Научна конференция, посветена на 90-годишнината от рождението на Анастас Примовски
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REVIEWS, CRITICISM, NEW BOOKS
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REVIEWS, CRITICISM, NEW BOOKS
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This paper represents a critical review of the article of Yordan Ivanov „The Cult of Perun Among the South Slavs" and once more provokes the question about this cult. The most convincing and up-to-date is that part of the work of Y. Ivanov, in which he presents the proofs for the existence of traces of South Slavic cult of Perun on toponimic and onomastic data. Nevertheless those are only indirect proofs. The passage cited and analysed by Y. Ivanov from the „History" of Spiridon (1792), where the name of Perun is mentioned, cannot be taken as a historical evidence for the existence of the cult of the Thunderer among Bulgarians. The citation is separated from its context while its wholesome analysis shows that the monk historian Spiridon has made a mythological etymology of the Bulgarian rain ritual „Peperuda", probably under the influence of medieval Russian chronicles. The folk notions about this saint are based on biblical sources of the biography of the Prophet Eliah to a much larger extent than it is presumed in scholarly works. Despite the fact we have at our disposal much more factological data, than Y. Ivanov had at his time, part of them support the scepticism about the characters in the South Slavic higher pantheon, but others comprise arguments „in favour" of this pantheon.
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The changes in the house interior of the intelligentsia in big Bulgarian towns in 1878-1912, are closely connected with the now planning and functions of the house, but in some cases they are ahead of, or lag behind them. In fitting-up their houses the people from this social group introduce many innovations, but still do not give up the tradition. The replacement of old house furnishing with a new one is a rapid, but nevertheless a smooth process, as intelligentsia shows differentiated attitudes towards the achievements of Bulgarian traditional material culture. The leading role in the innovative processes is lead by those from Bulgarian intelligentsia, who have studies abroad, or those, for whom the house interior is important for their professional success. In the late 90-ies the last group shows a special interest for folk fitting-up of the house and start to study, preserve and accommodate it to modern everyday life. The changes in the interior of Bulgarian intelligentsia in big Bulgarian towns reveal the increased self-consciousness of this social group, the wish to demonstrate their connection with prestigious European culture, but without losing their national identity; their devotedness to Renaissance traditions and the strive to improve the everyday life standart for the entire Bulgarian society.
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The origin of the Mediterranean race is considered on the basis of the conception of race as an aggregate of populations. The initial stages of race genesis are traced, connected with the process of sapientia, the role of adaptation factors being considered as well as that of isolation and the mixing of races which changes the genetic structure of the human population. An answer is sought to the question of the source at which the Mediterranean race appeared and its great age. A detailed study is made of its different variants which were differentiated and developed as mankind spread and settled in definite regions. The development of Mediterranean types is traced and its racial types on the territory of Bulgaria from the Neolithic Age up to the present. On the basis of Palaeonthropological studies the conclusion is drawn that the Balkan Peninsula should be included in the area, where the Mediterranean race was formed. The development of racial types in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages gives groups for the assertion that the basic mass of the Balkan population was of local origin. The Mediterranean features brought later by the Slavs (with an admixture of the Northern race) and by the proto-Bulgarians, from their Iranian and Turkic roots (mixed with the Mongolian race), are also traced.
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The national wooden house of the 17th to the 19th century is a unique and interesting phenomenon. A study of it brings to light new data not only about its architectural history, but also about Bulgarian ethnography, about the way of life, the traditions of architecture and construction, culture, mores and customs of the Bulgarian people. Questions concerning the territorial spread and forms of the individual groups of these houses within the boundaries of Bulgaria are dealt within this study. On the basis of the terrain (for the present studies cannot be carried out in those parts of the Bulgarian historical and ethnic territory which are outside the State frontiers) and of archive documents, the national wooden house is systematized in five large geographical regions. The study examines houses widespread in the Eastern Stara Planina (Bulgarians call the Balkan Range Stara Planina = the Old Mountain) and the typological groups formed there (the Zheravna house, the Starareka house, a transitional one, and the Yablanov house, also a transitional form). An attempt has been made in the study to examine the models preserved to this day in individual towns and villages in their architectural-artistic and plan development. The common features which characterize the houses of every type are indicated.
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Review, Criticisms, Books Bagra Georgieva, Ivan Ivanchev, Lilia Peneva. The National House. Interior Architecture, Arrangement and Furnishings. S., Publishing House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1980, 29-3 pp.
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From the history of ethnography On the History of the Study of the Bulgarian Emigran ts' Settlements in Romania in the National Revival Period (On the occasion of the Centenary of St. Romanski)
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This study examines the functions of the way of life in education along five basic lines. 1. A study is made of the educational functions of the way of life, when it interpenetrates others of its components among people: the prolongation of education in labour, school, etc., in the sphere of the way of life which outlines the unity and variety of social education in general. 2. The educational potential of the way of life is shown not only in its totality and realization, but also within its very structure-forming component, and in the mutual dependence and mutual influence of its structure-forming components. 3. The subject of this study is the complex and contradictory reality which imposes our present on the traditional way of life and its educational purpose, science-technical progress, the dynamic processes of migration and urbanization, etc. 4. Taking into consideration the circumstance that the vast part of our history was lived under the conditions of the feudal development of society, and that capitalism in Bulgaria did not succeed in eliminating many of the patriarchal-family relations, customs and traditions, formed in the past, a thesis is formulated about the marked importance of the Bulgarian family in the system of which the family-festive custom and ritual life of the Bulgarians functions with an exceptional educational charge. 5. An attempt is made in the study to outline the educational 'difference specifics' of the Bulgarian people's way of life. To put it more concretely, bearing in mind the dismal fact that their history was lived mostly under the conditions of alien (Byzantine, and chiefly Ottoman) bondage, which did away for a long time with the State, political and, to more than a small extent, the economic aspects of the social and national education of our people, the thesis is put forward that the Bulgarian people's way of life was inevitably burdened with greater and important educational obligations than would have been the case under the traditional conditions of development in other countries and among other peoples. The general intention of the study is, first, to show the way of life as a sui generis social-educational institution, and, second, to draw attention to the problems of this way of life from the point of view of the theory of social education.
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Some factors for assessing the different types and variants of historically conditioned plans of rural houses (regional or local forms) in the Carpathian-Balkan region are: the communication among the rooms, the layout of the rooms, the possible absence of some rooms, the localization of the principal communicating room, its role and importance in the home, the heating system, the symmetrical or asymmetrical planning of the house and the choice of the axis (transverse or longitudinal) for the orientation of the rooms. In many cases the degree of development of the plan determines the purpose of the different rooms. An important element to be considered in the classification is the character and the localization of the main living-room in the house. In the Carpathian region it is called izba and it is a room which forms the nucleus of the home and in which the everyday life of the family is concentrated. The izba has a fireplace (possibly a stove, a hearth or a cooking stove). The access to it is through the anteroom (i. e. the izba is not the main anteroom and entrance to the house). In the Balkan lands the principal room has a different localization compared with that of the izba in the houses of Central and Eastern Europe. There it is a kind of anteroom with a fireplace. The room is used for cooking, for taking meals, for sleeping and for the everyday life of the family. In Bulgaria this room is referred to as kusta, in Yugoslavia — kuha. On the basis of these criteria the author has classified the plans of the houses in the Carpathian-Balkan region in various groups. This classification is valid for Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and Turkey.
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The study is an attempt at semantic analysis of spinning as a ritual action and as a world outlook notion in the culture of the Bulgarians. Attention is focused on the principal elements of spinning: the distaff, the wool to be spun, the spindle and the thread. The information used as a basis for the study dates back from the mid-19th to the first decades of the 20th century. On the basis of the wedding rite of "spinning" it is concluded that spinning was interpreted as the sexual act, pregnancy and the birth of a child, whereby the distaff is the male side (phallus), while the wool (vulva) and the spindle (womb) symbolize the female side. The spun thread has several meanings: the first thread that is being spun by a man or by some male representative of the bridegroom's family is interpreted as the male semen which fertilizes; the winding of the thread around the spindle is compared to the development of the pregnancy; the filling of the spindle is identified with the end of the pregnancy; the unwinding of the thread and its winding into a ball symbolizes the birth of the child. The last thread that is unwound is identified with the placenta and the umbilical cord during childbirth. Thus the "spinning" in the Bulgarian wedding doubles semantically the mating and expresses the best wishes addressed to the bride to give birth to a child (many children). Other instances in the family rituals of the Bulgarians in which the same notion is detected are also demonstrated. Various practices and rites from the calendar and working rituals reveal a broader notion about spinning as a model of the creation of life, comprising not only man but also the vegetation (predominantly the wheat field and the other cultivated plants) and animals (mainly domesticated).
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The paper analyses a specific regional phenomenon in the funerary rites of the Southern Slavs, namely the healing of a child born in the same month with another child who had died, practised by Bulgarians and Serbians. This phenomenon is based on beliefs common to both nations, according to which people born in the same month have a common fate and all principal moments in their lifecycles coincide in time. The principal aim of the healing, i. e. the dividing of the destinies of the people born in the same month and the preservation of the life of the survivor, is achieved through concrete actions containing the main stages of the rites of passage (separation-passage-affiliation). All of them, depending on the composition of the rites and rituals performed, are divided into three basic types which are in addition ethnically determined. The first type of healing, consisting in the sharing or exchange of objects symbolizing the fate of the people born in the same month, is also known outside the system of funerary rites of both Bulgarians and Serbians. The second type — the symbolic "burial" of the surviving individual — is known predominantly to the Bulgarians, whereas the third type involving the breaking of the bond between the people born in the same month on the principle of contact and separation at the level of the action, is known mainly to the Serbians. A specific feature of the types of healing examined is that they are combined with the creation of artificial kinship which completes the change in the status of the individual healed: he continues to live in the same social environment, but he occupies another position in it, not the position shared previously with the deceased. Bearing in mind that the beliefs about people born in the same month and the practices for their healing have no parallels not only among the Southern Slavs but also among the remaining Slav peoples, the genetic roots of this phenomenon should be sought in all probability within the Balkan area.
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Ethnographic Materials
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