Veles, also known as Volos, is a chthonic god of the underworld in Slavic mythology, described in contemporary sources as a cattle god (skotij bogъ), but according to various hypotheses, he had a much broader sphere of influence. His function as protector of cattle may be connected to both wealth and rule of the underworld, which was imagined as a pasture where human souls grazed. Through comparative methods, he can be interpreted as a deity of magic, knowledge, divination, and poetry. As the guardian of the boundary between the world of the living and the dead, he was also a god of the wilderness, hunting and animals. He was also a guarantor of oaths, punishing their violation by "turning them yellow", most likely a metaphor for a form of jaundice.
His mythological nature and powers are similar, though not entirely identical, to those of Varuna, Velnias, Odin (marginally), Hermes, Afsati and Hades. Reconstructionists speculate that he may directly continue aspects of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon with the original deity Welnos.Jaan Puhvel, Analecta Indoeuropaea, (a collection of articles), publ. by Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft, Innsbruck, 1981
Veles is sometimes incorrectly identified with a dragon or a serpent. This hypothesis, based on the reconstruction by Ivanov and Toporov and published in 1974, was already criticized eight years later by A. Giezstor, and it is no longer part of the modern scholarly consensus on Slavic mythology. "There is no adduced evidence, either by Ivanov, Toporov, or Katičić, of the existence of formula Perun smites the god Veles, as the indisputable proof (instead of mere conjecture), which is to be expected by an objective explorer." Toporov later revisited this issue and recognized the association of Veles with Varuṇa instead of the demon Vṛtra, contrary to his earlier position. "The very name Varuṇa has been compared by scholars with the Hittite sea deity Aruna, with the ancient Greek sky god Ouranos, and finally with the Slavic Volos (Veles) and the Lithuanian Velnias, among others. Therefore, despite a number of remaining uncertainties, the Indo-European parallels of this name are beyond doubt."
Sources Veles is one of few Slavic gods for which evidence of offerings can be found in all Slavic nations.
Part of the oldest chronicle of Kievan Rus the Primary Chronicle (lit. 'Tale of Bygone Years') are three treaties between Byzantium and Rus’. They date from 907 (with Oleg), 945 (with Igor), and 971 (with Sviatoslav). Only the last one does not raise significant doubts about its authenticity:"As I have sworn to the Greek emperors, and with me the boyars and all Rus’, so shall we uphold the true treaty. And if we do not fulfill anything of what has been stated above, I and those who are subject to me, may we be cursed by our god in whom we believe, by Perun and by Volos, the cattle god (skotij bogъ), and may we become yellow as gold, and may we be cut down by our own weapons. Hold this to be true, for we have now bound ourselves to you by it, have written it upon this charter and sealed it with our seals…"Veles is here referred to as the “cattle god” (skotij bog). This is theorized to reflect his role in governing prosperity, particularly in the form of cattle, which was a meter of wealth in most Indo-European cultures. However, because he is mentioned in contrast to Perun, this reference may be mythological, our god x cattle god, reflecting his authority over all that lies "outside the fences of human dwellings", in other words the wilderness, as opposed to Perun, the "god of the people". The fact that both are guarantors of this treaty could further support the argument for a possible close similarity between this pair in the sense of Mitra – Varuna, as bright – dark upholders of law. After all, Perun displays sun-like characteristics in folk religion and symbolism, which could align him more closely with Mithra. This is not unusual, as the Celtic thunder god Taranis exhibits comparable traits. And Varuna is a clear cognate of Veles. "Only the character of the Vedic sovereign god Varuna appears to be fully congruent with the Slavic god in all his aspects, features and functions."
The work "Slovo někojego christoljubca, revnitelya po pravoi věre" ("The Word of a Certain Christ-Lover, Zealous for the True Faith") most likely dated from the 11th or 12th century. The oldest surviving manuscripts of this work are apparently in the Pajsievsky Codex, the Trinity Golden Chain, and the Sofia Codex. Volos, however, is mentioned only in the Trinity Golden Chain. The work is anonymous and its main purpose is to criticize surviving fragments of pre-Christian religion. Because Slovo někojego christoljubca contains descriptions of certain practices and names of revered figures, it becomes an important testimony to the archaic religion of the Slavs, which the author sought to eradicate. The passage mentioning Veles (or Volos) reads as follows:"Therefore, for Christians it is inappropriate to play demonic games or dance, to make music, sing demonic songs, or offer sacrifices to idols, in which they pray in drying houses to fire and to the fairies and Mokosh, Sima, Rglu, and Perun and Volos, the cattle god, to Rod and the Rozhanitsy, and to all those who are like them."The problem, however, is that the sequence crucial for us occurs in only one of the SNCh manuscripts, and therefore it seems likely that it is an interpolation from the text of the treaty in the TBG.
Another source is the Žitije Vladimira ("Life of Vladimir"), which exists in several variants. The mention of Volos is connected to his actions carried out during the Christianization of Kiev."Once [Vladimir] arrived in Kiev, he commanded that the idols be cut down, ordering some to be chopped and others to be burned. He commanded that the idol of Volos, whom they called the cattle god, be thrown into the Pochaiv River [...]"This passage is often examined with regard to the position of Veles’s idol, which, unlike the others, was not placed on a sacred mound as mentioned in connection with Vladimir’s pantheon. The lower placement of Veles’s idol is explained in relation to the chthonic function of this god, in contrast to Perun, who was a sky deity. At the same time, Veles being lower in the city could place him closer to the marketplace, and thus this may reflect a connection to his attribute associated with wealth and potentially trade.
This destruction of Volos’s idol does not appear in any of these sources or in any other known text, and could therefore be a later addition. Considering that the rest of the text demonstrably draws on older sources, Šachmatov’s assumption seems more natural: that the author of obyčnoje ŽV had access to a source that has not survived. Therefore, the information about Volos from ŽV can be considered relevant, albeit with a certain degree of caution.
Veles is also mentioned in the heroic epic The Tale of Igor’s Campaign from the late 12th century in connection with the bard Bojan as his grandfather:"Oh Bojan, singer of long-past times,
[...] Grandson of Veles, you could adorn Igor’s deeds with richer tones:
[...]Grandson of Veles, you would sing perhaps: [...]"Among Western Slavs, in Czech sources, the name Veles was used to refer to a devil or demon.(see below) The Polish chronicler Mikołaj Stryjkowski, at the end of the 16th century, calls him Vlos and describes him as a god of cattle and forests, comparable to Pan and Faunus.
For the South Slavs the name of Veles appears only in toponyms, the best-known of which is the city of Veles in Macedonia, over which looms a hill of St. Elias the Thunderer. Other examples are Veles in Western Serbia, Velesnica on the Danube and Velestovo in Montenegro and also the township of Velestino (Βελεστίνο, today Φέρες), apparently bearing testimony to a Slavic layer in the settlement of Thessaly. Another debatable if not improbable example is the town of Volosko in Croatia, situated on the seashore under the peak of Mount Učka, nicknamed Perun.
Etymology
Presumably it is not possible to conclusively determine a definite etymology for the name of the god Veles, though there are several Proto-Indo-European roots that are all closely related to the nature of Veles and his domains. Further complicating matters is the presence of Lithuanian vėlės, which Fraenkel claims is unrelated to the Slavic term.Fraenkel, E. (1962-5) Litauisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Winter Heidelberg. Pp. 1218-9 Moreover, it remains to be determined what the original shape of the lemma was in early Slavic, which obfuscates its history and linguistic relationships.
The identification of Veles and Volos as one and the same was considered entirely unproblematic by Roman Jakobson. He argued that the name Veles can be divided into two parts: the first is based on the Indo-European (IE) root *ṷel- (*wel-), the second on the IE root *esu- (from PIE *h₂nsú-, "ruler > god"; cf. Vedic asura-, Avestan Ahura-, Old Norse áss). According to Jakobson, the variant name Volos can be derived by assuming that the second root appeared in the zero grade and that a regular sound change from -el- to -olo- subsequently occurred. The connection of the second part of the name with the PIE root from which asura developed is particularly interesting because it is an epithet of the god Varuṇa, who can be linked with Veles on more than just an etymological level.
This root is fairly established and accepted in current scholarship. It encompasses several semantic fields: to die, grass, to see, to want, to turn (oneself), to tear, lukewarm; elsewhere, alongside "grass", we also find the possible meanings "hair", "wool", and "forest", as well as another meaning, "to deceive".
Mallory and Adams raise a question, whether PIE roots with several distinct meanings represent unrelated homonyms, or whether these meanings were once connected within a unified semantic field that has since become obscure. The question would be whether to associate Veles with all meanings of the root *ṷel- (*wel-), or to select only one. According to Gajdošíková Šebetovská and Jiří dynda, it is possible that some meanings are interconnected, while others are merely homonymous. However, attempting at all costs to find links between all meanings of the root *ṷel- and Veles could lead us astray, Gajdošíková Šebetovská adds.
Dynda lists the three reconstructed PIE roots dubbing it the "*wel- problem":
a) ṷel- (*wel-) "to roll, to turn" – Czech vlna (wave/wool),Vitomir Belaj "Hod kroz godinu, mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih vjerovanja i obicaja", Golden Marketing, Zagreb 1998., úval (valley); Latin volvo ("to turn/rotate"), valles ("valley"); Greek ἕλιξ ("spiral/winding"). *ṷélsu- (*wélsu-) "meadow, pasture" > Greek Elysion (Elysium), a region of the underworld. b) u̯elh₁- (*welh₁-) "to choose, to want" – Czech vůle (will), volba (choice), velet (to command); Latin vollo; Gothic waljan; English will; German wählen. c) u̯elh3- (*welh₃-) "to strike, to wage war" – Latin vello ("to pluck/tear"); Old English wéal ("bodies of the fallen"); Old Norse valr ("the fallen in battle"); Lithuanian vėlė and Latvian veļi ("souls of the dead").
Words semantically connected with the dead found in the Baltic sphere like Lithuanian vėlės, Latvian veļi (loosely transl. "souls of the dead") are associated with the figure of Velnias.
The meaning of the root ṷel- as “to see” is reflected, for example, in the prophetess Veleda mentioned by Tacitus, as well as in the Old Irish stratum associated with poetry and magic, fili. Another Veles etymological connecting is with the Old Russian class of seers and magicians known as volkhv, although this has not yet been confirmed and remains hypothetical.