M7a1. The luminaries float above the hero. .17.19.23.59.62.66.

The character finds himself in a place from which he cannot escape. As celestial bodies (at least three different ones) float past him or above him, he notices them (and turns to them for help).

Sumer, Dobu, Vedau, Ancient India, Makushi, Trio, Barasana, Shipibo.

Western Asia. Sumer [two Sumerian poems connected by a through plot, in modern scholarship, as a rule, bear the names "Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave" and "Lugalbanda and the Bird Anzu"; both poems are known primarily from tablets of the Old Babylonian period, mostly from Nippur; in addition, fragments of the version of the era of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Nippur) and the bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) version of the 1st millennium BC (Nineveh) have survived; the overwhelming majority of tablets with the text of the poems about L. are kept in the following museums and collections: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania, Hilprecht Collection (Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena), Istanbul Archaeological Museum, National Museum of Iraq (Baghdad); 1) the text of the poem "L. "In a Mountain Cave" opens with a mythical introduction: in ancient times, when the sky separated from the earth, when the first harvests rose and people began to eat barley, when boundaries were drawn and boundary stones were installed, when canals were dug and wells were constructed, when the Euphrates broke through the earth, when royal power appeared in Uruk, when the weapons of Uruk were raised in battle, when people enjoyed a long life, then Enmerkar, the son of the sun god Utu, decided to go to war against Aratta (a legendary city, conventionally localized in the territory of modern Iran); the population of Uruk is called to war; Enmerkar's army goes through the mountains; at the head of the army are seven brothers, born of the goddess of the earth Urash; they were fed with the milk of a wild cow (probably referring to one of the goddesses of the Sumerian pantheon) and grew up at the table of the sky god An; their eighth brother L. sets out on the campaign with them. In the middle of the journey L. falls seriously ill; the brothers are unable to return L. to Uruk and decide to take him to a mountain cave; they leave L. with abundant supplies of food, drink and incense: if L. recovers, he will be able to return to Uruk, and if he dies, the brothers will take his body on the way back; the army moves on; L. remains in the cave; three days later, when the rays of the evening sun illuminate the cave, L. prays to the sun god Utu for healing; Utu accepts L.'s prayer and gives him vitality; the goddess Inanna appears in the night sky (meaning her astral incarnation, the planet Venus); L. offers her a prayer and asks her for salvation; Inanna accepts his prayer; she plunges L. into sleep and fills his heart with joy; the moon appears in the night sky; moonlight penetrates into the cave; L. prays to the moon god Nanna-Suen; the moon god accepts L.'s prayer and gives him the strength to rise to his feet; the morning sun illuminates the cave; L. is surrounded by protective deities; the deity that sent L.'s illness (probably a certain demon) retreats; having prayed to the rising sun, L. leaves the cave; (further see motif K38b3)]: comp. summary, translation of fragments and commentary by R.M. Nurullin; Alster 2005b; Black et al. 1998-2006, 1.8.2.1, 1.8.2.2; Wilcke 1969; 2015.

Melanesia. Dobu [Kasabwaibwaleta has a skin disease; his mother gives him a medicine; he swims to another island to his Kula partner ; becomes handsome; receives a precious shell, hides it on his head under his skin with boils; a boy searches in his head, notices the shell, tells others; he is abandoned on an islet; he orders a tree to grow to the sky, climbs up; the constellation Kibi floats by, refuses to pick him up, says that his boat is full; the Pleiades brings him; K. stays with the sky people, gets married, his son, playing, throws a spear, piercing the firmament, K. sees his native village below, ties a rope to his necklace, descends, falls on a betel palm; his mother notices him; at this time a funeral feast was held for him; K. turns all the relatives gathered in the house into various birds; K. dives, emerges at Woodlark Island]: Fortune 1932: 216-220; vedau [the men went out to get shell ornaments; arriving at one place, they all went inland, and one along the shore; he met a boy, who brought him to his father, who had a string of shells; the man called his companions; with the strings of shells the people swam home; on the way they stopped at an unfamiliar shore to measure whose string was longer; the last {is this the man who met the boy?} had a string that was much longer than the others (he threw it to the top of a pandanus); they abandoned him on the shore and swam away; he began to ask the stars that were getting up and passing {swimming?} to take him; Magamaia, then Deboroia replies that the next one will pick him up; Maratomton (Morning Star); Maratomton takes him to heaven; he stays with the heavenly people, marries; their son grew up, began to throw spears at coconuts on the ground, asks his father to make new spears; he is surprised, the son shows him the ground below; he weaves a rope, asks his son to lower him down on it, ends up on a coconut in his garden; his grown-up daughter sees him, calls her mother; the man invites to a feast those who abandoned him, set fire to the house; their charred bones turn into flying foxes, whose voices are like cries of suffering]: Ker 1910: 7-13.

South Asia. Ancient India [in the Rig Veda (I, 105) the rishi (sage) Tritá found himself at the bottom of a deep co. etymologies and a female sage was tied to a violent stable boy for a golden hen with chickens, a golden table; a black man; he peers into the sky (first the night sky, then the dawn, morning sky), across which the Moon, reflected in the depths of the waters, and the stars are floating; T. calls upon Heaven and Earth to learn of his situation; asks for salvation for the sacrifices previously made to the gods, begs Agni and Varuna for intercession, and finally receives salvation from Brihaspati. The commentator of the Rig Veda, Sayana, in connection with I, 105, reports on the three rishis Ekata, Dvita and Trita, who were tormented by thirst and were looking for a well; When the well was discovered and T. wanted to get water, the brothers, tempted by his property, threw T. into the well and closed it; T. composed a hymn to the gods, miraculously received soma and found salvation; in the Mahabharata IX, 38, 8 et seq. the following motives: 1) the existence of three brothers, born from the ashes of sacrifices thrown by Agni into the water, named Ekata, Dvita, Trita ("First", "Second", "Third"); 2) the two elders throw T. into the well; 3) T. is saved with someone's help]: Toporov 2006: 480-483; Ancient India [Rigveda, I, 105; {there is no direct mention of Trita's address to individual luminaries, only at the end of each stanza is repeated "O Heaven and Earth, learn of me (in such a position)"; however, in individual stanzas the Moon is mentioned, "those seven rays" (the Pleiades?), "those five bulls that stood in the middle of the great sky" (Taurus?), "those beautiful-winged ones in the middle of the ascent to heaven, they drive the wolf from the road" (some constellation?), "the path of the Adityas, created in heaven" (the Milky Way?)]: Elizarenkova 1989: 126-128.

Guiana. Makush [two brothers hunt frogs, kill them with a club; one decided to catch them with his hands; a frog grabbed him by the hand, then by the neck, and dragged him by the water to an island; there grows a lonely tree on which birds nest; the man spends two or three months there, eating only clay and drinking water; boats {with constellation characters?} float by, ignoring requests for help; only the Sun takes the man into his boat, tells his daughter to smear pepper on his lips to restore his strength; asks where he lives, the man points to the east; the Sun takes him there, he still lives there, healthy]: Soares Diniz 1971, no. 13: 87-88; trio: Koelewijn, Riviere 1987, no. 9 [the younger brother warns the older one not to catch a frog whose voice they hear in the forest; the elder tries to catch it, it grows huge, carries him off to a rock in the middle of the river; evil spirits passing by, the Moon (Nunnë), Venus (Urutura) refuse to help; the Sun (Wei) sails in a boat, there is a lot of roast meat in it; he makes a ladder, returns the youth to his mother]: 49-52; Magaña 1987, no. 20 [a man tries to catch a frog, it drags him off to a rock in the middle of the river; the Moon, the star Urutula, the tokoro bird , illnesses, the wind refuse to take him with them under various pretexts; the Sun takes him into his boat, takes him to the shore]: 135-136.

NW Amazonia. Barasana [Manioc-stick Anaconda (MA) – half-brother of the current Sun, son of the Ancient Sun and his Sky wife; Mako – his younger brother, single; became a tapir for a time, left tracks; suggested to MA to finish digging a hole-trap for the tapir, MA fell into the underworld on a tree by the river; the Moon, the Morning Star, the striped water snake, the great and little otters (they are the Sun's rowers) swim by silently, or answer that the Sun ("son of mother MA") is swimming after them; the Sun grebe (Heliornis fulica) bird takes him, but leaves him in the water when he blows the winds; the Sun takes him into his boat; tells him to dive for a log of fish; MA says there is only an anaconda there; while the Sun himself dives, the Monkeys, Squirrel, Otters (they are the Sun's rowers) order to take out the substance from the Sun's bag, the Sun was going to burn MA with it; having plugged the mouth and anus of the anaconda, the Sun lifted it up, poured out fish of all known species; a pot for cooking fish is a poisonous snake; MA only pretended to eat this fish taken out of the anaconda; the Sun releases puffs of fire, MA each time turns into a spider, hides; he himself releases the substance that he took out of the Sun's bag, the latter's crown of feathers lights up, he recognizes him as a brother; see motive K1]: S. Hugh-Jones 1979, No. 6A: 287-293.

Montagna - Jurua. Shipibo : Gebhaert-Sayer 1987: 51 [at night the sun's boat sails underground from west to east], 371-372 [no. 23; on his way home, a hunter climbed into a hole after an armadillo, saw a light at the end of it; came to a river; in the evening he wanted to go back, but the hole was closed; before dawn he heard the voices of people floating past in a boat, they did not take him; in the second boat there were four people, including the Morning Star; in the large boat the Sun arrived; at the stern and bow there were three people, the former had burnt faces, the latter had burnt backs; at noon they stopped to rest, made a fire; the Sun asks a man to get some fish in the lake; he meets people floating in boats, returns empty-handed; the Sun explains that these were fish, to throw a harpoon at them; [after some hesitation, the man does so, each of them is transformed into a fish; the Sun's companions eat and drink enormous amounts; while the man sleeps, the Sun takes out his intestines, they float on the water; now the man also eats and drinks a great deal; the Sun drops the man off at his home; there they are surprised that he is so gluttonous, they make him drunk, he tells everything, he has a fever, he lies down in the sun, dies]; Roe 1991a [a man grabs an armadillo by the tail, it drags him down to the nether world; standing by a river, he sees boats coming upstream, asks to be taken along; Yantan Huistin (the bright star in the east is Regulus or Venus), many other stars say that with them he will freeze; the Sun takes him into its boat; they sit him on the bow, so that only his back is burned; a member of the Sun's crew sitting in the stern has his face burned; at noon the boatmen stop for lunch; another stop is at the nadir; the Sun takes out a man's entrails so that he can eat more; the man sees his intestines floating, turning into water plants; having no entrails, he is now able to eat and drink as much as the Sun; having delivered the man to earth, the Sun forbids him to tell about what happened; people are surprised that he can drink so much without getting drunk; he explains why; soon dies in the sun]: 23-25.