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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

HOW COSSACK MAMAI WAS BORN 

27 April, 1999 - 00:00

By Taras DYSHKANT, special to The Day
Ukrainian scholars seem to agree that the word Cossack originates from
Turkish, meaning a freeman. In the early fourteenth century a Polovtsian
dictionary is known which gives the word and interprets it this way. There
are documents dating from the same century from the Crimean Italian colonies,
mentioning Tartar Cossacks serving as guards there. In the late fifteenth
century, the term was applied to Ukrainians wishing to live free and prepared
to defend their freedom. However, knowing that Cossacks as a large-scale
social phenomenon emerged on their home turf, this hypothesis looks

somewhat dubious.

Borrowings from different languages relate mostly to objects and notions
absent in the borrowing language. Considering the nomads' collective-itinerant
lifestyle, the notion Cossack could not have existed in the vernacular.
Most likely, the Turkic peoples borrowed it from some other language. Polish
historian Maciej Stryjkowski in The Chronicles of Poland, Lithuania,
Samogitia, and All Rus (1582) tells about Kyiv Rus and Lithuanian Cossacks,
and about Cossack routes. Researchers believe that the author got carried
away, but assuming that the term is rooted in pre-modern times, Stryjkowski
is right. The notion Tartar Cossacks can be explained by the fact
that the Italian colonies in the Crimea hired Tartar freemen as guards.

The Indo-European community of Greeks and ancient Slavs characteristically
worshipped the goat personifying the animal world, used for a variety of
purposes, from food to milk, hides and horns. A small part of the cult
has survived in the Ukrainian Christmas goat-leading rite. As people proceeded
to domesticate animals, tending and preserving them as emergency rations,
their lifestyle grew sedentary. It was then that the first tilling attempts
were made. Mostly, people lived by hunting, collecting fruit and vegetables,
and working their plots. All this placed the goat on a pedestal. Goat is
kozak in Ukrainian, hence the word kozak or Cossack. As society
evolved, particularly as new animals were domesticated, Cossacks with their
goats receded into the background and were almost forgotten.

After the Golden Horde's onslaught routing the federated state of Kyiv
Rus, with the domestic elite joining the Polish-Lithuanian state, and only
the masses remained with the idea of building a national state. The elite's
siding with the enemy camp was also caused by the spiritual decay of the
Eastern Orthodox world, ending in the fall of the Byzantine Empire (May
29, 1453).

Vast fertile expanses dividing the plowmans' and nomads' habitats were
extremely dangerous to travel across, let alone settle in, yet here one
could be truly free and find one's livelihood. It was in this wild steppe
that the old principles of military democracy were revived, along with
the notion Cossack. New and better firearms were invented and developed,
enabling small Cossack detachments to defeat numerically stronger steppe
nomads. The scales tipped the Cossack way. The Cossack movement in Ukraine
received a fresh impetus from Polish social oppression and persecution
of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Could the Cossack movement, this huge process,
be named using a foreign word, especially one originating from the enemy
camp? Of course not!

The word Tartar comes from Tartarus, the mythological abyss, the Greek
kingdom of the dead, as far removed from man as the earth is from heavens.
Tara is the old Hindu for star - hence tarot cards. The new coinage, having
the opposite meaning, was made by doubling "tar," coming up with Tartar.
And the legendary Cossack Mamai's name was contrived using the same method:
mai, maya, ma - all these terms relate to a female deity, the goddess of
fertile soils. Cossack

Mamai "refuted" the goddess by hunting, fishing, collecting, and felling
trees (and enemies).

Mamai's hairstyle is a forelock of hair on a shaven head, called oseledets,
but the latter also means herring in Ukrainian. The larger species is called
chub, literally meaning a tuft of hair. In his landmark dictionary
Borys Hrinchenko also gave the form rusak. Considering that professional
warriors, hunters, and fish were believed by many peoples to originate
from the same underworld, kingdom of the dead, this similarity becomes
quite understandable in terms of both the appellation and appearance.

When the Varangian warriors appeared in the Slavic land they became
known as the Rus. Rus, or Khrus is the Slavic onomatopoeia for crunching,
cracking, or crushing. In the earliest military encounters striking weapons
- e.g., bludgeons, maces, mallets - proved most effective. Many a battle
would be accompanied by the cracking of bones, a deadly music. Trus,
or coward, and its plural form trusy (also meaning shorts) have
the same root and a shade of meaning ("wet shorts" is a Ukrainian idiom,
same as wet pants). With the Etruscans, the cult of the dead was almost
as strong as with the Egyptians. It is quite possible that worshipping
the kingdom of the dead caused them to vanish from the historical arena
almost without a trace. We know about Etruscans and Perugians. And with
the Slavs there were the rusaliyi dances of rivermaids - girls who
drowned themselves, driven by despair. Every feast of our forefathers invariably
included a ritual of honoring the dead. On festive occasions the table
would be covered by the obrus tablecloth. Another possibility is
that Jerusalem had been a place of worship of the dead before the Jews
came, as evidenced by the Indo-European origin of the toponym.

In a word, Cossack Mamai has roots reaching into the mist of centuries.

 

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