A legendary progenitor is a legendary or mythological figure held to be the common ancestor of a dynasty, [1] people, tribe or ethnic group.
Masculinity, femininity and "ghenos" or lineage linked to legendary progenitors were fundamental concepts of family identity in the Etruscan and Ancient Greek eras. The Greeks demonstrated the principles of family functionality in the mythological lives of Zeus, Hera, Hestia and Hermes. These included communal dining, and "charis" a form of charity that Vittoro Cigoli and Eugena Scabini described as being "deployed to oppose the core of violence inherent in the family relationship". Etrusco-Roman culture, developed from the Greek where each "gens" (family or house) had their own deified hero, prince or demi-god along with various household deities. The expansion of family trees to include heroic or legendary ancestors was used to boost social status and amass personal finances. Rome's patriarchal families, along with later European dynasties engaged in power struggles, such as that to be elected Pope based on this change in family culture. [2]
Peoples from all over the world have supposed themselves descended from various different eponymic or mythical progenitors. The Italians claimed ancestry from Italus, Lydians from Lydus, Phoenicians associated with Phoenix, Sicilians legendary progenitor was Siculus, Pelasgians revered Pelasgus, Dorians traced lineage to Dorus, Aeolians were linked to Aeolus and Hellenes looked up to Hellen. Legendary progenitors also gave their names to places, Memphis was alleged to have been built by Menes and Ninevah by Ninus. [3]
In later times, place names in Britain were given the names of legendary chieftains or Anglo-Saxon Kings. Isaac Taylor (1787–1865) suggested that "minute fragments of historic truth have been conserved". He noted however that the "greatest caution must be exercised as to the conclusions which we allow ourselves to draw. The traditions are generally vague and obscure and the personages whose names are associated with these sites have often only a mythical, or, to speak technically, an eponymic existence." [3]
In Armenian mythology, Hayk the Great or The Great Hayk, also known as Hayk Nahapet, is the legendary patriarch and founder of the Armenian nation. His story is told in the History of Armenia attributed to the Armenian historian Moses of Chorene (A.D.410 to 490). [4]
In various Greek myths, Melampus is the legendary progenitor of a great, long line of seers. Along with his brother Bias, they became kings of territory in the Argeian and was acknowledged as a leader in Homer's Odyssey. His grandson is recorded as the prophet Theoklymenos. [5]
Niccolò Machiavelli discussed how in Ancient Rome, Aeneas the Trojan and Romulus were alternately said to have been the city's legendary founders. He considered how one's view of history could be influenced by the preference of one progenitor over another, saying, "if whoever examines the building of Rome takes Aeneas for its first progenitor [primo progenitore], it will be of those cities built by foreigners, while if he takes Romulus it will be of those built by men native to the place". Machiavelli does not take a preference and suggests Rome had "a free beginning, without depending on anyone". [6]
In his Germania , Tacitus asserted that the Germani (not their original name according to Tacitus) celebrated 'an earth-born god, Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istaevones.' [7] [8] Varying manuscripts of the early medieval Frankish Table of Nations claim that thirteen Germanic tribes were descended from three brothers: Erminus, Inguo, and Istio. [9] The names of these three brothers are evidently derived from the tribal names mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania (where the brothers go unnamed): Erminus from Herminones, Inguo from Ingaevones, and Istio from Istaevones. [8] Most variations of the Table don't mention their father's name, but two manuscripts precede the Table by mentioning Analeus or Allanius as "the first king of the Romans", two others name "Mulius" as the three brothers' father, while the Historia Brittonum calls their father "Alanus". [10]
Míl Espáine is recorded in Christian writings to be the legendary progenitor of the Gaels or Goidels of Ireland. He was suggested to have led the Milesians to be the final inhabitants of Ireland. [11]
The five ancestors of Mieszko I as well as Chościsko, the father of Piast the Wheelwright have all been suggested as legendary progenitors of the Piast dynasty in Poland. [1]
In the Middle East, Abraham (originally Abram) is regarded as the patriarch of the Arab people and Jewish people in the Bible and the Quran. [12] In the Book of Genesis, he is blessed with this honour by God, saying "Your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations". [13]
Tan'Gun is the legendary forebear of the Korean people. [14]
In Indian Hinduism, the Rishis regarded Manu as the legendary ancestor of the ancient Indian people in the Rig Veda. This tradition was carried forward in the Brahamanas, Puranas, Matsya Purana, Vishnu Purana and Aitareya Brahama. Brahma is also mentioned as the progenitor of Manu. Manu Vaivasvata is the progenitor of current Manvantara and ancestor of all ancient royal dynasties
Nyatri Tsenpo was a legendary progenitor of the so-called "Yarlung dynasty" of kings in Tibet. [15] Tsenpo, or "gNya'-khri btsan-po" has been suggested to have descended from an Indian dynasty and hence linked with Buddha. [16] In Tibet, the term is also connected with a spiritual progenitor. Tibetan Buddhists believe their ancestors to be famous teachers or translators. They consider that single spiritual progenitors can incarnate in various different people simultaneously in different geographical locations. These progenitors are given names based on their qualities and physical locations. Examples include "Prince Lion the teacher of Rgya" and "Karma, Light of Knowledge and Love the Mkhyen-brtse at Dpal-spuns". [17]
In Chinese mythology, the goddess Nüwa is a legendary progenitor of all human beings. She also creates a magic stone. [18] Her husband Fu Xi is suggested to be the progenitor of divination and the patron saint of numbers. [19]
In Bali, a legendary forefather or "stamvader" was called Wau Rauh. He was a mythical Brahmin high priest of Majapahit who established a five classes. [20] He had five wives and five children and founded Brahamanic clans such as Kamenuh, Nauba, Gelgel, Kayusunia and Andapan. [21]
Prince Vijaya has been discussed as a legendary primogenitor of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. He is recorded in the Sri Lankan Pali chronicles as the first king and described going on a mythical quest. Monarchs continued to reign in the Kingdom of Kandy until being deposed by the British under the terms of the Kandyan Convention. [22]
Mythical progenitors are honoured in songs, dance and instrumental performance by the Mbyá people in Argentina. Their songs invoke the names of various deities which are believed to reincarnate as souls in new children. Their multitude of legendary progenitors are considered to "dictate actions carried out by their children on earth". [23]
Patrick Wolfe has discussed the work of Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869, 1870) regarding the role of legendary progenitors in Totemism, practised by Native Americans. He suggested that "patrilineal totem stocks were endowed with fictional ancestral figures who were well suited to provide a basis from which subsequent and more sublime theologies might develop". [24]
David Conrad discusses how ancient Mali's ruling elite adopted composite characters of Islamic forebears into legendary progenitors. Such a composite image is discussed as a character called Fosana, whose legends are told as "a collage of loosely connected incidents from the Prophet's life and times". Fragments of the stories of Fosana have been connected with events in the lives of Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi and Suraqa bin Malik. [25]
In Arnhem Land in Australia, the Kunwinjku people consider Wurugag and Waramurungundi to be their original ancestors and have depicted them in their tribal art. [26]
Robert Alun Jones discussed Baldwin Spencer's study of the Alcheringa ancestors of the Arunta tribe in Australia as having both a spirit "ulthana" and a syzygy spirit "arumburinga". The syzygy spirit reincarnating repetitively as a reflection of the spirit of a single alcheringa ancestor. [27] [28]
In creation myths, the first man and woman extend the concept to all of mankind.
Religion in China is diverse and most Chinese people are either non-religious or practice a combination of Buddhism and Taoism with a Confucian worldview, which is collectively termed as Chinese folk religion.
The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi, is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and an individual deity (shen) or part of the Five Regions Highest Deities in Chinese folk religion. Calculated by Jesuit missionaries, who based their work on various Chinese chronicles, and later accepted by the twentieth-century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi's traditional reign dates are 2697–2597 or 2698–2598 BC.
In Hinduism, Itihasa-Purana, also called the fifth Veda, refers to the traditional accounts of cosmogeny, myths, royal genealogies of the lunar dynasty and solar dynasty, and legendary past events, as narrated in the Itahasa and the Puranas. They are highly influential in Indian culture, and many classical Indian poets derive the plots of their poetry and drama from the Itihasa. The Epic-Puranic chronology derived from the Itihasa-Puranais an influential frame of reference in traditional Indian thought.
The Ingaevones were a Germanic cultural group living in the Northern Germania along the North Sea coast in the areas of Jutland, Holstein, and Lower Saxony in classical antiquity. Tribes in this area included the Angles, Chauci, Saxons, and Jutes.
The Trojan genealogy of Nennius was written in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius and was created to merge Greek mythology with Christian themes. As a description of the genealogical line of Aeneas of Troy, Brutus of Britain, and Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, it is an example of the foundation genealogies found not only in early Irish, Welsh and Saxon texts but also in Roman sources.
Hayk, also known as Hayk Nahapet, is the legendary patriarch and founder of the Armenian nation. His story is told in the History of Armenia attributed to the Armenian historian Moses of Chorene and in the Primary History traditionally attributed to Sebeos. Fragments of the legend of Hayk are also preserved in the works of other authors, as well as in Armenian folk tradition.
Mannus, according to the Roman writer Tacitus, was a figure in the creation myths of the Germanic tribes. Tacitus is the only source of these myths.
The Iclingas were a dynasty of Kings of Mercia during the 7th and 8th centuries, named for Icel or Icil, great-grandson of Offa of Angel, a legendary or semi-legendary figure of the Migration Period who is described as a descendant of the god Woden by the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies.
Tiras is, according to the Book of Genesis and 1 Chronicles, the seventh and youngest son of Japheth in the Hebrew Bible. A brother of biblical Javan, its geographical locale is sometimes associated by scholars with the Tershi or Tirsa, one of the groups which made up the Sea Peoples "thyrsenes" (Tyrrhenians), a naval confederacy which terrorized Egypt and other Mediterranean nations around 1200 BCE. These Sea People are referred to as "Tursha" in an inscription of Ramesses III, and as "Teresh of the Sea" on the Merneptah Stele.
In genealogy, the progenitor is the – sometimes legendary – founder of a family, line of descent, clan or tribe, noble house, or ethnic group. Genealogy understands a progenitor to be the earliest recorded ancestor of a consanguineous family group of descendants.
Kartlos is the legendary progenitor and "father of all Georgians" in the Georgian mythology, more specifically of the nation of Kartli, known as the Kingdom of Iberia in the classical antiquity. Kartlos is a legendary figure originating in Georgian Christian mythology, recounted in the medieval Georgian Chronicles. He was a descendant of Japheth, second son of Targamos, the common ancestor of the Caucasians, and Kartlos, himself becoming the patriarch of the Georgians. According to the myth, he controled a large territory in the Caucasus and participated, with his brothers, in a war to free himself from the domination of a giant and Titan king Nebrot.
Ara the Handsome is a legendary Armenian hero and king. He is the son of the legendary king Aram and a descendant of the Armenian patriarch Hayk. Scholars believe that Ara, Aram and Hayk were originally deities who were later reinterpreted as legendary human heroes. Ara represented a dying-and-rising agricultural god and is thought to have embodied fertility within the Indo-European triad of sovereignty, war, and fertility, along with Hayk and Aram. Ara is the subject of a popular legend in which the Assyrian queen Semiramis, desiring the handsome Armenian king, wages war against Armenia to capture him and bring him back to her, alive. Ara is killed in the war, and Semiramis attempts to bring him back to life.
The Ikshvaku dynasty, also known as the Solar dynasty or Sūryavaṃśa was a feudatory tribe that ruled the Andhra region, Krishna River Delta, and Godavari river on the east coast, situating their capital at Dharanikota . they prayed to Surya as their primary deity and considered him as their progenitor. Along with the Lunar dynasty, the Solar dynasty comprises one of the main lineages of the Kshatriya varna in Hinduism.
The pagan religion of the Germanic tribal confederation of the Franks has been traced from its roots in polytheistic Germanic paganism through to the incorporation of Greco-Roman components in the Early Middle Ages. This religion flourished among the Franks until the conversion of the Merovingian king Clovis I to Nicene Christianity, though there were many Frankish Christians before that. After Clovis I, Frankish paganism was gradually replaced by the process of Christianisation, but there were still pagans in the late 7th century.
Nyatri Tsenpo was a king of Tibet. He was a legendary progenitor of the Yarlung dynasty. His reign is said to have begun in 127 BC and in traditional Tibetan history, he was the first ruler of the kingdom. The Dunhuang chronicles report that he is said to have descended from heaven onto the sacred mountain Yarlha Shampo. Due to certain physical peculiarities – his hands were webbed, and his eyelids closed from the bottom and not the top – he was hailed as a god by locals, and they took him as their king.
The Germani cisrhenani, or "Left bank Germani", were a group of Germanic peoples who lived west of the Lower Rhine at the time of the Gallic Wars in the mid-1st century BC.
Siculus was a legendary king and son of Italus.
Prince Arran or Arhan was a semi-legendary founder of Caucasian Albania. The early Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi tells of a certain Aran, a descendant of the legendary Armenian patriarch Hayk through Sisak. According to Movses Kagankatvatsi he was 9th generation descendant of Japheth. He is regarded as progenitor of Aranshahik dynasty. According to a legendary tradition reported by Khorenatsi, Arran was a descendant of Sisak, the ancestor of the Siunids of Albania’s province of Syunik, and thus a great-grandson of the ancestral eponym of the local albanians. Almost no information exists about him and his successors except names. He was contemporary of Abraham according to Movses Kagankatvatsi which seems to be a legend.
Didanu was a legendary Amorite ruler or ancestral figure attested in Mesopotamian and Ugaritic texts. His name is presumed to be derived from the term Tidnu, which in the third millennium BCE referred to a specific tribal group among the Amorites, as attested in sources from the times of Gudea and Shu-Sin. After the Ur III period, variants of this term only appear in literary texts, by the end of the Bronze Age they were only ever used to designate a purely mythical figure. Various dynasties claimed descent from Didanu, including the kings of Assyria, the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the monarchs of Ugarit. In the last of these states, Didanu was also considered a deity.
The Frankish Table of Nations is a brief early medieval genealogical text in Latin giving the supposed relationship between thirteen nations descended from three brothers. The nations are the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, Saxons, Burgundians, Thuringians, Lombards, Bavarians, Romans, Bretons, Franks and Alamanni.
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