Hints of the Pear Cult in the Caucasus and the Carpathian Basin
(45th Meeting of the PIAC, Budapest 2002)
It is a well known fact that nomads adore nature. Besides the cult of the sky known as “tengrism”, they also worshipped big trees, rocks, springs etc. Juniper tree was one of the favoured cultic trees. Hungarians brought to their present lands different traditions they had learnt from the Khazars or other Turks and neighbours.These traditions are represented by our first layer Turkic loanwords. There are certain names of vegatation that were borrowed by our forefathers around the Kuban river and northern shores of Black Sea region, because these plants grow in that area. This concerns som “cornel cherry”，alma “apple”, dió “nut” and körte “pear” among others. Körte is also indigenous in the Carpathian Basin, therefore we might as well keep the habit of religious rites organized under pear tree. We have a folksong called körtéfa “pear-tree” proving this idea. We have a similar data to this from the Balkar language spoken in the Northern Caucasus. In the old times when they still had shamans, they called pear tree Rawbazd that was considered as holy or saint.