MORTUA WITH PESTLE. A device for making cereals from unrefined grains of wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat. Stupas intended for this purpose were hollowed out of wood. Their height reached 80 cm, depth - 50 cm, diameter - 40 cm. The wooden pestle was made up to 100 cm in length with a diameter of about 7 cm. When pounded in a mortar, the grain is freed from the shell and partially crushed.
There were stupas in every peasant house. They were used as needed, preparing cereals for one or two weeks.
In the popular consciousness, the mortar and pestle had mythological symbolism. It was conceptualized as intercourse, a union of male and feminine. Until now, in Russian villages a clumsy woman is called a mortar, and a slow, shy man is called a pestle. This was especially clearly manifested in the jokes of the guests who had been having fun at the wedding, and in ditties with erotic content.
In connection with such symbolism, a mortar with a pestle was widely used as an attribute of a wedding ceremony. In some Russian villages, a matchmaker, before entering a girl’s hut, spins her mortar three times in the entryway so that the matchmaking will be successful. In the southern Russian provinces, on the wedding day, women poured water into a mortar and pounded it with a pestle, imitating sexual intercourse that should take place between the bride and groom. Distributed throughout Russia.
MORTAR AND PESTLE. A device for grinding and grinding various types of products: salt, pepper, lard, garlic, poppy seeds, etc. Hollowed out of wood, made of tinned copper, brass.

Metal mortars were a low vessel, round in cross section, gradually tapering towards the bottom. Wooden mortars could follow the shape of metal ones or be low, wide cups with a handle. The pestles had the shape of a rod with a round working part. In Russian villages, wooden mortars were mainly used in everyday household life. Metal mortars were common in cities, as well as in wealthy peasant families of the Russian North.

Max Vasmer

Ukr., blr. stupa, other Russian stupa, tslav. (XIV century) Bulgarian stapa, serbohorv. Slovenian Czech stoupa, Polish stępa, v.-luzh., n.-luzh. stupa. || Praslav. borrowed from other Germanic - Middle-German-German

stampe "rammer", English. stampe f., d.-v.-s. stampf; see Mehringer, WuS 1, 8 et seq., 19 et seq.; Gerambus, WuS 12, 39 et seq.; Schrader - Nehring 2, 80; Uhlenbeck, AfslPh 15, 491; Kiparsky 266; Mi. EW 324. The assumption about the original Slavs is incredible. origin, contrary to Zubaty (Wurzeln 17), Mladenov (616), Preobr. (II, 408). STUPA (Sanskrit, lit. - a pile of earth, stones), Buddhist religious building

, storing sacred relics;
tombstone. From the first centuries BC. e. hemispherical stupas are known (canonical type; India, Nepal), later bell-shaped, tower-shaped, square, stepped, etc.
When crushing flax in some areas, they additionally used a mortar - a dugout log made from a birch or aspen trunk and a wooden pestle with iron padding at the end.
In Russian folk tales, Baba Yaga flies “in a mortar, drives with a pestle, and sweeps the road ahead with a broom.” In a northern Russian fairy tale, a man falls to the ground and turns to stone when struck by Baba Yaga's pestle. In some places, children were frightened by the Iron Woman, telling them that she would grab children who “walk alone through the fields and vegetable gardens, throw them into her iron mortar, crush them and eat them”14.
In Russian folk riddles, the mortar and pestle also have an erotic connotation:
Malanya is fat, Sukhoi Matvey has become attached to her - he won’t let go15.
The mortar is mentioned even more often in Russian folk proverbs and sayings: “You can’t pound it even in a mortar” (stubborn), “Force him to pound it, so he will break the bottom of the mortar” (fool), “The mortar does not eat oatmeal, but feeds the world,” “He’s a fool, he can’t talk in a mortar”, “The witch sat him in a mortar”, etc.

12 Afanasyev A. N. Poetic views... T. 2. M., 1995.- P. 22.
13 Toren M.D. Russian folk medicine and psychotherapy. St. Petersburg, 1996.- P. 402.
14 Slavic mythology. encyclopedic Dictionary. M., EllisLuck. 1995.- pp. 306-307.
15 Russian erotic folklore. M. Ladomir. 1995.- pp. 414-415.

Lesson topic: Mortar and pestle.

Lesson objectives:

Reveal the meaning of the word “stupa”, study the use of this object in everyday life;

Develop logical thinking, attention, consolidate knowledge about Kazakh national dishes;

Cultivate interest in the subject.

Lesson type: explanation of new material

Methods, techniques: visual, search, reproductive, gaming

Equipment: presentation for the lesson, projector

Interdisciplinary communication: Russian language, literature

During the classes

1. Organizing time

Psychological attitude

1. Updating knowledge

A) The name of the first woman in the world to master an aircraft. (If students do not guess, a second riddle is given)

B) A hut was lost in a dense forest.

A difficult old woman lives in a hut -

He takes a broom and sits in the mortar,

And then it flies over the forest like a bird!

(Baba Yaga)

What was the name of the aircraft?

What is a stupa?

1. Work on the topic

1) Teacher's word

The word "stupa" has several meanings.

What do we call such words? (multi-valued)

Where can we find out about them? (in the explanatory dictionary)

Remember the rules for using dictionaries and find the meaning of the word “stupa”

• Stupa - (in Sanskrit - crown, heap of stones, earthen hill) - in India, Nepal, Central Asia, a cult Buddhist symbolic and memorial monolithic structure of a hemispherical shape; adobe, often lined with stone or stone. Early stupas are repositories of relics of Buddha and Buddhist saints, later ones were erected in honor of events associated with Buddhism. The stupa was installed on a round or square platform, under open air. A classic example of an Indian stupa is the oldest surviving one - the stupa in Sanchi (3rd-2nd centuries BC), the shape of which symbolizes the sacred Mount Meru.
• Stupa - Heb. honey. Stupa, a well-known household utensil for making cereals from unrefined grains of wheat, barley, millet, and buckwheat.
• Pound water in a mortar (in a figurative meaning: engage in empty talk, useless business; colloquial form).
• Baba Yaga's flying machine in fairy tales
• A clumsy person, usually a woman, is called a stupa.

What kind of stupa do you think we will talk about today in class?

The stupa has long been no longer in use (an outdated word). But under this name and with this principle of operation, there are mortars in which something is crushed or ground at home, in a pharmacy. Also with a pestle. The mortar in which millet was pounded (and millet was obtained from millet, and porridge was cooked from millet) was a stump of thick wood, in which a conical container was hollowed out, the depth of an arm almost to the shoulder. The height of the stupa reached 80 cm, depth - 50 cm, diameter - 40 cm. The wooden pestle was made up to 100 cm in length with a diameter of about 7 cm. Handles (more precisely, handrails) were cut out from the outside in the lower part, which made the stupa look like a rocket stage.

There were stupas in every peasant house. They were used as needed, preparing cereals for one or two weeks.

The mortar did not require preparation for work, because after each use, they placed it upside down, and no debris or dust got in there. Pestle - carefully in the corner. According to legend, you cannot leave the pestle in the mortar: the devils will grind it - perhaps some kind of disease - and then scatter it among the people.

You had to be very careful when you started pounding: be patient and let the pestle down for quite some time easily, just carefully, as if you were actually pounding water. Only water will produce water, and, for example, millet will produce millet. When the millet or buckwheat has shed its clothes a little, you can strike more boldly with the pestle. But still make sure that there is something left to cook the porridge from. There was no point in trying: you could have crushed the semolina into flour.

There are many beliefs associated with the stupa. So, for example, they put the patient’s clothes under the mortar and said something like this: let the patient (name) go, otherwise I will kill you (disease) under the mortar. In case of fire, it was necessary to place the stupa upside down, and it became a person’s intercessor.

The stupa was interestingly used in wedding ceremonies. For example, in order for the family to have both sons and daughters in the future, the bride had to sit alternately on the mortar and pestle.

The stupa was also used as a vessel for making potions and medicines.

2) Working with the textbook (page 24)

What new did you learn in the lesson? What concepts did you become familiar with? What did they repeat?

1. D/Z prepare necessary materials for making a stupa. (See page 24)

Go to the pestle!

Thousands of years ago, an amazing and strange mistake occurred in the common Slavic language...!

It is a historical fact that one of the first tools of labor were the MORTUA and PESTLE. It is still known that the mortar stands motionless, and the pestle falls from above, turning the grains into powder. But the names of these two subjects according to the education system ancient language must be different.

Using the typing method, we will determine the meaning of the word PEST. What does the PE diphthong mean in other words? Let's name things from ancient life: Diaper, Shroud, Captivity, where E is lost, Loop, PE-nyok - PE-NOKO - an obstacle for the legs (b replaced O, b - E), PENA, PENKA, FEATHER - covering a bird, PE- juice, where PE - veil, juice - ooze, OVEN - fire enclosure, CAVE - shelter ... In words in which voicing occurred and the phoneme L turned into P: bank - PE-LEKO - obstacle or fence of the river, birch bark - PE-LESTO - forest shroud, protection, henbane - Shroud - covering the mind, thorn - Shroud, den - PELE-LOKO - shelter of the beast...

As you can see, all words with the PE diphthong mean fencing, protection, obstacle, surrounding, covering. By logic and in the word PEST - PEST - PESTO should mean the same meaning. PE – fence, STO – standing. A fence to prevent the grain from scattering and falling apart.

Now consider the word STUPA, where ST is standing, U is narrowing, PA is falling. Similar to the word ARROW, where ST is standing, LE is flying.

The pestle first freezes, then falls to one “narrow” point. There is an analogue to this concept - the word STEP. The foot performs the same function, but first the heel falls to the ground. The word STOP already has STO, where the word means a larger area than a person’s heel. "GO!" and the word STUPOR are also adjacent to the concept STUP. And the word KNOCK is also adjacent to this “point” sound.

All this confirms that the PESTLE performs the function of a STOUP and vice versa!

The confusion may have occurred in the prehistoric common Slavic language. To this day it is contained in all Slavic languages. But in the vocabulary of the Lithuanian and Latvian languages, PEST is standing, and STUPA is falling. Two primitive words speak volumes: about the commonality and disunity of the Slavic and Baltic language paths. Also facts of history. In the Lithuanian language there are many coincidences of prehistoric morphemes with Slavic ones, but this is a topic for another study.

However, intimate Russian vocabulary, which, naturally, carries more ancient roots than the names of kitchen utensils, also retains the word “pesta” in the “Lithuanian” meaning. As we know from the school botany course, the pistil in plants is also the “female” reproductive organ.

For what reason the names of Slavic objects changed, we won’t guess.

This example suggests that the names were not immediately fixed in the word. The famous linguist and philosopher W. Humboldt considered the WORD to be the basis of language. He argued that a concept cannot disengage from a word, just as a person cannot discard his physiognomy.

The phenomenon of STUPA and PESTLE refutes this statement: the concepts of mortar and pestle have exchanged their “faces”. They still live in this guise. This does not stop the Slavs from pounding with a pestle in a mortar for thousands of years. However, perhaps this is the exception that proves the rule.

Of course, speaking about the stupa, we cannot help but recall the mysterious line of A.S. Pushkin: “There the stupa with Baba Yaga is walking, wandering by itself.” There is no hint here that the stupa is a kind of “ vehicle”, to the fact that it is generally a container. Perhaps Pushkin was aware of the confusion in the names of objects and deliberately introduced this moving image: stupa - steps. It is the stupa here - main character, and Baba Yaga is only next to her. Isn’t this the “Pushkin’s” stupa – the same bone leg with which this powerful grandmother is associated?

However talented artist Ivan Bilibin, the first to illustrate Pushkin’s fairy tale “Ruslan and Lyudmila” in 1908, set a figurative motif: Baba Yaga flying in a mortar. And from then on it was like this. Although the author's image is somewhat different.

Through the prism of this knowledge, the murder of a father by a son in The Brothers Karamazov is understood differently. Was it by chance that the weapon of a crime motivated by jealousy was not a knife, not an ax, but a pestle? Feminine and masculine are mixed here. There is nothing accidental in Dostoevsky.

Read more about the true etymological theory of the Russian language on the website: http://lingvisty.jimdo.com/

Bibliography:

L.P. Pisanov, V.L. Pisanov The secret code of Russian speech. Volume 1. Genetics of the word Second edition: revised and expanded. Chelyabinsk, Private Production Association "Book", 2011

L.P. Pisanov, V.L. Pisanov The secret code of Russian speech. Volume 2. Etymological Dictionary. Anti-Fasmer. Chelyabinsk, Private Production Association "Book", 2009

A folk tale today is not only a window into a magical world, but also a guide to the realities of peasant life in past centuries. Many fairy tale words must be explained to children and explained what is behind them. A fairy-tale dictionary will help teachers and teachers of folk culture with this.

For those who read with children folk tales

Explaining the word "stupa"

“Baba Yaga gallops through the forest in a mortar, drives with a pestle, covers her tracks with a broom...”

What is a stupa? The sound is reminiscent of the word “step” - which is what Baba Yaga did: she rode around the forest in a mortar. In fact, the stupa is not intended for this.
A mortar is a special device in which something is pounded or ground. This is a homemade hand mill. It resembles a bucket, only without a handle. The stupa was usually made from stone or wood - the middle was hollowed out. Grains are poured inside and crushed with a special stick with a knob. This stick was called a pestle. To manually grind grain into flour, a lot of force had to be applied. The only thing missing was for the stupa to swing while working! So they made her very heavy. It was difficult to even move the mortar. And Baba Yaga could climb into such a mortar and make it gallop through the forest. Isn't this proof of her magical power?

True, in the old days there were not only large stupas, but also small mortars. They were used when it was necessary to grind a small amount of grain into flour. Small mortars have even survived to this day. Until recently they could grind coffee beans.

Note. If you have the opportunity to show children a small mortar and how it works, do so.

Illustration by Ivan Bilibin for the fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful”

Questions and tasks for parent-child research on fairy tales

1. Take the fairytale test.

Fairy tale test Stupa is: 1) special shoes; 2) a device for grinding grain into flour; 3) a person’s confident gait. The following people moved with the help of a stupa: 1) Ivan Tsarevich; 2) Koschey the Immortal; 3) Vasilisa the Beautiful; The following must be included with the stupa: 4) lubricating fluid.

2. Solve the puzzle.

Fairytale rebus The answer to this puzzle is related to the stupa

3. Make a list of fairy tales that mention the words “mortar” and “pestle”.

4. Conduct an experiment: try grinding whole coffee beans or oats (wheat) by hand at home. What did you manage to adapt for this? How long did it take you to do this? How long will it take to grind a bag of grains? Is it hard work or easy?

Drawings by Vladimir Semerenko

Part I
To understand what kind of mortar we need on the farm, we first find out what its purpose is, what work it does in our premises. skillful hands? The answer to this question determines what kind of mortar we need.

The fact is that the task of turning something into dust involves two jobs - crushing and grinding. Which are fundamentally different in terms of the application of brute force. In the first case, the force is applied vertically - impact, in the second - horizontal - friction force.
The form of mortars is thus reduced mainly to two types. Which one exactly?
Grinding any products is more convenient and easier to do in a circular motion, so the optimal mortar intended for grinding should have a flat (grinding stone) or hemispherical (mortar) inner surface and a cylindrical or close to hemisphere grinding surface of the massive pestle.
Narrow and tall glass-shaped mortars, as opposed to low and wide ones, are designed to withstand impact loads, that is, grinding.

But this is not all the requirements for a mortar, because you can pound and grind substances, both dry and containing varying amounts of aggressive and not so aggressive liquids, obtaining either a powder or a paste. And this is where the difference in the mortar material comes from.
Obviously, the properties of the material must meet these tasks - not fall apart from impact, not deteriorate from moisture, not absorb anything unnecessary and not season the products processed in a mortar with its own dust. Hence the important properties of mortar materials with a plus sign:
- hardness, that is, the ability to withstand external pressure, abrasion resistance (abrasion resistance) is also associated with this.
- plasticity - the ability to deform without ruptures or destruction
- density, that is, the internal structure of the material, which is directly related to impact resistance
- chemical resistance
There are no pros without cons, which are a continuation of the advantages:
- softness
- fragility
- porosity, i.e. ability to absorb moisture, food colors and odors
- chemical activity, i.e. ability to interact with crushed products
It is from this stove that we will dance.

Part II


Let's start, so to speak, by seniority. Stone mortars were the first to appear in our everyday life. Pieces of rock - granite and basalt were lying here and there around the cave, you just had to choose the right ones. Only the flat stones did not yet know that they were future mortars, and the round stones did not yet know that they were the pestle. Like an apple, a rounded pestle rolled on a saucer, rubbing everything that came to hand - grains, seeds, roots, vegetables, nuts, fruits. Over time, the middle of the flat stones became slightly deeper and the edges rose, and the pestle turned into something like a rolling pin, or even bent into the shape of the letter “g”. Similar archaic mortars are still preserved, for example, in India (pata varvanta, sil bhatta), in Indonesia (cobek and ulek-ulek), in Mexico (metate and metlapil), for grinding vegetables and spices, grains, rice, corn, cocoa beans and preparing vegetable pastes such as guacamole, sambal or masala and curry pastes.
And although mortars over time acquired a more civilized appearance - and became such as molcajete and tejolote in Mexico or krok hin in Thailand, basalt and granite have retained their importance to this day. The hardness, density and abrasive resistance of these materials are the highest among natural stones. The disadvantages of basalt include poor polishability, so spices and pastes obtained in such mortars have a heterogeneous, rough structure.
But polished granite and mortars made from other natural stones, once called semi-precious: jasper and chalcedony - agate, onyx, carnelian, cope well with this. All these stones are perfectly polished, have excellent hardness and density, and as a result, it is quite easy to obtain fine powders of incense and spices and smooth pastes from them.
They also have one common drawback - all stone mortars run the risk of splitting when hit from the heart, so you can only grind them in them. The best properties Jade is one of the natural stones - its impact resistance is several times higher than that of some metals.
The undoubted advantage of all stone mortars is that they do not absorb water and do not react with the sour juice of fruits or with dyes.
With one sad exception - marble does not withstand the given conditions. Its hardness is much lower than other stones; it absorbs moisture quite well and reacts even with weak acids - citric and acetic. Do we need it? What to do if you already have a marble mortar? Don't throw it away. If you carefully grind only dry spices in it and prepare non-aggressive pastes, for example from baked garlic or onions oil based, it will serve no worse than others.

Part III

Another ancient natural material for mortars is wood. It is clear that in a forested country like ours, wooden mortars were widely used, but they were not ground, but pushed. Large wooden mortars are still used in Japan (usu and kine) to extract rice flour and starch from glutinous rice.
Even medium-hard wood species - oak, Canadian maple, not to mention the hardest ones - boxwood and dogwood - are suitable for mortar-glasses, in which it is convenient to pound. The fact is that the properties of wood are such that the impact strength of end cuts is tens of times higher than longitudinal ones. That is, on human language- if the mortar and pestle are turned or hollowed out like Pinocchio, in the longitudinal direction of the fibers of the log, the strength of the pestle and the bottom of the mortar will be higher than that of some metal ones. That is why we made oatmeal and all other oatmeal in narrow and tall oak mortars with a thick bottom. They also crushed poppy seeds into them and pressed flaxseed and hemp oil from the seeds.

One of the obvious advantages is that wood does not react with food acids and alkalis.
But on the downside: it perfectly absorbs odors and food colorings, and most importantly, moisture, which is why sooner or later even the hardest wooden mortar will crack.
The most popular mortars, solidly carved from hardwood, are intended rather for dry, semi-dry or oily products - herbs, seeds, nuts, etc., have sufficient hardness and strength and allow not only pounding, but also grinding. The oil film that forms on the wood over time will protect it from absorbing moisture and cracking. Cheap glued mortars are the least durable and more susceptible to moisture.
The ratio of the pros and cons of a wooden mortar, like no other material, depends on the nobility of the breed, and the best of them serve more as a gift option than are really necessary on the farm. That is, say, an ebony mortar decorated with intricate carvings, donated by a beloved mother-in-law, or an Indonesian version of a palm wood mortar brought as a gift by a colleague/boss is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent. Since olive mortars are often offered in a matching gift set with olive oil and olives, it makes sense that olive tapenade paste is best use for such a gift.

Part IV


But we cannot wait for favors from nature, and we came up with porcelain, which has no less hardness, strength, moisture and chemical resistance than natural stone. And a short time after the appearance of porcelain, pharmacists adopted it, and since then doctors and chemists have been using porcelain “sets”. Porcelain mortar and pestle (suribachi and surikogi) allow Japanese women, for example, to obtain the finest rice powder or homogeneous soy miso paste, grind sesame for goma-dzio or leaves and seeds of Japanese pepper for seasoning - kinome.
The main disadvantage of porcelain - fragility - can be overcome quite easily due to the thickness of the wall and careful handling of it. Porcelain is by no means intended for hammering nutmeg or even just black and allspice into such a contraption with all its might. This is, to put it mildly, inconvenient and impractical. And there is more suitable material for this.

Part V


Over time, humanity decided to improve and streamline nature again. Metals were a great gift for such experiments. With a fairly average surface hardness, inferior to stones, porcelain and even some types of wood, metal, due to its internal structure, has very high impact resistance, or is capable of increasing this very strength and hardness during processing. The surface of metal mortars is highly polished, which makes it possible to obtain very fine powders and crush, for example, nutmeg or dried ginger almost into dust.
Historically, the first in this competition was copper, and its derivatives - bronze (originally an alloy with tin) and brass (originally an alloy with zinc). Bronze and brass have very useful property– high resistance to abrasion. This property is very useful for manual coffee and spice grinders. By the way, coffee ground not even in an antique, but in just an old brass mill is somehow tastier than in a soulless modern coffee grinder. Bronze and brass grinder parts are also a good choice for modern artisanal pepper grinders.
But for the beaker mortars from which we choose the right one, abrasion resistance is not the main advantage.
Pure copper has high ductility, which means it easily changes shape upon impact, while bronze is the most fragile of copper alloys, so brass mortars, which have high impact resistance, are preferable. The highest chic will be silver-colored mortars made from the latest alloys - cupronickel (originally a copper-nickel alloy) and nickel silver (originally copper with nickel and zinc).
But here’s the problem - the surface of such mortars in the greenhouse conditions of the kitchen - high humidity, aggressive atmosphere and elevated temperature, as well as upon contact with acids, becomes covered with a greenish-brown coating - patina. What is good for artistic products and monuments is bad for you and me. The components of the plaque - malachite, verdigris and others - are complex and simple poisons. How to deal with this? It’s elementary, as they say, Watson – clean, clean and clean again. It is not for nothing that in all literary monuments of past centuries such attention was paid to cleaning metal (read copper) utensils. The internal surfaces in contact with food should shine like a polished copper basin.

Following the Bronze Age came the time of iron, cast iron and steel.
“Cast iron” as a material for mortars is inferior to brass and bronze, because although it is stubborn, it is fragile - if desired, a cast iron mortar can be easily split. In addition, cast iron, being porous, absorbs moisture and rusts, which is a big disadvantage. But pounding water in a mortar-glass is not very convenient, so this disadvantage is easily negated by using metal mortars and mills for their intended purpose - only for dry spices. And it can be easily eliminated with careful care - wipe with a dry cloth or paper or dry after use and store away from the stove.

Iron and steel, although stronger than cast iron, also rust quickly and well, unless this iron is meteorite. But this is already from the realm of fantasy. The reality is that technological progress, which cannot stand still, has not bypassed routine household work, and stainless steel has brought ancient mortars to the level of complex mechanical devices - electric mills and blenders.
Glass containers and steel parts that do not absorb foreign odors and moisture and are not susceptible to aggressive environments, and most importantly - modern power These kitchen monsters make grinding a process not even worth mentioning - the cooking time is reduced so much, and all the disadvantages of previous generations of mortars are eliminated. However, it subjectively seems to me that along with the shortcomings, the warmth and soul that fill the ancient mortars, no matter what they were made from, go away, because the slow process and consistent addition of components in the mortar allows the aromas and tastes to be properly released, and most importantly, mixed during the grinding process products used.

Literature and materials:
1. “Clay tablets or stone tablets. How to preserve your memory for centuries", Illustrated manual on cuneiform, Sumer publishing house, 5000 BC
2. “On the influence of wood density on Pinocchio’s mental abilities,” Magazine “Woodborer,” ed. L. Alice, 1827
3. “The Jade Rod or Memoirs of a Former Mandarin,” an unpublished manuscript from 1149 (presumably) found in a fishing village on the island. Taiwan.
4. “Gloss”, magazine of the Society of Meissen Porcelain Lovers, Germany, 1865.
5. " Stone Flower- ten steps to success." A guide for beginners, 1898, Mednogorsk printing house
6. “The use of Mr. Nobel’s new materials in stone-cutting art,” magazine
“Factory Bulletin”, 1905, Kolyvan