God of Cattle, Wealth and the Underworld
Veles, also written Volos, presided over cattle, wealth, contracts and the world below. The chronicles call him the "cattle god" (skotii bog); since the Old East Slavic word for cattle also meant money and property, merchants counted among his worshippers. While Perun's idol stood on the prince's hill in Kyiv, later sources place an idol of Volos down by the trading quarter of Podil on the riverbank.
In the treaties of 907 and 971 between Rus and Byzantium, the pagan side swore by both Perun and Volos, warriors taking their oath on weapons and gold. The twelfth-century epic Tale of Igor's Campaign calls the legendary singer Boyan "grandson of Veles," which suggests he was also patron of poetry and prophecy.
The linguists Ivanov and Toporov, working from folklore, reconstructed a duel between the thunderer and a serpent, casting Veles as Perun's adversary: one wields lightning in the sky, the other coils as a great snake among the roots by the water, and their combat releases rain. The reconstruction has been influential, though no medieval text states it directly. After Christianization his herding functions passed to Saint Blaise (Vlasii), whose icon peasants hung in the cowshed and on whose February feast cattle were fed blessed bread.
