CODES OF SLAV CULTURES
journal of slavic folkloristics and ethno-lingvistics

No. 1

PLANTS 

The article deals with the symbolism of bean plants in the traditional culture of Slavs. The whole line of ritual and folklore contexts reflecting the semantics of conceiving and springing up of new life connected with the conception of the growing bean and pea grain (in wedding and birth rites) has been examined. The analysis of functional - semantic characteristics of the bean cultures in the funeral rites and in performative calendar forms reveals other aspects of bean and pea symbolism. Slavic folk concepts of soul and its transformation from the body into the other hypostases, confirm the interrelationship and logical connection of these, essentially not opposed symbolic meanings. The article offers numerous attestations about bean as a basic funeral food, about feeding souls of the dead with bean and pea dishes, etc. from different Slavic regions. This confirms the basic thesis of the article that bean or pea grain was adopted as a symbol of the end of life and of the beginning of the new one. A similar reconstruction of the bean plant symbolism is possible on the semiotic level at first, but on the level of rite acts' motivation and folklore texts, the examined meanings are implicitly expressed. Areal diffusion of the function and semantics of bean (or common bean) and pea on the Slavic territories proves continuity of the discussed meanings of bean (pea) in the South of the Slavic territory, and of common bean in it's North. At Polesye and the Carpathian Slavic regions the network of isogloses (isodoxes) of the examined ethnocultural phenomena is followed.

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