Back Stiersprong Afrikaans ثور-القفز Arabic Таўракатапсія Byelorussian Таврокатапсия Bulgarian Taurocatàpsia Catalan Stiersprung German Ταυροκαθάψια Greek Taurocatapsia Spanish Saut au-dessus du taureau French Taurocatapsia Italian
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Bull-leaping (Ancient Greek: ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia[1]) is a term for various types of non-violent bull fighting. Some are based on an ancient ritual from the Minoan civilization involving an acrobat leaping over the back of a charging bull (or cow). As a sport it survives in modern France, usually with cows rather than bulls, as course landaise; in Spain, with bulls, as recortes and in Tamil Nadu, India with bulls as Jallikattu.
Ritual leaping over bulls is a motif in Middle Bronze Age figurative art, especially in Minoan art, and what are probably Minoan objects found in Mycenaean Greece, but it is also sometimes found in Hittite Anatolia, the Levant, Bactria and the Indus Valley.[2] It is often interpreted as a depiction of a rite performed in connection with bull worship.
- ^ The name of a ritual bull-fight held on occasion of a festival in Thessaly (scholion to Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.78), at Smyrna (CIG 3212) and at Sinope (CIG 4157).
- ^ One argument for the association of Minoan Crete with the Bronze Age culture of the Indus Valley by H. Mode (Indische Frühkulturen und ihre Beziehungen zum Westen, Basel, 1944); since the 1940s, further bull-leaping motives have been discovered in 2nd millennium BC contexts in Bactria and northern Anatolia.