Strava

The strava was the feast that the Huns held over the tomb of Attila in 453, after the riders had sung his dirge round his body.^[1] Jordanes, following Priscus, writes that they celebrated “a strava, as they call it”, with great revelling. In turn they gave way to the extremes of feeling, funeral grief mixed with joy. Then they buried the body at night.^[1] The account of the death and funeral covers the whole rite.

The feast was a Hunnic custom.^[2] The word is another matter. Some scholars take it for the Slavic strava, food or funeral feast. It supposes that Priscus’s informant was a prisoner who spoke a Slavic language. They reject a Germanic derivation from a verb meaning “to strew”, since no Germanic language has such a word for a funeral meal.^[3] Others hold that strava is the one word of the Hun language to survive. In this view it cannot be classified, because it has been claimed as Germanic, Slavic and Turkic.^[4] The Hunnic language article sets it beside the few other words that are given as Hunnic.

The Göktürks had their own word for the rites owed to the dead, dochia. Menander heard it at the mourning for Istemi in 576.^[5]

References

^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 258, p. 124
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 278
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 276, 425–426
^ Thompson 1948, p. 151
^ Menander Protector

Sources

Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)
Menander Protector

Literature

Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)