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

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              www.folklore.ee/folklore

Yuri Berezkin

from the body of the man) and with the Dardic (the Kho) version in which the 

origin of the human navel is also explained.

The westernmost text that contains a significant part of our plot is registered 

among the Arabs of the Tiaret plateau in northern Algeria (Aceval 2005: 10–11). 

God made the man’s figure out of mud. Satan looked at it and spat in disgust, 

the place where his spittle fell turned into the navel. When angels brought 

the human soul to be inserted into the body one of them noticed a dark spot, 

scraped it off and the substance turned into the dog. Because the dog is created 

both from Satan’s spittle and from the same substance as the man himself, it 

is considered unclean but remains the best friend of the man.

The easternmost Eurasian text related to our anthropogenic tale is found in 

western Mongolia. The publisher of its Russian translation kindly let me know 

that the text had been recorded in 1983 in Ubsunur Aimak from the Dörbet 

man, the Dörbet being one of the groups of the Oirats

. 

God modeled of mud 

two human figures. The cow came and caught one figure with a horn, it fell 

down and broke. The fragments turned into the dog, and since then the dog 

barks at the cow. The dog and the man have common origin, that’s why their 

bones are similar (Skorodumova 2003: 51–52). The major difference between 

the Oirat tale from one side, and the Caucasian and South Asian versions from 

the other side, is the replacement of the horse with the cow. Such a replacement 

is logical but we’ll address this topic a little bit later.

The last version of the tale that should be mentioned in this section was re-

corded in the far North among the Nganasans and represents the only Siberian 

case of its kind. The primeval mother gave birth to a child, a small branch of 

willow. Her husband put it to grow but “The disease came and spoiled it.” The 

man asked his wife to give him another child so that the latter would defend the 

former. The second child proved to be a reindeer without horns. He asked his 

father to give him horns to fight the worms and evil beasts, received one horn 

of ivory and another of stone and destroyed the beasts (Popov 1984: 42–43). 

Another version of the same story was published by B. Dolgikh (1976: 39–44). 

It contains similar episodes and describes the antagonist who tried to destroy 

the “blade of grass child” as “something flying”. Though neither the horse nor 

the dog is mentioned in the Nganasan myth, its structure fits the southern 

pattern according to which the guard successfully drove away the antagonist.

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Folklore 56 

 

       

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The Dog, The Horse and The Creation of Man 

THE AGE OF SPREAD OF THE SOUTHERN TRADITION

To establish the terminus ante quem for the dispersal of the Southern tradi-

tion across Eurasia, the distribution of variants recorded among the different 

groups of the Munda are of crucial significance. Now most of the “tribal” people 

of India are dispersed at vast territories, some groups changed their linguistic 

affiliation during the last centuries. However, the areas where the number of 

speakers of the corresponding languages is the highest are mostly the same as 

they were in the past (Osada & Onishi 2010). The principal area of the spread 

of the Munda languages is the Chota Nagpur plateau (state of Jharkhand with 

adjacent territories). The Santali, Ho, Mundari, Birhor, Asur (including Birjia) 

and other groups that speak languages of the northern branch of the Munda live 

here. To the south, mostly in the Koraput district of Orissa state, Bondo, Sora 

and other languages of the southern branch of the Munda are located (Figure 

2). Much to the west, in Maharashtra state, the Korku language is localized, 

which belongs to the northern branch. The position of Kharia and Juang is not 

certain. Formerly these languages were classified as belonging to the southern 

Munda but according to the recent classification they stand nearer to the North-

ern division (Diffloth 2005). Ilia Peiros (Santa Fe Institute) also classifies the 

Kharia and Juang as the Northern Munda. His conclusions are based on the 

100 words list of Morris Swadesh according to the glottochronological formula 

of Sergei Starostin (personal communication, October 2010). The Juang speak-

ers live in the northern Orissa, and the Kharia is spoken practically across the 

same area as the Mundari (Peterson 2009: VI–VIII).

Initially, the Munda family broke into the southern and northern branches, 

then Kharia and Juang split from the northern branch, after this the Bondo 

and Sora separated from each other and at last the Korku lost contact with 

other languages. The lexicostatistics gives only approximate assessments of 

age but still helps to create a rough chronology and to establish the successive 

steps of the splitting of language branches. The disintegration of the Munda 

family began in the early II millennium B.C. (the separation of the northern 

and southern branches), while the isolation of the Korku took place in the mid 

I millennium B.C.

The myth about the creation of the human figures and an attempt to destroy 

them is recorded among the northern Munda including the Korku. It should 

be noticed, that the Korku mythology is poorly known while the materials on 

the Bondo and Sora are rather rich. The fact that three versions have been 

found among the Korku indicates that the tale is very popular there. At the 

same time we can be sure that the Bondo and Sora were not familiar with it. 

It means that the Munda could have adopted the tale between ca. 1700 (after 

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