The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European Part 7 doc

Second Function (warfare). One cannot retrieve a single name of a Proto- Indo-European war god. A proposed lexical correspondence (that would yield a PIE *ma ¯ wort-) between the names of the Latin war god Ma ¯ rs and the Skt Maruta ´ s is doubtful; the latter are companions of the war god Indra. Rather we have, with the exception of Indo-Iranian, a series of diVerently named war gods: Skt Indra $ Skt (Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata) Arjuna $ Av Indara $ Lat Ma ¯ rs $ Lat (Livy) Tullus $ ON Tho ¯ rr $ Gaul Taranis $ OIr Ogma. The second function can also be viewed in terms of two aspectually contrast- ing warrior functions—: defensive (good) and oVensive (wild, destructive to the community itself)—and this opposition is seen to be played out among some of the pantheons. The more destructive manifestations are seen in the following correspondences: Skt (Vedic) Va ¯ yu (a storm god) $ Skt (Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata) Bhı ¯ ma $ Av Vayu. Thunder god (*perk w unos). The lexical set consists of ON Fjo˛rgyn, Lith Perku ¯ ´ nas, ORus Peru ´ nu 00 , and perhaps Skt Parja ´ nya. The underlying root is probably *per- ‘strike’ with diVerent extensions built in diVerent groups. The North-West European set is relatively coherent with associations with the thunder god (Fjo˛rgyn was the mother of the Norse thunder god Tho ¯ rr), hurling lightning, use of the club both in battle but also as a fertility symbol at weddings. The association of the North-Western deities with the Sanskrit deity is not so clear, although the latter is depicted as a rain god in the Vedas. Third Function. No lexical correspondence here but rather a series of gods who Wnd themselves third in canonical order of deities and who are associated with fertility. These may especially include the divine twins but also single deities such as Lat Quirinus or ON Freyr, Gaul Teutates and OIr Bres. Transfunctional goddess. There is no lexical evidence for such a deity but the diVerent Indo-European traditions are replete with examples of goddesses whose qualities either comprise or dispense the three functional categories. Such goddesses may be provided with a trifunctional epithet, e.g. the name of the Iranian goddess Ar@dvi Su¯ra Ana ¯ hita ¯ may be rendered ‘moist, strong, and pure’ just as Athena is showered with the epithets po ´ lias, nı ´ ke ¯ , and hugı ´ ea ‘protectress, victory, well-being’ and Juno is Seispes Ma ¯ ter Regı ¯ na ‘safe, mother, queen’, in all cases—although not necessarily in canonical order— words suggesting the three Dume ´ zilian functions. We have already seen how the three functions may also be split among three associated goddesses, e.g. the Greek judgement of Paris where Hera promises rulership, Athena military victory and Aphrodite oVers the love of the most beautiful woman, or the three semi-divine Machas of early Irish literature. Aryan god (*h 4 ero ´ s). A deity in charge of welfare is indicated by a number of lexical correspondences (Skt Aryaman,Avairyaman, Gaul Ariomanus, OIr Eremon, and non-cognate functional correspondences, e.g. Vidura in the 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 433 Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata. The Aryaman-type deity is associated with the building and maintenance of roads or pathways, with healing, especially involving a ritual where cattle urine or milk is poured in a furrow, and the institution of marriage. In this sense he is seen as a ‘helper’ to the First Function deity of the Mitra type. In addition to these there are a number of deities that have been proposed either on the basis of limited isoglosses (Greek-Sanskrit) or on questionable linguistic evidence. Pastoral god (*pe ´ h 2 uso ¯ n). Primarily a Greek (Pa ¯ ´ n)-Sanskrit (Pu ¯ s _ a ¯ ´ ) corres- pondence, possibly from *peh 2 - ‘protect, feed (cattle)’. Both deities are pas- toral gods and are closely associated with goats. In Greek mythology some of Pan’s original characteristics may also have been assimilated by his father Hermes. Medical god. Both the Indic god Rudra and Greek Apollo inXict disease from afar by their bows and are also known as healers; both are also associated speciWcally with rodents, Rudra’s animal being the ‘(rat) mole’ and Apollo was also known as Smintheus ‘rat god’. Decay goddess. This is based on an Indic-Latin isogloss where both tradi- tions indicate a goddess (Skt Nı ´ rr8ti-, Lat Lu¯a Mater) whose names derive from verbal roots ‘decay, rot’ and are associated with the decomposition of the human body. Wild god (*rudlos). The only certain deity by this name is the Skt Rudra ´ - although there is an ORus Ru ˘ glu ˘ (name of a deity) that might be cognate. Problematic is whether the name derives from *reud- ‘rend, tear apart’ as Lat rullus ‘rustic’ or from the root for ‘howl’. River goddess (*deh a nu-). This is largely a lexical correspondence, e.g. Skt Da ¯ nu, whose son holds back the heavenly waters, and Irish Danu, Wels Do ˆ n, both ancestor Wgures. The same root underlies the names of many of Eur- ope’s larger rivers, including the Danube, Don, Dnieper, and Dniester (the latter three as Iranian loans). Other than the deiWcation of the concept of ‘river’ in Indic tradition, there is really no evidence for a speciWc river goddess. Sea god (*trih a to ¯ n). Even more doubtful is the Celtic-Greek possible cor- respondence between OIr trı ¨ ath ‘sea’ and the Greek sea god Trı ¯ ´ to ¯ n, the son of Poseido ¯ n. The lexical correspondence is only just possible and with no evidence of a cognate sea god in Irish (there are other sea deities but these are not lexically cognate), there is really no certain evidence of a god of the sea. Smith god (*wl8ka ¯ nos/*wl8keh a nos). This is based on a linguistically doubtful comparison of the name of the Latin smith god Volca ¯ nus and the Ossetic smith god wærgon. The problem here lies in the etymology of the Latin name which 434 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY may be derived from Etruscan or an Aegean loanword. There are no mytho- logical elements, other than those generic to most smith gods, that might unite the Latin and Iranian deities. 25.3 Creation Although the various Indo-European groups exhibit diVerent creation myths, there appear to be elements of a Proto-Indo-European creation myth pre- served either explicitly or as much altered resonances in the traditions of the Celts, Germans, Slavs, Iranians, and Indo-Aryans. These traditions all indi- cate a proto-myth whereby the universe is created from a primeval giant— either a cow such as the Norse Ymir or a ‘man’ such as the Vedic Purus _ a— who is sacriWced and dismembered, the various parts of his anatomy serving to provide a diVerent element of nature. The usual associations are that his Xesh becomes the earth, his hair grass, his bone yields stone, his blood water, his eyes the sun, his mind the moon, his brain the clouds, his breath the wind, and his head becomes the heavens. This body not only Wlls out the material world but the dismemberment also provides the social tiers with the head associated with the First (ruling) Function, the arms being equivalent with the warrior function, and the lower torso, with its sexual organs, the fertility function. As to the identity of the sacriWcer we have hints in a related sacriWce that serves as the foundation myth for the Indo-Iranians, Germans, and Romans (with a possible resonance in Celtic). Here we Wnd two beings, twins, one known as ‘Man’ (with a lexical cognate between Germanic Mannus and Skt Manu) and his ‘Twin’ (Germanic Twisto, Skt Yama with a possible Latin cognate if Remus, the brother of Romulus, is derived from *Yemonos ‘twin’). In this myth ‘Man’, the ancestor of humankind, sacriWces his ‘Twin’. The two myths, creation and foundation of a people, Wnd a lexical overlap in the Norse myth where the giant Ymir is cognate with Skt Yama and also means ‘Twin’. The dismemberment of the primeval giant of the creation myth can be reversed to explain the origins of humans and we Wnd various traditions that derive the various aspects of the human anatomy from the results of the original dismemberment, e.g. grass becomes hair, wind becomes breath. The creation myth is then essentially a sacriWce that brought about the diVerent elements of the world. Conversely, as Bruce Lincoln has suggested, the act of sacriWce itself is a re-enactment of the original creation. There is evidence in various Indo-European traditions, e.g. Rome, India, that the parts 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 435 of the sacriWced animal were dispersed according to the prevailing social patterns and, therefore, we may view the act of sacriWce as an attempt to restore the balance of the world. This same notion may be carried also into the burial ritual of at least some of the Indo-European traditions where it was imagined that the deceased disintegrated back into its constituent parts, e.g. in the R8gveda, the eye of the deceased goes back to the sun, his breath to the wind. In a sense then, after the initial creation, life is essentially recycled. 25.4 War of the Foundation This myth is attested primarily on the basis of Germanic (Norse) and Roman sources but elements of it have also been claimed for Greek and Sanskrit. The myth depicts the forceful incorporation of Dume ´ zil’s Third (fertility) Func- tion into a social world run by the Wrst two functions. In Norse mythology, the myth is expressed as a war between the Æsir, the gods of the Wrst two functions, led by Oðinn and Tho ¯ rr, against the Vanir who were led by the fertility gods Freyr, his sister Freya, and Njo ¨ rðr. After a period of warfare the two sides conclude a pact of peace with the three fertility deities coming to live among the Æsir, thus providing representatives of all three functions within a single social group. The Roman parallel is found in the legend of Romulus who, Wnding Rome lacking in women (fecundity), wars with the Sabines. The Sabine women intercede and bring about peace between the two sides and, again, the incorporation of the Third Function into society. The Trojan War has also been interpreted in such light (the Greeks as the Wrst two functions and the Trojans with Helen as the third). In Indic mythology, the As ´ vins, representatives of the Third Function, Wnd their way into the world of the other gods blocked by Indra until he is tricked into letting them in, thus securing a three-function society. 25.5 Hero and Serpent One of the central myths of the Indo-Europeans involves the slaying of a serpent, often three-headed, by the archetypal hero, either deity or human. Calvert Watkins has argued that this deed has left some lexical evidence in the frozen expression *(h 1 e)g w he ´ nt h 1 o ´ g w him ‘he killed the serpent’, preserved as such in Indo-Iranian with lexical substitutions in Hittite, Greek, and Germanic. The association with three heads or some aspect of triplicity is indicated either by descriptions of the monster, e.g. the three-headed dog 436 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY Ke ´ rberos who guards the Greek Underworld, the name of the hero, e.g. the Skt Trita A ¯ ptya, or in some other aspect of triplicity, e.g. Horatio Cocles’ defeat of three opponents in early Roman history. Bruce Lincoln has sug- gested that the context of this slaying is during the W rst cattle-raid where a monster runs oV with the cattle of a hero whom he designates *Tritos ‘the third’ who then sets oV in pursuit, accompanied by *H a ne ¯ ´ r ‘Man’, kills the serpent, and recovers his cattle. Traces of this myth are seen in Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Greek, and Norse traditions. 25.6 Horse Sacrifice It is largely the residue of ritual rather than explicit myths that points to the existence of a speciWc association between the assumption of kingship and the ritual mating with and sacriWce of a horse. The Indic as ´ vamedha, an inaug- uration ceremony, and the Roman Equus October both involve the sacriWce of a horse either to a warrior deity or on behalf of the warrior class; the victim was a stallion that excelled on the right side of the chariot, and the victim was dismembered, diVerent parts of the anatomy going to either diVerent loca- tions or functionally diVerent deities. The medieval inauguration of an Irish king in County Donegal which involved the king-designate bathing in a cauldron with the dismembered pieces of a horse may also be a reXex. The underlying myth, particularly in Indic, suggests some form of mating between the king and the horse (mare), the latter of which behaves as a transfunctional goddess and passes to the king the gifts of the three functions that make up the totality of society. 25.7 King and Virgin A recurrent theme, though not without considerable modiWcations (if genet- ically inherited) or diVerences, is that of a virgin rescuing a king which is found in Indic, Roman, Scandinavian, and Celtic sources. The basic structure involves a king whose future (including his descendants) is endangered be- cause of his immediate male relatives (sons, uncle, etc.) but is allowed to prevail because of a virgin (often his daughter) who provides the oVspring necessary to the king’s survival. In the Indic tale, for example, King Yaya ¯ ti is rescued by four sons born to his daughter (who mated with three kings and a teacher); in Roman tradition King Numitor’s line is ensured by the birth of Romulus and Remus because his virgin daughter, Rhea Silvia, was made pregnant by Ma ¯ rs. 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 437 25.8 Fire in Water This mythic element is postulated on the basis of several disputed divine names and some general mythic elements found in several Indo-European traditions (Celtic, Italic, and Iranian). The lexical argument (Section 23.1) posits a PIE *neptonos or *h 2 epo ¯ m nepo ¯ ts ‘grandson/nephew of waters’ on the basis of Skt Apa ¯ ´ mNa ´ pa ¯ t,AvApa˛m Napa ¯ t, and much less securely OIr Nechtain and Lat Neptu ¯ nus. The myth itself depicts a divine being associated with Wre who inhabits water (in the Celtic myth there is a sacred well of Nechtain whose Wre burns out the eyes of those who approach it, in the Avesta the Wery power is the xvar@nah, the burning essence of kingship, which was placed in Lake Vourusaka) and who can only be approached by someone especially designated for the task. Although there is no corresponding mythic evidence from Ger- manic, the ON kenning sœvar niðr ‘son of the sea’, i.e. ‘Wre’, may provide some linguistic support for the equation. 25.9 Functional Patterns There are a number of patterns in Indo-European narratives that replicate the three functions. Among the more striking are the motifs known as the ‘the sins of the warrior’ and the ‘threefold death’. The Wrst motif deals with a represen- tative of the Second Function whose downfall involves sins against all three functions, e.g. the Germanic Starkaðr slays a king (violation of the First Function), Xees in battle as a coward (violating his Second Function as a warrior), and kills for money (a violation here taken to be against the third estate). Traces of this motif also occur in other Indo-European traditions, e.g. Greek where He ¯ rakle ¯ s manages three comparable sins or the Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata where S ´ is ´ upa ¯ la commits three similar sins. The ‘threefold death’ associates a particular type of death with a particular function or functional deity. For example, classical sources indicate that among the Gauls victims dedicated to the First Function Wgure (Esus) were hanged; the Second Function (Taranis) received victims who had been burnt; and victims dedicated to the Third Function (Teutates) were drowned. The motif is also found in Germanic where the First Function deity, Oðinn, is known as the ‘hanged god’ while victims to the fertility (Third Function) deity Nerthus were drowned. These patterns are replicated in the heroic literatures of the Celtic and Germanic peoples although the motif is believed to have been more widespread. Essentially, it establishes a pattern of death which is directly associated with the three functions where the First receives hanging, the Second 438 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY burning or bloodshed (by sword or other appropriately military weapon), and the Third Function victim is drowned. 25.10 Death and the Otherworld There is an abundance of evidence for various beliefs concerning death and the afterlife in the diVerent Indo-European traditions but ferreting out an original belief is diYcult. Many Indo-European traditions portray death as a journey and in the case of Celtic, Germanic, and Greek, and to a lesser extent Slavic and Indic, this may involve a journey across a river where the deceased is ferried by a *g ˆ erh a ont- ‘old man’. On this journey they may also encounter a dog who serves either as a guardian of the Otherworld or as a guide. Here we have some linguistic evidence in the cognate names of Greek Ke ´ rberos, the three-headed dog of Hades, and the Indic S ´ a ´ rvara, one of Yima’s dogs, both deriving from a PIE *k ˆ e ´ rberos ‘spotted’. Both Greek and Indic traditions also have a river ‘washing away’ either memories or sins while Germanic and Celtic traditions attest a belief of wisdom-imparting waters; Bruce Lincoln has suggested that these two may be joined together where the memories of the deceased are washed away into a river but others, lucky enough, may drink of such water and gain inspiration. The actual afterlife is attested in so many diVerent ways— as a pleasant meadow, a place of darkness, island, house, walled enclosure— that it is diYcult to ascribe any particular belief to Proto-Indo-European. The ruler of the dead, however, may well be the sacriWced twin of the creation myth as suggested by Indo-Iranian tradition and to a lesser degree by Germanic. 25.11 Final Battle Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Greek all reveal traces of an Indo-European eschatological myth, i.e. a myth that describes the end of the world in terms of a cataclysmic battle, e.g. the Battle of Kurukshetra from the Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata, the Second Battle of Mag Tured in Irish tradition, Ragnaro ¨ kin Norse tradition, the Battle of Lake Regillus in Roman history, Hesiod’s Tita- nomachy, and the Plain of Ervandavan in Armenian history. In all these traditions the end comes in the form of a major battle in which gods (Norse, Greek), demi-gods (Irish), or major heroes (Roman, Indo-Aryan, Armenian) are slain. The story begins when the major foe, usually depicted as coming from adiVerent (and inimical) paternal line, assumes the position of authority among the host of gods or heroes, e.g. Norse Loki, Roman Tarquin, Irish 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 439 Bres. In this position he exploits the labour of the protagonists until he is driven out and returns to his own people. A new leader then springs up among the protagonists (e.g. Irish Lug, Greek Zeus) often the *nepo ¯ t- ‘grandson’ or ‘nephew’ of the deposed leader. The two sides then prepare for a major war (in Germanic and Iranian myth there is also a great winter) and the two forces come together and annihilate each other in a cataclysmic battle. Since a new order is called into existence after the battle, the myth may not be eschato- logical in the strict sense but rather represent a mythic encounter that brought a past golden age to an end. 25.12 Current Trends Current trends in Indo-European comparative mythology are taking several directions. The evidence for trifunctional (or quadri-functional) patterns is con- tinually being augmented by further examples both from well-researched sources, e.g. Indic, Roman, Norse, and from other traditions such as Greek and Armenian that have seen far less attention. Moreover, an increasing number of scholars have been examining the narrative structure of the earliest literary traditions of the various Indo-European groups to reveal striking parallels between diVerent traditions. For example, N. B. Allen has shown how much of the career of the Greek Odysseus is paralleled by distinct incidents in the lives of Arjuna in the Maha ¯ bha ¯ rata, the Buddha in the earliest Buddhist texts, and Cu ´ Chulainn in early Irish heroic literature. Other scholars such as Claude Sterckx, Stepan Ahyan, and Armen Petrosyan have uncovered detailed corres- pondences inother early Indo-Europeantraditions. According toAllen, the close coincidences go beyond both the type of random generic parallels that one might expect between diVerent literary traditions and beyond what we might ascribe to some formofdistant diVusion. Heargues that suchcomparisonsprovides us with at least some of the detritus of the Proto-Indo-European narrative tradition. Further Reading The best general treatise is Puhvel (1987a); for the core of Dume ´ zil see Dume ´ zil (1968– 73) and Littleton (1973); cases for a ‘Fourth Function’ can be found in Allen (1987), Lyle (1990); the mythic structure of IE medicine is to be found in Benveniste (1945); the ‘‘three sins of the warrior’’ are the subject of Dume ´ zil (1970); representative new approaches within the Dume ´ zilian tradition that seek new patterns of underlying Indo-European narratives include Ahyan (1998), Allen (2000a, 2000b, 2002), Miller 440 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY (2000), Petrosyan (2002), Sterckx (1994); a diVerent approach to IE mythology can be found in Haudry (1987). The topics of creation, sacriWce, death, and the Otherworld can be found in the various works of Lincoln (1980, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1995); various deities are discussed in Dexter (1996), Nagy (1974a), Watkins (1995); the divine twins are treated in Ward (1968), Lehmann (1988), Grottanelli (1986), Dubuisson (1992), and York (1995); the subject of sacred vocabulary is handled in York (1993); summaries of the eschatological model are found in O’Brien (1976) and more recently Bray (2000); death beliefs are in Puhvel (1969), Hansen (1980), and Lincoln (1980), while burial is discussed by Jones-Bley (1997). 25. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 441 [...]... among the earliest ‘splits’ For this reason, homeland solutions are devised to accommodate these intrafamily relationships, generally by having the homeland not too distant from the historical seats of the Anatolian languages Following this line of reasoning, the Proto-Indo-European homeland is placed in Anatolia, requiring all the other Indo-European languages to separate oV from Anatolia (either to the. .. with the consensus that Anatolian was a superstrate on local non-Indo-European language families To avoid this issue, either the Proto-Indo-Europeans must be moved to the far west of Anatolia during the Neolithic or the non-Indo-European Hatti must be introduced later to the story, not as the indigenous population but themselves as intrusive As both theories explain the Asian Indo-Europeans in the same... Essentially there are two vectors: human beings and their social institutions The most obvious vector is the human vector, i.e the migration of a population speaking a particular language who carry it beyond its former territory For much of the history of the Indo-European homeland problem, human vectors have been the most popular In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one often read of a Proto-Indo-European. .. much further ado, to be the homeland of their ancestors, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as well In actuality the Airyana vaeja would have been the homeland of (a major branch of) the Iranians alone 26.2.5 Conservation Principle One of the recurrent arguments employed to determine the Indo-European homeland on the basis of purely linguistic evidence is the assumption that the homeland is most likely in the area... expansion, this model now seems to admit of later (Late Neolithic, Bronze, or Iron Age) movements into Mediterranean, Atlantic, and northern Europe For the steppelands, it envisages the spread of an agricultural economy from the Balkans to the steppes where it was then carried, in the Bronze Age, beyond the Urals and then south into the territories 26 ORIGINS: THE NEVER-ENDING STORY 461 ... the same manner, there is no dispute there although it does militate against one of the most attractive aspects of the ‘‘wave of advance’’ The archaeological evidence for an expansion from the steppelands across historical Iran and India varies from the extremely meagre to total absence: both the Anatolian and the Kurgan theory Wnd it extraordinarily diYcult to explain the expansion of the IndoEuropean... either of their diYculties in explaining the Tocharians), i.e the expansion of mobile pastoralists eastwards and then southwards into Iran and India Moreover, there is recognition by supporters of the Neolithic theory that the ‘wave of advance’ did not reach the peripheries of Europe (central and western Mediterranean, Atlantic and northern Europe) but that these regions adopted agriculture from their... Indo-European languages The later vocabulary of Proto-IndoEuropean hinges on such items as wheeled vehicles, the plough, wool, which are attested in Proto-Indo-European, including Anatolian It is unlikely then that words for these items entered the Proto-Indo-European lexicon prior to about 4000 bc This is not necessarily a date for the expansion of IndoEuropean since the area of Proto-Indo-European speech... (either to the east or to the west), or the homeland is placed somewhere not too distant from Anatolia, e.g the steppelands, so that the future Anatolians might be accounted for by the initial Indo-European expansions The problems involved with this method are several First, there are competing family trees to explain the IndoEuropean languages and the diVerences will govern the nature of the geographical... should avoid a false dichotomy between the population and social vector as if the spread of the Indo-European languages was due purely to one or the other means It may well have Xuctuated from one instance to the next and it is easy to see how populations who have experienced language shift might be the next population to migrate and carry it into a new territory A number of the cultures most closely . reasoning, the Proto-Indo-European homeland is placed in Anatolia, requiring all the other Indo-European languages to separate oV from Anatolia (either to the east or to the west), or the homeland. deceased disintegrated back into its constituent parts, e.g. in the R8gveda, the eye of the deceased goes back to the sun, his breath to the wind. In a sense then, after the initial creation, life. such scholars that the homeland of the ‘Aryans’ could be assumed, without much further ado, to be the homeland of their ancestors, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as well. In actuality the Airyana vaeja