The article by the well-known Russian sinologist Boris Lvovich Riftin (1932–2012) is devoted to a comparative analysis of one of the most widespread myths that tells about the existence of several suns in some ancient times and the destruction of superfluous ones by a mythological hero. To a large extent, the article is based on the author’s own field recordings among the natives of Taiwan, the peoples of Bunun and Taiya, in 1992–1998.
The researcher comes to the conclusion that the myth that relates the hero’s victory over the unbearable solar heat, was developed from a more general idea of an excessive number of suns. It is found in Europe as well as in Africa, but mainly in the Pacific region, East Asia and America. The myth of shooting superfluous suns exists mainly in mainland China, Taiwan and the Philippines, Indonesia and northeastern India, but is practically not noted north of the Amur river, among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Tibet. Thus, the area of distribution of this myth has clear boundaries, and many peoples who have similar stories belong to the Austroasiatic language family. Perhaps the ancient myth of the destruction of additional suns originally appeared in East Asia, and then during migrations was transferred to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and some islands in the Pacific.

One of the main clusters of episodes in the mythologies of East and Southeast Asia describes the appearance of multiple suns, whose heat threatens life. The archer shoots down all the suns except the last one. This article examines the geographical distribution and frequency of combinations of these and other solar motifs. The dominant notion of the sun as a woman in the northeastern half of Eurasia only formed in the Holocene. It contrasts with variants typical of the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. The motifs of multiple suns, shooting at the suns, and rectifying the peculiarities of the original sun combined at the same time. A similar set is reflected in ancient Chinese monuments and in the folklore of China and Southeast Asia, but in America, these motifs are rarely interconnected. In southwest Eurasia, the sun in the form of a man or a woman occurs with almost equal frequency, which is characteristic of ancient mythologies in the Near East. In general, the percentage ratio of variants in southwest Eurasia is close to the world average, while in all other regions, it is skewed in favor of one of the variants. The myth of how the moon provoked the sun to eat its children was brought by early migrants from Africa to the Sunda subcontinent. At the end of the Pleistocene, a marine transgression displaced part of the population to the north, giving rise to the genes of the Malay Negritos and the myth of the sun-eaten children in Central India. Exclusive parallels between the Balkans and Shaanxi (“The Sun Refuses Marriage”), as well as between the Balkans, India, and Madagascar (“The Cancelled Cosmic Marriage”), remain unexplained.

The article presents the background of the author’s concept of selfassembly of the plot. The proximity of the language of demonological stories to the spoken language requires special attention to the text, to its linguistic semantics. The linguosemantic approach to the analysis of texts, which was justified by the author, is demonstrated by the example of the concept of “to lead the water”, widely represented in mythological stories. A lot of predicative compounds were found that implement semantic transitions between two lexico-semantic nests. It is shown that the analyzed narratives are based on the actualization of intra-linguistic, potential predications (“language events”) into predicative syntagmasmythological motifs (“language of events”). The search for an answer to the question of how interactions arising in the language between different levels of the language system (intra-language predications between secondary and primary meanings of words, between literal and metaphorical meanings of idiomatic expressions, etc.) are transformed into text-building constructs led to the emergence of the concept of selfassembly of the plot.

The article is part of a larger study dedicated to the examination of mythological characters of the Russian North from a gender perspective, which involves a systematic analysis of the functions, appearances, and characteristics of these characters. In this work, research has been conducted on the nomination of the female mythological character of the bathhouse. This nomination can depend on the locus (derivatives from the lexeme “banya” and others are used), on actions, functions (derivatives arise from the verbs “zadirat’,” “obdirat’,” “buchit’”), and on external appearance. Additionally, certain lexical items are used to perform a complementary function (e.g., “matushka,” “babushka”), proper names, including those associated with folk beliefs about a woman who assisted in the birth of Christ. The female mythological character of the bathhouse appears in anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms, sometimes lacking a clear description. This character can be paired with a male character or stand alone. It can either help or harm a person if they violate established prohibitions. It is believed that the “family” of mythological bathhouse owners, like the “family” of mythological house spirits, can serve as a mirror reflection of the human family.
The research was conducted based on the materials from the Arkhangelsk dialects (using the “Arkhangelsk Regional Dictionary” and its extensive card index) and may provide an opportunity for researchers aiming to conduct a comparative analysis of mythonyms to utilize materials from the Arkhangelsk dialects alongside other materials collected in the Russian North and other regions.

In the Soviet science tradition the opening of the genre of children’s scary stories or “strashilki” is an event that has its own history, described by contemporaries. In 1970 at the all-union conference in Novgorod the first thematic report was announced by O.N. Grechina, who a few years earlier randomly recorded the first texts and introduced them into scientific circulation. In the American tradition in the 1960s scary stories became part of the research on children’s narrative and related narrative processes. In other words, they were woven into the popular at that time trend towards the study of spontaneous children’s fantasy, and scary stories, fear, fantasies about fear and have proven to be one of its key elements. This article describes the stages in the history of American science that preceded these events and formed an original tradition of studying children’s scary folklore in America.