Arira: Arira (Gods Wall II-2, and I don't have IP so if I'm wrong I can't help it) has plaits, which are remarkably similar to those of the perhaps, bear connected, Iberian Dama of Elche which I saw in Carlo Ginzburg's "Ecstacies". A bust of Arira would almost definitely resemble the good lady. I'm convinced that her story explains the relationship of the Ariran hunters to Arakang.
In Kamchatka and Hokkaido the natives regarded the omnivorous bear as the Lord of the Forest and as a kind of big brother. Hunters captured bears, which were then reared in captivity by the women, before being sacraficed and eaten in a winter festival. Not only a valuable source of protein at the leanest time of the year, they also acted as divine messengers. Needless to say the women who nurtured the cub mourned violently, both from sincere emotion and in order to pacify its spirit.
Essentially her story would be the myth of this ritual, and as long as the merciless flamers of the Digest don't scare me off :-) I'll finish it and post it sometime soon.
A Second Age version of the story of Arira and Arakang shows her two bad sisters (the lascivious one and the ugly one, of course) going off with farmers and suffering miserably under the Carmanian yoke. Farmer stories either depict the kenestratae (hunters) as fickle magical people or cannibals and perverts.
I am certain that Arira played the virgins role in luring a mighty bear, like a unicorn, to the hunters and regretted this violently afterwards. Anadiki and Ariran girls are called bears, whereas Oria put bears inside men.
I don't argue the Orogeria connection, it's there in black green in Entek
after all, I just think there's more to it than that.
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Andrew
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #325
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