger of the serpent did you see, O Indra,
That fear has entered your heart, the murderer,
When there are ninety and nine streams
Have you crossed the spaces like a frightened eagle (I, 32, 14)?

This meteorite may have been the original cause of the earthquake that destroyed the dam.

The suggestion of a meteorite falling explains why Vishnu came to Indra's rescue.

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The Aryans, like other ancient peoples, certainly saw meteorites fall from the sky. According to their ideas, these were hot stones sent to earth by gods representing planets or comets. Vishnu, as I have shown in another work [Maidanov, 2002, pp. 69-89], personified a comet, and therefore, he could also send a hot stone (meteorite) to earth, which helped Indra in the battle with Vritra. On another occasion, the aryans ask Indra himself to drop such a stone from the sky:

Throw a rock out of the high sky,
With which, intoxicated with soma, thou wilt burn the enemy (II, 30, 5)!

Throw a stone from the sky, O Indra!
Sharpened Soma make very sharp, O generous one!
Front, Back, Bottom, Top
Smash the Rakshasas with the 6th mountain (VII, 104, 19)!

O Indra-Soma, throw down your deadly weapons from the sky!
Shots fired over a red-hot fire, hitting rocks,
Ageless flames armed with heat,
Will you push it
Atrinov (demonov. - A.M.) to the abyss! May they go there without a sound

(VII, 104, 5)!

But the fall of a meteorite raises huge masses of dust into the air, which for quite a long time obscures the sun and causes darkening. Did a similar phenomenon occur in the Vritra myth? Viewing the hymns of the RV allows you to discover many places that speak of the great darkness. By time, it is tied to events related to Vritra. The sky, the sun, and other stars were no longer visible. The" magic serpent " blocked the waters and the sky (II, 11, 5). The stream of water that Indra later released was shrouded in darkness (II, 23, 18).

The rishis, during their sacrifices, ask Indra to make the sky visible:

Throw yourself bravely, O brave one of thought!
High glory be to you!
Let the mother waters flow quickly!
Kill Vritra! Conquer the sky (VIII, 89, 4)!

Indra fulfilled the request of the Aryans.

You've opened up traffic jams.,
You have brought good things to the mountain related to moisture.
When, O Indra, did you kill Vritra the serpent by force,
In this way, you caused the sun to rise in the sky, so that the sun could rise.
everyone has seen it (I, 51, 4).

The above description of the brutal battle of Vritra with Indra will be supplemented with another very informative fragment:

Here, O Indra, are a pair of your bun steeds, eager for the prize,
It rumbled, and the noise was thick with fat.
The land spread evenly,
Even the mountain that was trying to escape stopped.

The mountain settled down without dodging.
He roared, thundering along with his mothers.
Amplifying the sound far to the limit,
They were spreading the whistle raised by Indra.

Indra pushed the witchcraft Vritra,
Lying on the great river.
Two worlds trembled, frightened
by the Roaring vajra of this bull (II, 11, 7-9).

6 Rakshasas are evil spirits.

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The impressive sound effects described in this fragment, the shaking of two worlds - the Earth and the Sky - suggest that this picture is similar to the descriptions of meteorite falls available in the scientific literature and in reliable eyewitness accounts.

Meteorites sweep through the Earth's atmosphere in huge fireballs or burst into meteors. The collision of a meteorite with the Earth causes a huge amount of vapor and dust to be released into the atmosphere, which makes the sunlight fade [Simonenko, 1985, pp. 5-14, 113]. The fall of even a relatively small meteorite is accompanied by a strong thud and shaking of the Earth's surface. This was the case in the case of a meteorite impact in Brazil on August 13, 1930. An eyewitness tells the following story: "The morning was clear, the sun had just risen. Suddenly, the sun turned blood-red and darkness spread all around. There was a sound coming from above, like the whoosh of artillery shells. The sound grew louder, startling everyone. Those who weren't afraid to look up at the sky saw huge fireballs falling from the sky like bolts of lightning. They fell in the center of the forest, and three blows were heard, similar to thunderclaps, accompanied by a shaking of the earth "[Bronshten, 1999, p. 63].

The analogy of sound and partly optical phenomena in mythological and scientific descriptions is obvious. On this basis, we can put forward a "meteoric" interpretation of the lines quoted above from the RV. Without such an interpretation, their meaning remains unclear. At the same time, this interpretation helps to understand the characterization of Indra's weapon as a "noisy club" (I, 32, 2), "roaring vajra" (II, 11, 9). The prototype of this weapon was a flying meteorite, more precisely - a fireball. By the way, there is a curious linguistic coincidence here: "bolide "means"throwing weapon" in Greek. Indra's vajra in RV is also called a projectile thrower (I, 32, 3).

If the assumption about the fall of a meteorite in the area of the described ancient cataclysm is correct, then we can assume that there must have been traces of it-or a crater, or even the object itself. Isn't this what RV says: "Vajra lies in the middle of the sea, covered with water" (VIII. 100. 9). This sea was then the dammed southern delta of Akcadarya. Now it is completely dried up and is a complex interweaving of waterless channels, channels and basins. Isn't that where we should look for this "weapon"-a meteorite, which, having fallen into the water, was supposed, among other things, to cause a large tsunami that destroyed the Vritra dam?

If, in fact, the meteorite fell into the water, as the RV hints at, then this should have caused a different course of events and caused a whole chain of extreme geophysical and meteorological phenomena - an earthquake and tsunami, which have already been mentioned. And since the falling meteorite was incandescent, it must have caused large masses of water to evaporate. This, in turn, would lead to the appearance of thick fog, to the formation of heavy clouds, to darkness, which for a long time covered the sky, the sun, dawns, and then would turn into torrential rain, thunderstorms, and hail. All this the ancients attributed partly to Indra and partly to Vritra. By doing so, they told us about the events listed above.

It was dark, obstructing the flow of water.
The mountain was in the interior of Vritra.
Everything that was arranged by the dam of rivers
In the rapid, Indra breaks one after another (I, 54, 10).

Neither by shaking nor by thunder
Vritra did not frighten Indra.
Caught up with him iron
Vajra with a thousand prongs.

Before your thunderclap, O lord of the crushing stones,
Everything that stands and moves trembles.
Tvashtar himself before your wrath,
O Indra, shudders with fear (I, 80, 12-14).

page 18


Neither lightning nor thunder helped him (Vritra - AM) ,
Not the fog that he spread, not the hail.
When Indra and the serpent fought,
For all future times the bountiful one prevailed (I, 32, 13).

He shook the earth mightily, the foundation,
Like wind to water, Indra with her own powers.
The strongholds were crushed by him, playing with the force.
He cut off the mountain tops.

Like women in labor, they opened their wombs,
Like chariots, the rocks immediately moved.
You stilled the waters flowing through the mountains, held back their waves.
Thou hast set flowing, O Indra, closed rivers (IV, 19, 4-5).

When you, Indra, slew the first-born of the serpents
And outwitted the tricks of the sly ones,
And gave birth to the sun, the sky, the dawn,
Since then, you haven't really found an opponent (I, 32, 4).

A similar problem (although more extensive) and a similar method ("from myth through hypothesis to the study of reality") was solved by the American researcher Bruce Masset from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. His task was to determine the cause of the Flood. The analysis of 175 legends and myths of different peoples convinced him of the reality of this flood, and allowed him to identify a number of quite possible realistic moments of this event. The catastrophe began with a severe atmospheric storm, preceded in many places by seismic shocks and fires, was accompanied by a black sky, thunderstorms, many days of torrential rain, giant waves, and ended with a flood that killed most of the world's population at that time (Piccardi and Masse Brace, 2007; Krivosheev, 2007, pp. 77-79). This information allowed Bruce Massa to put forward a hypothesis about the fall of a huge comet into the ocean, which caused this disaster. Its explosion vaporized and released a large amount of seawater into the atmosphere, which soon began to fall in the form of continuous rain. A team of scientists began to test this hypothesis empirically and found many traces left over from that time on the Earth's surface and in the ocean, including a crater at its bottom. The method proved to be productive and allowed us to establish a link between mythological perception and reality representation, on the one hand, and scientific perception, on the other, confirming the cognitive value of mythical images. This method is suitable for deciphering myths.

Researchers engaged in the empirical study of relevant processes and phenomena, primarily archaeologists, use the opposite method- " from the study of reality to the correlation of its results with myths." This method helps to solve the problem of reconstruction of the socio-spiritual superstructure over the monuments of material culture. In the case of the history of the Aryans, they necessarily came to use the texts of the RV and the Avesta to recreate the social and ideological meaning of these monuments.

In both cases, we are dealing with the interaction of at least two sciences. In Bruce Masset's case, it's mythology and geology. The collaboration of these sciences has created a new interdisciplinary field of knowledge. Masset called it mythogeology. In the case of RV myths, mythology and archeology interact. This synthesis gives rise to another complex discipline, which can be called mythoarchaeology.

list of literature

Avesta in Russian translations / Translated by I. M. Steblin-Kamensky, Moscow, 1998.

Bartold V. V. Sochineniya [Works], Vol. III, Moscow, 1965.

Biruni Abu Reyhan. Selected Works, vol. III. Geodesy. Tashkent, 1966.

Bronshten V. A. Gigantic meteorites of the XX century. 1999. N 3.

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Vinogradov A.V., Itina M. A., Yablonsky L. T. The oldest population of the lower reaches of the Amu Darya. Moscow, 1986.

Drevnosti yuzhnogo Khorezma [Antiquities of Southern Khorezm].

Gening V. F. The Sintashta burial ground and the problem of early Indo-Iranian tribes // Soviet archeology. 1977. N 4.

Gening V. F., Zdanovich G. B., Gening V. V. Sintashta: archaeological monuments of Aryan tribes of the Ural-Kazakhtan steppes. Chelyabinsk, 1992.

Grigoriev S. A. Ancient Indo-Europeans: Experience of historical reconstruction. Chelyabinsk, 1999.

Grigoriev S. A. Sintashta i aryiskie migratsii v 2-m millennii B.C. [Sintashta and Aryan migrations in the 2nd millennium BC]. Chelyabinsk, 1996.

Ancient Indo-Iranian cultures of the Volga-Ural region. Samara, 1995.

Itina M. A. Istoriya stepnykh plemen yuzhnogo Priaral'ya (II - nachalo I millenniya B.C.) [History of steppe tribes of the Southern Aral Sea region (II-beginning of the first millennium BC)]. Moscow, 1977.

Itina M. A. To the 90th anniversary of S. P. Tolstov and the 60th anniversary of the Khorezm archaeological and ethnographic expedition. www.rhpentextnn.ru/history/archaeology/expedition/tolstov

Kuiper F. B. Ya. Trudy po vediiskoi mifologii [Works on Vedic Mythology], Moscow, 1986.

Krivosheee S. The sea is agitated... / / Results. 2007. N 5.

Kuzmina E. E. Arias - the way to the South. Moscow, 2008.

Kuzmina E. E. Whence the Indo-Aryans came. Material culture of the tribes of the Andronovo community and the origin of Indo-Iranians, Moscow, 1994.
Maydanov A. S. The Logic of God-making // Questions of philosophy. 2002. N 3.

Lower reaches of the Amu Darya, Sarykamysh, Uzboy. History of formation and settlement, Moscow, 1960.
Norman Brown W. Indian mythology / / Mythologies of the Ancient World, Moscow, 1977.
Simonenko A. N. Asteroids, Moscow, 1985.
Smirnov K. F., Kuzmina E. E. The origin of Indo-Iranians in the light of the latest archaeological discoveries. Moscow, 1977.

Steblin-Kaminsky I. M. Arysko-uralskiye svyazi mifa ob Yime [Aryan-Ural connections of the Yime Myth]. Rossiya i Vostok: problemy vzaimodeystviya [Russia and the East: Problems of Interaction], ch. V Kn. 1, Chelyabinsk, 1995.

Tolstov P. S. Po drevnim deltam Oksa i Yaxarta [On the ancient deltas of the Oxus and Yaxarta], Moscow, 1962.

Chlenova M. L. Problema prarodiny irantsev i drevneyshie gorodishche Yuzhnogo Urala i sopredel'nykh territorii [The problem of the Iranians ' ancestral homeland and ancient settlements of the Southern Urals and adjacent territories].
Chlenova N. L. [Archaeological materials on the question of Iranians before the Scythian epoch and Indo-Iranians]. 1984. N 1.

Eliade M. Kosmos i istoriya [Space and History], Moscow, 1987.

Luders H. Varuna. I. Gottingen, 1951.

Piccardi L., Masse Bruce W. Myth and geology. L., 2007.

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