Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, issue: 56 / 2014 — The Dog, the Horse and the Creation of Man

Folklore 56 

 

       

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The Dog, The Horse and The Creation of Man 

Figure 1. The location of the traditions that contain the northern and the southern vari-

ants of the myth about the creation of the man. 1 – the guard (usually a dog) successfully 

drives away the antagonist who tried to destroy God’s creation or the dog is created from 

the same substance as the man; 2 – The guard (usually a dog) cannot defend human figures 

created by God.

1986: 359, 444). The Dardic languages pertain to the Indo-Iranian branch of 

the Indo-European stock but occupy a special position, probably being slightly 

nearer to the Indo-Aryan than to the Indo-Iranian branch. I could not find any 

version among the Nuristani (Kafir) traditions of Afghanistan but we should 

take into consideration our relatively poor knowledge of the Nuristani folklore.

The  typical  Indian  variant  is  as  follows.  God  makes  of  mud  figures  of  a 

man and a woman and puts them to dry. A horse or two horses, often winged, 

come and break the figures. The creator makes a dog or two dogs who drive 

the horses away. The horse is punished by being deprived of its wings and 

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Yuri Berezkin

obliged to serve the man, and to be harnessed and beaten. The horse wanted 

to destroy the man just because it was afraid that the man would harness it. 

In one of the Korku stories trees try to destroy the man, being afraid that the 

man would begin to cut them.

One of the Dardic (the Kho) versions is quite similar to the Indian ones. 

Before the creation of the man, the world was populated by horses. They tried 

to trample down the figure of Adam that was made of mud but the dog did not 

let them to do it and until now remains the guard of the man. The navel on the 

human body is the trace of the horse’s hoof (Jettmar 1986: 444).

To this main group of texts there should be added others that lack some 

details, e.g. the guard is not mentioned at all or (in some Mundari versions) it 

is not a dog but a tiger or a spider. Among the Dards (Jettmar 1986: 359) and 

among the Munda-speaking groups such versions with minor alterations exist 

along with the typical ones. Among the Limbu the complete texts (with the dog 

as a guard) are not known. According to the Limbu myth, Niwa-Buma made the 

first man out of gold and he was perfect, but the envious horse monster broke 

the figure. Niwa-Buma created the man anew of ashes and chicken dung, and 

punished the horse. Now it has to walk on four legs and not on two as before 

and is a beast of burden (Hermanns 1954: 10–11). The Limbu text is rather 

similar to the Pamir (the Wakhi) version according to which the man created 

by God was handsome but the covetous horse kicked the half-ready figure and 

because of this all people have some physical imperfection. God punished the 

horse by making it the servant of the man. This information was kindly supplied 

by the late Bokhsho Lashkarbekov in February 2005. Among the Mizo, Kachari 

and Khasi the antagonists who try to destroy human figures are a snake, an 

evil spirit, or brothers of the creator (Kapp 1977: 50; Shakespear 1909: 399; 

Soppitt 1885: 32). The role played by the dog in these texts is the same as in 

most of the others. In South Asia the most distant from the Mundari versions, 

both geographically and by its content, is the tradition of the Barela–Bhilala. 

A goddess makes human figures, “the sky queen of the eagles” tries to destroy 

them, a male personage kills her, and the high god inserts souls into the hu-

man bodies (Kapp 1977: 46).

Myths about the creator (or his messenger) who took some mud, made the 

figures of human beings and left them for a while to bring the souls are recorded 

among the Loda and Galela of Halmahera Island (Indonesia, the Northern 

Malucu). When the evil spirit broke the figures, the creator made two dogs 

from his (i.e. the evil spirit’s) excrements and they drove him away after which 

the humans were made alive (Baarda 1904: 442–444; Kruijt 1906: 471). This 

Indonesian variant is similar to some Indian ones, especially to the Khasi text, 

but it can be left aside. The name of the antagonist is O Ibilisi  (from Arabic 

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Folklore 56 

 

       

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The Dog, The Horse and The Creation of Man 

“Iblis”, the Devil) and it means that the story reached the Maluku after the 

advent of the Islam. When and how it happened is not essential for our topic.

Moving to the west from South Asia, we should mention “a late Zoroastrian 

legend” from Iran (Litvinski & Sedov 1984: 166). After creating the first man 

Gaiomard, Ormuzd commissioned seven sages to guard him from Akhriman 

but they could not fulfill the task. So Ormuzd put the dog Zarr

īngoš (“yellow 

ears”) as a guard and since then this dog protects from demons the souls who 

go to the Beyond. There is no such story in “Avesta” though it does not exclude 

the possibility that it could exist in the oral tradition from the early time.

Another cluster of folklore records related to the story about the creation 

of man by God and a brave dog who saved human figures from destruction is 

localized in the Caucasus. Among the Abkhazians the story was discovered in 

the 1990s. One text was recorded by the ethnologist Marina Bartsyts from her 

mother, another by the folklorist Valentin Kogonia (I am grateful to Marina 

Bartsyts and Zurab Japua for this information). The version recorded by Bar-

tyts is as follows. In the time of the creation of the world the man was made 

of mud but the devil sent horses to trample him because otherwise the man 

would torment them all the time. The man managed to take a handful of mud 

from his abdomen and threw it to the attackers. The lumps of mud turned into 

dogs and drove the horses away. In Kogonia’s version (published in Abkhazian), 

the dog also defends the man by its own initiative and not by the order of the 

creator. God made the man out of mud. The devil warned the horses, “If the 

man becomes alive, you are doomed, kill him!” The horses rushed at the man 

but the dogs drove them away. That’s why the man and the dog are considered 

to be close to each other.

The Swan variant was never recorded in detail. It was heard by an archaeolo-

gist Alexei Turkin in Swanetia in 2004 from an old man, R. Shamprioni being 

the interpreter. During a conference in Saint Petersburg (October 2012) A. 

Turkin told me that the story was practically identical with the Abkhazian one.

The Armenian version is drawn to the study thanks to the invaluable help 

of Lilith Simonian, a folklorist from Yerevan. This tale was recorded in 1941 

in Lori near the Georgian border and recently published in Armenian (Zham-

kochian 2012: 138–140). God sent angels to bring the mud, made the figure 

of Adam and put it to dry. Devils told horses to destroy the figure, otherwise 

the man would put them to work. God sent the angels again and this time the 

devils spat on the mud but God wringed it out and the saliva turned into the 

dog who drove the horses away. The place on the human body from which the 

devil’s saliva ran out is the navel. This text shares specific motifs both with the 

Abkhazian versions (dog emerges spontaneously out of the substance extracted 

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