On the Track of the Sun - The Red Warriors from Chorasmia
Elersek, Leonard ; Mikulin, Rado Zic
Synopsis "On the Track of the Sun - The Red Warriors from Chorasmia "
Under Hor's protection, a pagan deity of Sun and war and the supreme God of the early Croatian pantheon, the warrior nation of Croats (Old Croat. Hrvuati) travels on the track of the Sun, setting off at dawn from the Asian vastness in the East, toward the setting Sun and a new homeland in which they will find a home and accept Christianity. The Croatian legendary saga from the Island of Krk - On the Track of the Sun - The Red Warriors from Chorasmia follows the history of the Croatian people through ancient centuries and many lands in which they lived, in a way it is seen in the Croatian folklore. The story is narrated through generations of noble families of Krk, Zic Mikulin and Mrakovčic Pavlic, and finally written down in 1951 in a small town Punat in the Island of Krk, in an archaic and very specific local Chakavian dialect of the Croatian language that takes us to the early Slavic and Pre-Slavic history with its many unusual archaic words. This epic saga tells the story of the arrival of Croats in the Adriatic, their lives and migrations during a thousand years of history, bounded by two historical battles. It seems like the first one describes the defeat of the army of Artabanus I, the king of the Parthian Empire in 124 or 123 BC against the nomadic tribes from the east, described by the Roman historian Justin (JUSTIN, Epitomes, XLII). The second one describes the triumph of the Croatian Prince Branimir's fleet against the Doge of Venice Pietro I Candiano's squadron in the battle of Puntamika in the Zadar canal on 18 September 887.This long epic story starts in the Imperial castle on the river Tigris and follows the Croatian people on the journey from the empire Chorasmia, across the Afghan Arachosia (old Persian Harauvatis) to the Black Sea river basin. After they arrived in the area between the Volga and Don, according to the saga fable, the Croats spread across the Bug and Dnieper to the Carpathians and established a large state with the capital Horovo. The Croatian state spreads farther north along the Vistula and to the Danube on the west. Finally, the Croatian people arrive in Illyricum via two routes, by land, which is known to us during the history, and naval, with thousands of boats across the Black and Aegean Sea to the eastern Adriatic coast.The entire oral literature of a small island town and its ancient generations, kept for hundreds and even thousands of years through oral transmission of the people, has reached our time in which it was written down. The extensive transmission of aristocratic descent and content, with an immensely beautiful narrative, not only explains and complements the events described in the Saga, but offers a new, unusually interesting view of the early history and ethnogenesis of the Croats and Slavs and coindicates with the work of many domestic and world scientists, archeologists and historians. Its significance goes beyond the Croatian scope, and will certainly stand side by side with the most beautiful works of Slavic and world folklore. Although it was written only in the middle of the 20th century, it is extremely valuable because it was preserved in the folklore together with a few hundred shorter stories and songs, with which it deeply permeates and complements. The ones who had read The Croatian story - On the Track of the Sun - The Red Warriors from Chorasmia compare it to the Nordic Hervarar saga, The Song of the Nibelungs and The Kalevala.
