The Embodiment of the Myth about the Woman-Snake in A. Remizov’s Story “Melusina” and Armenian Legends

In world folklore, both the Myth of the Snake-woman and the motive of the birth of “wonderful children” from half-humans-half animals are widespread. Melusine is a fairy, a heroine of a folk tale of Celtic origin. Often depicted as a female-snake or female-fish from the waist downwards, sometimes with two tails. The Legend of Melusine goes back to the mythological motif of the “sacred marriage” of a chthonic being with a celestial deity, which was then transformed into the fabulous motif of the “wonderful spouse” (AaTh 400-459). The folk legends we have considered about mermaids and other travesty of female characters in snakes reveal a direct connection with the cult of the goddess of love and fertility. All similar characters, like Melusine, reveal a connection with lunar symbolism, as well as with the other world. The moon and stars have a sacred symbolic meaning in the work of A. Remizov and accompany fragments of Melusine’s appearance, and are also present at all important and fateful events, such as the death of Emery, the Meeting of Raymond and Melusine at the source, and the Wedding. We have revealed the similarity of Melusine’s image with fish-like and snake-like characters in Armenian folklore and mythological texts. The large luminous stone on Melusine’s forehead echoes the motif of the magic stone on the head of the king of snakes or frogs. In the beliefs of the people, snakes personify spirits, the souls of ancestors. They live in their old homes and protect them. Both the serpent and the spirit of the ancestor are interested in the fertility of the clan and the fertility of the fields. Structurally A. Remizov’s Story consists of three parts: “The Story of the Story”, “Melusine”, “Kolovorot”. In his treatment of the legend of Melusine A. Remizov introduced psychological motivations for the actions of the heroes. As a result of the study of the Legend of Melusine in the literary processing of A. Remizov, we can conclude that Melusine reveals the closest connection with the pagan deities of fertility, as well as all three fairy sisters are in one way or another connected with the Armenian Kingdoms and Armenian mythology.

Shankh-er Shongshar, Afterlife Everyday: Religious Experience of the Evening Conch and Goddesses in Bengali Hindu Homes

This essay brings together critical archetypes of Bengali Hindu home-experience: the sound of the evening shankh (conch), the goddess Lakshmi, and the female snake-deity, Manasa. It analyzes the everyday phenomenology of the home, not simply through the European category of the ‘domestic’, but conceptually more elastic vernacular religious discourse of shongshar, which means both home and world. The conch is studied as a direct material embodiment of the sacred domestic. Its materiality and sound-ontology evoke a religious experience fused with this-worldly wellbeing (mongol) and afterlife stillness. Further, (contrary) worship ontologies of Lakshmi, the life-goddess of mongol, and Manasa, the death-and-resuscitation goddess, are discussed, and the twists of these ambivalent imaginings are shown to be engraved in the conch’s body and audition. Bringing goddesses and conch-aesthetics together, shongshar is thus presented as a religious everyday dwelling, where the ‘home’ and ‘world’ are connected through spiraling experiences of life, death, and resuscitation. Problematizing the monolithic idea of the secular home as a protecting domain from the outside world, I argue that everyday religious experience of the Bengali domestic, as especially encountered and narrated by female householders, essentially includes both Lakshmi/life/fertility and Manasa/death/renunciation. Exploring the analogy of the spirals of shankh and shongshar, spatial and temporal experiences of the sacred domestic are also complicated. Based on ritual texts, fieldwork among Lakshmi and Manasa worshippers, conch-collectors, craftsmen and specialists, and immersion in the everyday religious world, I foreground a new aesthetic phenomenology at the interface of the metaphysics of sound, moralities of goddess-devotions, and the Bengali home’s experience of afterlife everyday.

BKm minisatellite sequences are not sex associated but reveal DNA fingerprint polymorphisms in rainbow trout

GATA-GACA repetitive sequences first isolated from a female snake (termed BKm sequences) and associated with sex chromosomes in some species were hybridized to DNA from rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri). Genomic DNA was studied from three groups of rainbow trout: (i) randomly selected males and females from an outbred group, (ii) androgenetic individuals from an inbred strain, and (iii) parents and offspring of an outbred strain. Three restriction enzymes (EcoRI, HaeIII, or HinfI) were used to digest the genomic DNA. The DNA was electrophoresed in agarose gels, transferred to nylon membranes, and the GATA-GACA repetitive sequence probe was hybridized to this DNA. There was no evidence of sex-associated patterns of hybridization with the enzymes used. However, the sequences reveal DNA fingerprint polymorphisms which appear to be inherited in a stable manner.Key words: BKm, GATA-GACA repetitive sequences, DNA fingerprint, rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri.