Pure — a honey brew of the Erzya, Merya, and other indigenous peoples of the Volga Region. Classic pure is brewed in autumn and left to mature in barrels.

Nature of the Phenomenon

Farming, hunting, and fishing, the inhabitants of the Volga Region drank wholesome, low-alcohol fermented beverages of their own invention.

These beverages were: rye beer, until recently known as peasant beer; buza (or buzha) — a bragа (strong beer) made from rye malt; and the most festive, most luxurious drink of all, "pure" — honey brag, mead.

"Pure" was produced in the area bordering a great road, where the vast forests surrounding it were home to many bees, which gathered abundant honey from willow trees, raspberries, buckthorn, and rosebay willowherb on forest burn sites, as well as from clover and the mixed grasses of the meadows. The district along this ancient road remains favorable for beekeeping to this day. It is here, along this old route, that the place names Purekh and Pureshka are found. It is no coincidence that the volost situated in this district was called Purетskaya.

In those distant times, the winter cold and blizzards, the long roads and hard labor made the consumption of "pure" a necessity — and furthermore, the drink was considered both beneficial and medicinal. The observations of ordinary Russian folk hold that the honey drink "pure" purifies the blood, strengthens the stomach, and improves the body's composition and metabolism.

A small carved or painted wooden cup — a charochka of "pure" — was passed around among those seated at the table, so that none would drink too much and none would be left out. The charochka came down to us from the Meryans, and the word is made up of two Meryan words: "chary," meaning wheel, and "a(sh)ska" — walker, step along. Chara(sh)ska means "go in a wheel," in the sense of go around, step around.

Pure among the Erzya and Moksha

Among the Erzya and Moksha, pure is the most ancient of fermented drinks and an obligatory part of the sacrificial meal at molyan ceremonies. It was prepared from honey; the name is shared by both languages.[1]

The composition is described differently across sources, and the discrepancy is an old one. Among the Nizhny Novgorod Mordva of the 1860s, according to the notes of Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky, pure was "Mordva honey without hops, or beer diluted with honey that was left to ferment" — that is, set aside to finish fermenting; hops were deliberately omitted because hops were considered a shoot from a branch brought by Shaitan, and the goddess Ange-Patyay did not accept them. Academic works of the 20th and 21st centuries describe pure as a brew of honey, hops, and barley, or of honey with a barley starter.[2][1][3]

The strength of the drink was best described by Melnikov himself: it is pleasant to the taste, the head stays clear, but the legs seem to give way — while the Mordva and the Chuvash themselves drink their pure by the ladleful and only grow merry.[2]

Pure must be distinguished from poza (boza among the Moksha) — a grain or beet brew containing not a drop of honey. It was made with rye malt, later with red and sugar beet, and divided into black, rauzhо poza, and white, aksha poza; it was brewed in a linden-wood vat called a poza par with a wooden plug set twenty centimetres from the bottom. Beer was made in much the same way as the brew, using barley or rye malt flour, and among non-alcoholic drinks they had kvass-kuvas, birch sap kelu ved, maple sap ushtor ved, and brine salved.[1][3]

Mordva honey without hops, or beer diluted with honey that was left to ferment.

— Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky, "Sketches of the Mordva," 1867[2]

Who brewed it and how it was served

At molyany (communal prayer gatherings), pure was not brewed by housewives but by specially elected brewers called purendyaity — the word itself means "brewer," from "pure." They went from house to house collecting bread for the beer and honey for the sytu, received the sacred vats called parki from the senior officiant, the pravt, and during the prayer service distributed the drink to the worshippers.[2]

The procedure was strict. Under the sacred tree, two or three barrels of first-wort pure were set out. On one side of the raised area stood a five-bucket "sovereign's barrel," on the other a "communal" one, and sometimes a third, brought on behalf of the authorities. The vozatya received the sacred ladle from the pravt, scooped up the pure, and poured it into the fire; the ladles were then passed to the men, who approached the barrels in turn. Forty, fifty, or even a hundred sacred ladles were given out; the remainder was poured into vats and burak containers and carried to people's homes.[2]

One of the purendyaity, taking a mouthful of pure, sprayed it over the crowd in three directions — for the harvest. The same gesture was repeated at home: a vat of pure was placed on the floor beside the table, and a midwife sprayed the drink over the women and children. Christmas pure among the Nizhny Novgorod Mordva was brewed by young women, who allowed neither old women nor men anywhere near the work.[2]

Each vessel had its own purpose: hollowed ladles called kechet and kar'khkyat, small barrels botskyan, vats par, and a honey vessel, med parka, holding up to ten kilograms, fitted with a wooden lid. Apple-wood ladles were kept exclusively for ritual use.[1]

Pure and bees

Pure grew directly out of beekeeping. Honey beer was brewed at the apiary itself — for prayers in honor of Nishke Paz and Neshke Pire Ava, the guardian of the beehive; pure was poured on the threshold of the keeper's hut as an offering to the gods, a large wooden ladle passed among all present, and cups of the drink were set before the hives. Today this prayer ceremony is held on Ilyin Day.[4][5]

According to a belief recorded among the Nizhny Novgorod Mordva, sacrificial pure could only be brewed from the honey of bees, and votive candles — shtatoly — could only be cast from their wax: the bee was considered a creation of that same goddess.[2]

This was grounded in livelihood. In Mordva villages of Lukoyanovskiy, Sergachsky, Ardatovsky, and Nizhny Novgorod districts, beekeeping was one of the principal occupations: in the Sergachsky village of Kakino, twenty-seven apiaries were counted, and individual households kept anywhere from ten to seven hundred hives. By the end of the nineteenth century the forests had been cleared, and the trade died out.[6]

Purekh: a dispute over the name

Honey brew gave its name to an entire cluster of Nizhny Novgorod place names — or so the local historical tradition holds, and it is from that tradition that the sketch above is drawn. In it, "purekh" and "purezhka" are interpreted as meaning "mead-like, brew-like," while streams bearing such names flow through boggy terrain and carry brownish water resembling the color of pure; the Puretskaya volost is likewise derived from this root.[7]

Toponymists explain Purekh differently. Nikolay Morokhin connects the name to the Mordva prince Puresh, who lived in these lands in the thirteenth century — the very one who, unlike Purgaz, swore allegiance to the Russian grand prince. Nizhny Novgorod local historian Aleksandr Gatsiskiy, writing in the late nineteenth century, traced the name to a Merya word meaning "small stream" and pointed to the Kolesyonka River between Purekh and Maly Chukhov; in this version the river name came first, giving rise to the Pureshskaya — also known as Puretskaya — volost, and from the volost the village took its name. A third interpretation also exists, deriving it from the root "pur," meaning "top" or "upper."[8][7]

The "from Pozharsky" theory does not hold up chronologically: the village was granted to Prince Dmitry Pozharsky in the 1610s, meaning the name already existed by that date.[8]

Pure today

The drink did not disappear from everyday life along with the molyan. At beekeeping prayer gatherings, pure is still called the chief beverage, and in the Pikshen museum of Mordva culture and daily life — a branch of the Bolsheboldinsky museum complex — a special barrel for brewing pure stands among the household implements, alongside clay pots, milk jugs, and wooden tubs.[5][9]

See also

Sources

  1. niign.ru — Peoples of Mordovia: A Historical and Ethnographic Study. Edited by V. A. Yurchenkov and L. I. Nikonova. Saransk: Research Institute of the Humanities, 2012. Food and Household Utensils, pp. 218–227 (archive)
  2. opentextnn.ru — "Open Text": P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. Essays on the Mordva (Russkiy Vestnik, 1867): sacred groves, velen-molyan, the goddess Ange-Patyay
  3. cyberleninka.ru — Asanova I. P. Ritual and Ceremonial Food of the Mordva (an Ethnolinguistic Analysis). Bulletin of Chuvash University, 2007 (archive)
  4. zubova-poliana.narod.ru — Traditional Beekeeping Rites of the Mordva (based on materials by G. A. Kornishina) (archive)
  5. narod.samddn.ru — House of Friendship of the Peoples of Samara Region: the Mordva, traditions and customs
  6. cyberleninka.ru — Vlasova N. A., Koshina O. V. Economic Activities of the Mordva Based on Materials from the Nizhny Novgorod Guberniya and Diocesan Gazettes. Economic History, 2025, vol. 21, no. 4
  7. web.archive.org — Purekh Local History Museum of the Otechestvo Foundation named after D. M. Pozharsky: S. Kryakushin. On the Origin of Geographical Names. The Village of Purekh (web archive snapshot) (archive)
  8. bibl.nngasu.ru — Podzhidayeva I. E., Prokofyeva S. V. Purekh. Moskovskiy Zhurnal, 2011, no. 8 (248) (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Kultura.RF: Museum of Mordovian Culture and Daily Life, the village of Pikshen (web archive snapshot) (archive)