Dali (also Daal or Dæl; ) is a goddess from the mythology of the Georgian people of the Caucasus region. She is a hunting goddess who serves as the patron of hoofed wild mountain animals such as ibexes and deer. Hunters who obeyed her numerous taboos would be assured of success in the hunt; conversely, she would harshly punish any who violated them. She is most prominently attested in the stories of the Svan ethnic subgroup in northwestern Georgia. Other groups in western Georgia had similar figures considered equivalent to Dali, such as the Mingrelian goddess Tkashi-Mapa ().
She was usually described as a beautiful nude woman with golden hair and glowing skin, although she sometimes took on the form of her favored animals, usually with some marking to differentiate her from the herd. She was said to reside in a cavern high in the mountains, where she kept watch over the hoofed game animals who live on the cliffs. Dali was styled with a variety of regional epithets reflecting her different roles and associations.
Stories of the Svan people depict her taking human lovers and killing them out of jealousy, giving birth to sons such as the culture hero Amirani, and later clashing with her rival Saint George. Some myths depict her working alongside other forest deities, and she is sometimes accompanied by the legendary hunting dog Q'ursha. After the rise of Christianity in Georgia, Dali's importance as a goddess waned, which was reflected in changes to stories told about her. Saint George was presented as having the power to overrule her, and she began to be conflated with a malicious nature spirit called the ali.
Many authors have described parallels between Dali and stories from other mythologies. As a patron of the hunt associated with hoofed beasts, she has been compared with Artemis of Greek mythology, a Scottish hag called the glaistig, and the maiden who tames the unicorn. Her associations with gold, seduction, and the morning star have led scholars to draw connections with goddesses such as Aphrodite and Ishtar, who have similar mythological themes.
Her story remains an important part of Georgian cultural consciousness, and she is often referenced with eponyms and literary allusions. Although younger people treat her as a figure from mythology, some older hunters still consider her to be a real figure one might encounter deep in the forest.
Origins
Dali is attested primarily in surviving pieces of Svan folklore: myths, ballads, and round-dance songs. Linguistic anthropologist Kevin Tuite regards the surviving texts as fragmentary, representing "but a tiny fraction of the texts that would have been in circulation in the Svaneti of a few centuries ago". He also noted that most of these pieces would have been performed and likely composed by men, leaving any female perspective of Dali unclear.
Dali is also attested in oral traditions recorded in modern academic fieldwork by Georgian academics such as Vera Bardavelidze in the 1930s and Elene Virsaladze in the 1950s–1970s. According to Virsaladze, Georgian culture exhibits an extraordinary degree of live retention of ancient folklore and traditions, possibly from as far back as 3,300 years ago.
It has been suggested that Dali, along with numerous other deities of Georgian mythology, had her origins in a lost common religion of the Kartvelian peoples. Variations on this idea were supported by the Georgian historians Nikolai Marr and Ivane Javakhishvili, both of whom independently theorized that the similarities in folklore between the various Georgian ethnic groups indicated a common religious origin. Dating the origin of this religion, and therefore of Dali in particular, may be impossible due to the lack of surviving written sources. The only thing that can be stated definitively is that these beliefs predate the adoption of Christianity in Georgia, which archaeological evidence indicates began as early as the 3rd century.
Some archaeological artifacts have been suggested to have a connection to Dali. Folklorist Mikheil Chikovani considered the Trialeti Chalice, a Georgian artifact from approximately the 2nd millennium BCE, to depict a round dance or ritual dedicated to a goddess of the hunt comparable to Dali. He connected the motif of the animals on the lower portion of the chalice to the hoofed animals which Dali protected. Folklorist David Hunt also suggested the Chalice could be a depiction of a mistress of beasts. Some historians have speculated that certain Phasian drachma coins from the 4th to 5th century may have depicted Dali or her precursors, although numismatist John Hind argued against these interpretations in a 2005 paper.
Etymology and epithets
The etymology of Dali's name is unclear. Although many figures in Georgian mythology have origins in figures from the early Georgian Orthodox Church, Dali is not among them. It has been suggested that the name comes from the Georgian word , meaning "morning", or the Ossetian word meaning "demon", but these links are disputed. Tuite has linked the name to the various words for "god" in the Nakh languages, a group of languages in the Northeast Caucasian language family: "Chechen dēla, Ingush dǣlə, Bats dalě". These words can refer to Allah specifically, or can be used as a general term for pre-Islamic deities in the region. It was characteristic for central Caucasian cultures to replace sacred words with substitutes; this lexical replacement was driven by taboos against speaking the true words. Tuite believed Dali might originally have had a Svan name that gradually became replaced by the Nakh term for "god" as a result of this process.
Dali and her equivalents were also known by various epithets, reflecting local perceptions of the goddess's role or associations. At times she was simply called "Radiant", in reference to her extraordinary beauty. When focusing on her association with New Year's Eve, she was referred to with the epithet of Dæl Ešxwmiš, or "Dali of New Year's Eve". The Svan called her "the Queen Dali". Because she was said to live high in the mountains, she was sometimes referred to as "Dali of the Rocks". In the Racha and Kakheti regions she was called "the Mistress of Beasts" and the "Angel of the Crags". The name Tkashi-Mapa, used by the Mingrelians, translates as "the Queen of the Woods" or "the Sovereign of the Forest".
Depiction
Traditionally, Dali lived in a cavern high up in the mountains, far away from human settlement. Some traditions specified her home was the distinctive double-peaked mountain Ushba, whose ice-covered south face was sometimes called Dalis panjara, the Window of Dali (). The cave's exact location varied; it could be on the side of a glacier, or at the summit of the mountain. Sometimes the entrance was concealed by a rock door which Dali opened and closed to hide her dwelling. Rarely, Dali and her flock lived inside an enormous hollowed-out spruce tree. As a rule, Dali did not enter civilized spaces such as villages except on rare occasions, such as the funerals of her human lovers. Her nighttime cries could injure people and damage her surroundings, and her rage could cause blizzards and avalanches.
Dali was usually described as a beautiful young woman with long braided hair. She was most often portrayed as nude, occasionally wearing gold jewellery. If she wore clothes, they were white. Her skin was so white it was literally radiant. Her beauty was extraordinary: "both irresistible and terrible", it could drive a man to madness if he even spoke to her.
Dali's long hair was an important component of her mythology. Her hair was gold-colored; in some cases, it was actually made of gold, and shone like the sun. Some stories depicted this gleaming aspect as fire, describing the goddess leaving "little tongues of flame" in her wake, although this is less prevalent. She would sit on the cliffs combing her hair with a golden comb. In some tales, Dali used her supernaturally-strong hair to bind hunters who wronged her. In one story, she used it to strangle a hunter who had stolen one of her hairs to string his hunting bow.
Although strong enough to string a bow with, her hair was not invulnerable; indeed, using Dali's hair to threaten, harm, or kill her was a recurring motif. Multiple tales depict hunters grabbing or cutting Dali's hair in order to subdue and rape her. This tactic did not necessarily prevent the goddess from later taking revenge. In a story about Dali's Mingrelian equivalent Tkashi-Mapa, the goddess agrees to marry a hunter when he threatens to cut off her luxurious hair. He eventually grows tired of her endlessly washing and combing it, and hides her prized comb so she will stop. She destroys his family, killing one of his children and stealing another, and curses his entire line of descendants.
Women could also use Dali's hair against her. In one of the major Dali stories, a woman discovers her husband sleeping with Dali. She cuts Dali's hair off in a rage, killing her or banishing her from the world. A superstition recorded in 1971 described how a woman whose man had been away hunting too long might cut her own hair off, praying that God would cut Dali's hair in return, which would force the goddess to allow her husband to return home. In one unusual variation of the hair-cutting motif, a woman wishing to rid her son or her husband of Dali's influence sneaks up on the goddess while she is sleeping and washes her hair, sometimes in deer's milk. Dali is rendered so powerless, or so grateful, by this act that she becomes the woman's servant. Her Mingrelian equivalent could be dismissed with a similar method, using milk from a black cow instead of a deer.
Primary motifs
Game animals and hunting
Dali's primary mythological role was that of the mistress and guardian of hoofed game animals of the mountain. She protected her charges, which included deer, ibex, wild sheep, and goat-antelopes like turs and chamois, just as a shepherd guards a flock. Some stories portray her milking her animals. She was responsible for granting favor or misfortune to hunters, punishing the greedy and ensuring there would always be enough game to go around.
Stories involving Dali often feature animals that have been marked as special: either they are Dali's favorites among the herd, or they are the goddess herself in the form of an animal. Examples of these special features include a purely white coat, unusual markings, or golden horns. Dali could vary her size in both her animal and her human forms. When she took the shape of her favored animals, they were often significantly larger or smaller than the usual animals of that kind. She could also make her human form very small: in eastern Georgia, hunters would leave tiny pairs of shoes on the cliffs as an offering to her.
Several tales recorded by Georgian folklorist Elene Virsaladze reflect the deadly consequences for a hunter who wounded or killed one of Dali's marked beasts, or hunted too greedily. Two stories describe Dali cursing a hunter's family such that his sons, and later the hunter himself, died as a result. Another story describes Dali destroying the town of Nakvderi with an avalanche as revenge after a hunter wounded a tur marked by the goddess. In another story, a hunter killed a doe and its fawn, and was cursed by the herd's protector to never have any descendants of his own.