Veda Slovena is a forged collection of folk songs and legends of the Muslim Bulgarians; the subtitle of the book indicated that they were collected from the regions of Thrace

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

 and Macedonia

Macedonia (region)

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...

 (see image right). The first volume of which was printed in 1874 in Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

 and the second 1881 in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 under the authorship of Bosnian Serb Stefan Verković. The collection was assembled by Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n teacher Ivan Gologanov for 12 years and is famous for containing numerous elements of ancient Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....

 notwithstanding the conversions first to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 and then to Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

.

Veda Slovena has been alleged to have been partly or fully forged by Gologanov ever since its publication, dividing scholarly circles into two groups, the one considering the texts to be forged, the other defending their genuineness. Recently editions like "Bulgarian Encyclopaedia" consider Veda Slovena to be a mystification.

External links

• Full text of Veda Slovena (in dialectal Bulgarian and Cyrillic)
• The Veda Slovena mystery
• Lexical analysis of Veda Slovena