Dazhbog

Attestation

Dazhbog is named fourth among Vladimir's six idols in the Russian Primary Chronicle's account of 980. A separate strand, the Hypatian Chronicle's 1114 gloss on the Slavonic Malalas translation, identifies him with the sun and calls him "son of Svarog." The Tale of Igor's Campaign (Slovo o polku Igoreve), a medieval poem describing a failed 1185 Rus' military campaign whose manuscript and dating have drawn scholarly debate, twice calls the Rus' people "Dazhbog's grandsons"; whatever the poem's exact date, it shows the name still carried weight as an ancestral, poetic figure for the audience it was written for.

Reading the sources together

The 980 list, the 1114 gloss, and the Tale come from three different kinds of text (a political chronicle entry, a scribal aside translating Greek myth, and an epic poem) and none of them narrate an actual myth about Dazhbog's deeds. What can be said with confidence is that he was one of the state cult's official gods and that his name endured afterward as a literary figure of speech for the Rus' as a people.