General characteristics of
Indo-european religion
Jean Haudry
A) Indo-european religion is polytheistic,
consisting of a multiplicity of rites proper to various social groups and localities, and pagan,
i.e. peasant, reflecting the diversity of the people and not the unity of a state cult,
nor of an established church.
B) Being pluralistic and diversified, this religion is naturally tolerant;
far from indulging in proselitism, each group jealously guards its own gods, rites and
formulae. In this sense it may be called esoteric and initiatory. It
possesses myths and symbols, but is devoid of dogma.
C) It is a religion of works and not of faith, lived out rather
than thought about. The performance of the traditional rites and of one¹s state are
essential to it.
D) Being a political religion by reason of its framework
(that of the various ethnic units) and in view of the greater part of its pantheon, as we
shall see, a religion of leaders and not of priests, it is without fanaticism. The
poet may be an inspired being seized from time to time by the divine frenzy, but the
celebrant is a grave and worthy magistrate. ³Superstition² and foreign (or archaic)
ecstatic cults are viewed with disapproval, and sorcery is repressed with severity.
However the private practice of magic is widely attested, viz. The Old Indian Atharaveda,
the Hittite rituals, many examples in the classical world, among the Celts and Germans.
E) Character and appellations of the Indo-European gods
The gods are thought of as personal beings. Their
nature cannot be described with greater precision, but it is more or less close to human
nature according to the people and the period concerned. In this context their
appellations, four types of which occur, are interesting:
a) common nouns denoting phenomena (fire, dawn), celestial
bodies (sun, moon) or abstract concepts (contract, oath);
b) derived or compound common nouns with possessive value
denoting the ³master² of the corresponding phenomenon, being or social fact (Lat. Silva-nus
³forest-master², Ved. Brhaspàti- ³master of the brh-³ i.e.
³power-master²);
c) personal nouns, non-motivated (Ved. Indra-) or
motivated, for the most part agent-nouns (Av. Vrthra-ghna- ³he who breaks down
resistance²);
d) syntagmata expressing a kindred relationship (³daughter
of the Sun²).
Groups (b), (c) and (d) apply explicitly and
group (a) implicitly to personal beings: although their original nature is not lost
sight of, and poets constantly play on the ambivalence, Mitra/Contract and Agni/Fire
are just as personal as Indra in the Veda. We are not, then, dealing with a lack of
precision or a nature (³force²) intermediate between the thing or action and the god *dyew-
³day-sky² has the title *pHter- ³father² tacked on to it from the very
beginning. Very few names have been reconstructed in Indo-European; all of them denote
former gods of the universe.
F) The two poles of sacrality
Benveniste (1969 II: 179 ff.) has clarified the dual
nature of the Indo-Europeans¹ idea of sacrality as evidenced by their vocabulary: that
which is ³charged with divine power² is ³positively sacred² (Av. spenta-,
Germanic *hailaz, Lat. Sanctus, Gr. Hieròs); tht which ³contact is
forbidden for man² (Av. yaozdata-, Germanic *wihaz, Lat. Sacer, Gr. Hàgios)
is ³negatively sacred². A corresponding duality is found in the terms for religious
observance, expressed on the one hand by verbs denoting either ³to cause to grow, to
strengthen² or one of the sacrifical operations, and on the other by those denoting
religious attitude: the fear of offending a god, even involuntarly, but at the same time
confidence in and even familiarity with the gods, especially in the case of some of them.
In Vedic India the bonds of Varuna/Oath are held in awe, but Indra is treated as a
³comrade² (yùj-). Indo-European religion contains strict prohibitions, but is a
religion of freemen (Neckel 1920: 134; Höfler 1971: 371 ff.)
The gods of the universe
Sky, earth, important heavenly bodies and atmospheric phenomena have become
divine, but the constant tendency is to link nature with politics by means of cosmic
symbolism.
1. The heavens and the earth
A) The Indo-European gods are called *deywòs ³those of the day-sky² (Haudry 1987 b: 28 f.), a term whose origins go back to a period in which the Day-sky, *dyéw-pHtér-, was the first among the gods. Hittite Sius ³Sun god² is his most archaic reflex, which retains his temporal character, the limitation of the day. He lost this primacy in those cases where he remained the sky (so the Vedic Dyaùh), whereas his name passed to the sovereign god in the case of the Greeks (Zeùs) and the Romans (Jupiter). To the *deywos of day who inhabit the heavens are opposed the demons whose habitat is the Night-sky or Hell. This theology, initially linked with the revolving-sky-cosmology, is perpetrated in the various dualism which place gods and demons in opposition to one another, such as the Mazdaism of the Iranians. The earth-mother is, in the last state of this theology, the consort of the ³sky², but in more ancient times she was the consort of a black Night-sky who was succeeded by the white Day-sky after the brief reign of a red Dawn- or Dusk-sky.
B) The Veda and Baltic folklore preserve traces of a demoniac Dawn from whose clutches the sun had to be snatched. But in a more recent state of the myth, Dawn, ³daughter of the Day-sky² (Schmitt 1967: § 333 ff.) is on the latter¹s side in his daily combat with darkness. As Dumézil has shown (1974: 66 f.), this is the meaning of the curious Roman ritual of the Mater Matuta, in which matrons pamper their nephews and drive out a servant-girl, in the image of the good Dawn who guides the first steps of her sister Night¹s son, the sun, after driving out demonic Darkness. We shall see below that it is here a question not of daily but of annual Dawn. Daily Dawn is at the base of only a part of the mythology surrounding the various Dawn-goddesses, especially those who bear another name, such as the Greek Aphrodite and her corresponding heroin Helen. Many goddesses and heroins of the insular Celts, bound to the fairy Other World, such as Etain, Fand, Brigit, Boand, Mòrrigan, are to be interpreted as reflexes of Indo-European Dawn. We retain the Irish tale of the birth of the Sun (Angus Mac Oc), conceived by Diurnal Sky (Dagda) and Dawn (Eithne or Boand) without the knowing of Elcmar (Ogme), who in the story plays the part of the Indo-European Nocturnal Sky (Jouet 1993).
C) The Divine Twins ³Sons of the Day-Sky² (O.Ind. divò nàpata, attribute of the Asvin, the Greek diòskouroi; the Baltic Sons of *Deivas; O.Icel. dags synir ³Sons of Day² Sd 3) must be, on account of their designation, cosmic entities, like their sister Dawn (B). But their identification is debated: Twilight (Myriantheus 1896) or rather Morning and Evening Star (Mannhardt 1875). Their most important parts are the courting of rescue of Dawn or Sun¹s Daughter, whom they marry jointly, or whom they give away to Moon.
D) Two bodies of evidence in
aggreement with one another show that the Sun, together with the Day-sky,
was the great god of Indo-European religion in its oldest form. The traditional formulary
preserves no less than five expressions applied to him or to his attributes
(Schmitt 1967: § 314 ff.), and, alonside his ordinary name *sHuel-, a parallel
poetic form has been reconstructed from Sanscr. Ravi-: Armenian arew. Again,
the iconography of archaeological sites which can with certainty be attributed to
Indo-European peoples abounds with solar emblems. Worship of the sun lives on more in
popular worship and subsequently in folklore than in the ³political religion²
into which the sun, though in a modest role, was incorporated. He belongs to the third
function by reason of his beneficient character (this is the meaning of svastika-,
the Indian name for the solar emblem), and on the other hand as ³universal watchman²,
³eye², he becomes more or less the sovereign god¹s police chief.
E) The Moon (*meH1-n-s/ot (Beekees 1982)) is
both the unfaithful husband of the Sun goddess, whose punishment is the lunar cycle, and a
warrior-god who fights against the fiends of Night-sky.
2. The elements
A) Fire
As the terrestrial form of an element represented in the sky by the sun and in the
intervening space by lightning, fire is one of the most ancient of Indo-European gods. In
the historical period, it is found in its original unified form only in the Aryan world:
the Vedic Agni is at one and the same time the element of fire and a trifunctional
god, a priest-god above all, but also a warrior-god and a ³young² god, possessing and
bestowing vital force. These various finctions are elsewhere shared out among separates
³fire-gods² or ³fire-masters² whose names are not identical with that of the element.
B) Water
Fire and water are linked in the curious image ³fire,
grandson of the waters² (Schmitt 1967: § 577) viz. Gold (Haudry, to appear, c). Water,
or the waters, which themselves belong to three different worlds, were deified, often in
the form of a great goddess, celestial source of the waters of earth, who in political
religion becomes a trifunctional entity like the Avestic Ardvi Sura Anahita ³she
who is wet, heroic, immaculate² or a third-function divinity.
C) Air
Winds in the historical period are minor genii. However,
the former importance of this element shows through in the name of the great Aryan
warrior-god Vayu ³the wind²: he derives this warrior-role from the fact that the
intermediate world through which he blows is the arena in which the gods of the day-sky
and the demons of the night-sky confront one another.
D) We have seen how these ancient gods were incorporated into political religion;
on the other hand, they survived in popular religion. For this reason it will not do
reject, a priori, evidence such as that provided by Caesar for the Germanic tribes
who, according to him, ³consider as gods only those which they see, the sun, Vulcan
(fire) and the moon² (B.G. 6. 21).
3. Gods of the individual
These ancient
deities are those who are closest to man, the most reliable succour for the lonely. For an
orphan-girl alone in the world, runs a Lithuanian song, (Senn 1957: 40) ³Sun is the
mother who piles up her dowry for her, Moon is the father who gives her share in the
inheritance, the star is a sister who weaves her crown and the Pleiads a brother to take
her for walks in the country². In the same way, the Hattic-Hittite Sun god Istanu ³most
particularly has compassion on mankind, on the downtrodden and defenceless: ³Istanu,
father and mother of the oppressed and lonely person you (are) you restore the claims of
the lonely and oppressed person² (Cf. Istanu¹s epithet ³Sheperd of the lands/of
mankind²) (Justus 1983: 78).
III. Rites and gods of the four circles of social attachment
1. Political religion is centred not on the
individual but on the group, and has as its framework the four circles of social
attachment described. It is a misleading over-semplification to speak of public and
private worship: in the quadripartite community structure we find family (*dom-),
village (*woyk-), clan (*genH-) and tribal (*te/owta-) forms of
religious observance. Subsequent regroupments have this former structure as their model.
A) The priest of each of these forms of worship is the leader of the
corresponding circle; in the case of the highest of them, it is the king who is the
priest. The head of a family celebrates the daily domestic rites with only his wife to
help him; but in the case of solemn sacrifices, the intervention of specialists becomes
necessary once the ritual attains a certain degree of complexity. At the outset, this
specialist is a mere assistant; the real priest is the leader, who offers the sacrifice
³for himself², i.e. for the group which he represents, and not the celebrant who does so
³for another², as the Brahmanic theological expression puts it. But almost everywhere
specialist celebrants tended to take over and monopolize the liturgy apart from that of
domestic worship.
B) The ³congregation² consists of all members of the group whether by birth or by
initiation, this latter being the case of the leader¹s wife who changes her domestic
³religion² when she leaves her group of origin for that of her husband. Outsiders cannot
take part in worship, as the group keeps to itself the privilege of being protected by its
gods.
C) The place of religious worship is the hearth, the centre of the community whose
continuation it symbolizes: domestic hearth, tribal (national) hearth and later hearth of
the city. For the national forms of worship some people built temples on the sites of
their altars, while others, e.g. the Germanic tribes, were still refusing to do so in the
historical period.
D) The rites show a wide variety, ranging from a simple food-offering
accompanied by a prayer to long and complex ceremonies such as the Vedic asvamedha,
the sacrifice of a horse spread over an entire year. But these are recent developments.
The ancient ritual is simple and invariable, consisting in a ³reception² (Thieme 1957b:
77, 90, 95) of the gods by the head of the house (of the village, etc.) at his hearth, to
which each of them is personally invited according to the prescribed forms. Next, a meal
is served of which the primary purpose is to make them strong; in order to aid their
devotees, the gods must first be in a position to do so. And as at human banquets, poems
are sung in their praise. Thus treated, the gods who have accepted the invitation incur an
obligation to recompense their hosts. The opposite, a sacrifice of thanksgiving or in
fulfilment of a vow, is less frequently met with. The offering (*ad-bher- Hamp
1973) varies according to the gods; in the case of the Celtic and Germanic peoples we even
find a threefold division of sacrifical practice. The libation (*ghew-, *spend-),
which consists in pouring a liquid into the sacrifical fire is an ancient and important
rite: from its name are designated the priest (Indo-Iranian *zhàutar-), the cult
(Hittite spand-) and the gods (Germanic *guda-), probably on account of its
social use for oath, promise, betrothal (Latin sponsa), Polomé 1987: 208. Another
part of the ritual (particularly in the Indo-Iranian world) is the ³esoteric formulation
of Truth² (Thieme 1957b: 95).
E) It is just as necessary, especially in certain circumstances such as the taking
of an important decision, to know the will of the gods or to decide which god is
unfavourably disposed and why. This is the raison d¹etre of divination,
whose various and complex techniques also require the services of specialists.
2. Gods of the lineage
A) Ancestor-worship.
Divine worship is directed first of all to the gods of one¹s lineage: the ancestors
of the group and particularly its founder, the eponymous ancestor¹s survival
depends on the worship paid to them by their descendents who, from the very concept of
lineage, are the only persons qualified to do so. When duly honoured the ancestors are
powerful spirits, capable of effective aid to their descendents, but if neglected they die
once for all. This is why such an extreme degree of importance is attached to heredity and
the reputation which one leaves after one: the memory of a glorious ancestor has more
chance of staying alive and enjoying the benefits of a personal cult.
B) Funerary rites
The first object of funerary rites is to stop the dead person from doing harm and to
localize him in definite surroundings so that his agonized soul shall not come back to
interfere with the world of the living. But they are also designed to direct the dead
person¹s actions in the hereafter. Dumézil has revealed the significance of the two
funerary techniques used by the Indo-Europeans (1970a: 150):
³In the case of cremation it is the dead person himself who is thought of above
all; he is to have a fitting ascension and a rich existence in the hereafter. With the
barrow, it is the country which is central; the dead person is a pledge of plenty,
kept in the earth to make it produce rich harvests. In other words, there is a privileges
class of dea which goes straight to Heaven the other stay bound to the soil, imparting to
the earth in which they lie hidden the fertilizing virtue which characterized them during
their lifetime and which will be transformed by the earth into food for the living: the two
ways of the Other World.
C) Each circle also honours, in the forms and under the names peculiar to them, the
gods which belong to the whole people in common, whether the group in question has
borrowed them from the nation or whether the contrary is the case. By its eponymous
ancestor Iulus, son of Aeneas, the gens Iulia descends from the goddess
Venus, honoured by the whole Roman community from which the family had borrowed her; but
the cult of Hercules of the Ara Maxima had initially belonged to the two gentes of
the Potitii and the Pinarii, who sold it to the Roman state (Liv. 1.7).
IV. The gods of the three functions
The principal axis
of the Indo-European pantheon, represented by the division of the gods among the three
cosmic and social functions of sovereignty, war and production, is in evidence among all
the Indo-European peoples whose traditions are known to us, as are the subdivisions, more
or less widely attested, of these functions: dual nature of the first (magic/legal,
together with the existence of minor sovereign deities), as of the second
(chivalrous/brutal); a greater or lesser degree of development of the third. There exist
in addition trifunctional gods, often ancient deities incorporated into the three-function
system. See Dumézil 1941, 1952, 1958b; Polomé 1980: 155f.
1. The three functions in the Indo-Iranian pantheon
A) Vedic India:
a) Sovereignty (Dumézil 1948, 1949, 1986d)
Mitra and Varuna (Contract and Oath or True Speech) form a couple:
called ³kings², they are the representatives of the Aditya, each of whose members
rules over a department of the royal function. The domain of Mitra-Contract
(Meillet 1907: 156, 1926: 334; Thieme 1957a: 61), or ³Alliance², ³Allegiance²
H.P.Schmidt 1978, is legal sovereignty (e.g. the organization of relations between the
four circles), that of Varuna-Oath, True Speech, or ³Lord Confining² (Puhvel
1978: 336), magical sovereignty (the exercise of maya, with other mysterious
forms of action on man and the world); together they watch over truth and the course of
the world, which depends upon truth.
b) War
Indra, the ³resistance-breaker² (Vrtra-hàn-) exercises his warlike powers at
once in the world of men, as at the entry of the Aryans into India, and in the universe;
his ³resistance-breaking², re-interpreted as the ³murder of the demon (Vrtra)²
(Benveniste, Renou 1934), is at the centre of a creation-myth which explains the conquest
of essential goods, the waters, etc. He is assisted by the Marut (whose name is
identical with that of the Latin god Mars).
c) The production of beings and goods is the domain of the Vasu (³Goods²)
class, whose name recurs in that of the Italic goddess Vesuna goodmistress: the Asvin,
twin healers (health is one of the chief concerns of the third function), the great
goddess of the waters Sarasvati, etc.
B) This threefold organization appears strikingly in the treaty concluded between
an Indian king of Mitanni and the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I: ³the gods Mitra and
Varuna, the god Indra, the gods Nasatya (the Asvin)²; this
enumeration of the chief gods of the three finctions engages the three classes of society
(Dumézil 1986d: 23 f.).
C) The Iranians
A religious revolution whose date, causes and details are unknown to us transformed
gods such as Indra, Rudra and the Nasatya into demons, but spared
those the Veda calls asura-, a term which already means ³demons² in the Rigveda;
*Mitra becomes the yazata- or ³god² Mithra, and *Varuna the
³wise lord² Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Mazdaism. The warrior-function,
vacant after the rejection of Indra, is entrusted to Vrthraghna, the
hypostatic form of one of the former¹s earlier epithets. The third function devolves upon
various deities.
D) The
Zoroastrian Reformation
A second religious revolution brought about by Zarathustra (before the 8th
century (Kellens 1988: 13)) turned the Mazdaic religion monotheism to the advantage of
Ahura Mazda. On the lines of an ancient process which has been described, abstractions
become Beings, the ³Immortal Saints², under the authority of the Supreme God. Dumézil
(1945) asserted that the organization of this group of being exactly reflects the
three-function model: Mitra has his counterpart in Right Thinking; Varuna in
Truth; Indra in Domination; the Nasatya, in the couple
Integrity-Immortality; the goddess who accompanies the former, in Correct Thought. But
Narten (1982) has shown that the system of the six Immortal Saints does not appear
in the Gathas. See also Kellens Pirart (1988: 26 f.).
E) Ancient Persian religion is little known. The first Achaemenids mention by name
only A(h)uramazda, for Zoroastrian or other reasons. But the three-function
ideology, to which several formulae, including that of the ³three scourges², bear
witness, remains very much alive, and it is tempting to see a revival of it in Artaxerxes
II¹s A(h)uramazda, Anahita, Mithra, if indeed this last is already the warrior-god
of later times.
2. The three functions in the Latin and Umbrian pantheons
The most ancient of Roman triads consists of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus,
whose existence is demonstrated by several accounts and confirmed by that of the Umbrian
triad of the Grabovii consisting of Jupiter, Mars and Vofionus.
The Latin and Umbrian Jupiter is the sole representative of Sovereignty; elsewhere,
he is accompanied by Fides ³Good Faith² or Dius Fidius, representing the
legal aspect of the function. Mars is the god of war: a contraction of Mavort-,
his name coincides exactly with that of the Vedic Marùt-, if one postulates a
metathesis *wr>ru fur the Vedic word. Quirinus is a pale figure, but the
etymology of his name *coviri-nus ³master of the assembly of wiro- (³commoners²)
points to a third-function god, as does that of his Umbrian counterpart Vofionus>lewdhyono-
³master of the population².
3. The three functions in the Germanic pantheon
The Nordic triad of the temple of Old Uppsala (Dumézil 1959: 5 ff.) is also
³functional²: Odin (O.Icel. Odhinn), from wod-ena- ³frenzy-master²,
particularly in the field of poetic inspiration, is, like Varuna and Jupiter,
the representative of sovereignty and, again lik them, the terrible and magic sovereign
whose power in the legal sphere is Tyr (O.Icel. Tyr) < Germ. tiwa-
(*deywo- ³diurnal²). The second god of the triad is the warrior Thor
(O.Icel. Thòrr), the god who wields the hammer, the bane of giants: he starts life
as the ³thunder-master² *tnHro-. Thor and Odin both belong to the
group of Ases (whose name resembles that of Vedic Asura). The third member, Freyr,
belongs to the group of Vanes, gods of well-being, plenty, peace and fertility. At
the creation of the world, there had been a ³war of foundation² between Ases and
Vanes. See also Polomé 1985a, 1985b, 1988.
4. The three functions in the Slavic and Baltic pantheon
In the present state of the evidence, the reliable portion of which is limited to
folk-songs of recent origin, it is difficult to arrive at watertight conclusions; Toporov
(quoted by Fisher 1970: 148 n.3) has suggested attributing the sovereign function to the
Slavic god Stribogu, about whom little is known, with Perunu, a replica of
the Nordic Thor, as the representative of the warrior-function and Volosu that
of the third function. But the triad is not directly attested. It is, however, among the
Balts, if we are to share Fisher¹s (1970: 148 f.) trust in Grunau¹s description of a
tapestry showing three gods: a mysterious Pocullus, god of Hell, darkness and the
spirits of the dead; Perkunas, who is a second-function god like the Slavic Perunu;
and a Potrimpo who, personified by a happily-smiling young man crowned with ears of
wheat, represents the third function. Gimbutas 1974b (see also Puhvel 1974b) has shown
that Pocullus is none other than Velinas, the ³spirit-master² (whose name
today denotes the Christian devil), a god who in more ways than one recalls the Nordic Odin
and the Vedic Varuna. Are we to see in Dievas (also absent from the
triad), whose name, from *deywòs, coincides exactly with that of Tyr, a
sovereign after the manner of Mitra, Fides and Tyr?
5. The three functions in the Celtic pantheon
The triad does not occur, but a distribution according to the three roles has been
contended in its magical aspect by Lug, identified by the Romans, as in the case of
the Germanic *Wodanaz, with Mercury. Alongside him the Irish Dagda
³the good god², a sky-god and for this reason identified with Jupiter tonitruus
the Gallic Taranis -, but also a druidic god, represents sovereignty in its
³friendly² and legal aspect, Nodens (Ir. Nuada), the one-armed
³distributor², corresponds by reason of his affliction with the Nordic Tyr, but
by his function is closer to the Vedic Bhaga; he is in any event a sovereign god,
in spite of his identification with Mars. The warrior-function seems to fall to the
lot of the Gallic Ogmios (Ir. Ogme), identified with Hercules. The
Irish Diancecht, a physician-god identified with Apollo, and several
artisan-gods including the great goddess Brigit, identified with Minerva,
typify the third function. But according to Jouet 1993 passim the structure of the
Celtic pantheon is to be interpreted in cosmic terms.
6. The three functions in the Hittite pantheon
The Hittite religion bears visible traces of the influences of the non-Indo-European
religions of Anatolia. Nevertheless, the persistence of the three-function (and three-colour)
concept as evidenced by the ritual of mentioning the enemy's gods KUB VII 60 II 20
(Basanoff 1947; Laroche 1964: 25) invites us to examine the pantheon for traces of the
earlier division into three functions. The most immediate identification is that of the
great third-function god Telepinus who rules over agriculture and whose
disappearance paralyses all life on earth. Here as elsewhere, the Sun-god is associated
with the role. The other great myth, that of the dragon-killing storm-god, provides a
parallel with the Vedic god Indra Vrtrahan, even though Vrtra¹s ³murder²
has nothing to do with storms and the material facts of the events are different. The
god¹s nature is clearly shown in the oldest of the Hittite texts (Polomé 1987: 203 f.):
³he was dear to the god of the stormy sky and, as he was dear to him, the king of Nesa
was undone by the king of Kussara² (Neu 1974: 10 f.); this is equivalent to Indra¹s
aiding his proteges in their struggle against their adversaries who are ³hated by Indra².
His atmospheric aspect is secondary; Neu has proposed the reading Tarhunnas
³victorious god² for the ideogram DISKUR=DIM (³wind god²) by which he is denoted, a
double title which makes simultaneous reference to the Indra who ³breaks down
resistance² (vrtraturya-) and the great Indo-Iranian warrior-god Vayu ³wind².
The god(dess) Halmasuitt- ³Throne² despite a borrowed name, represents the
earthly (third function) sovereignty, and finally the god Sius, identified by Neu
with the Indo-European *dyews, has every chance of being a heavenly (first
function) sovereign god like Zeus, Jupiter or Tyr; in any case, he is
closely associated with the king who addresses him as Sius mis ³my (God) Sius².
This Sius is replaced first by a god and then by a goddess of the sun, whose name
in the classical vocabulary means ³royal majesty²; we have here the idea of a solar
charisma, the analogue of the Avestic xvarnah . As in the case of the Celts,
however, the triad is not formally attested, and the division of the Hittite pantheon into
three functions thus remains an hypothesis. See also Masson 1991.
7. The three functions in the Armenian pantheon
Little is known of the Armenian pantheon. Our knowledge of the gods is sometimes
limited to their names, and these latter are often borrowings from the Iranian. It is
nevertheless possible to trace in it the three-function structure, as de Lamberterie
(1983: 3 ff.) has shown. In an edict designed to reaffirm paganism, at the time under
threat, King Tiridates, addressing his subjects, places them under the protection of the
gods: ³May salvation and prosperity be yours with the help of the gods: plenteous
fertility from noble Aramazd, prudence from the lady Anahit, valiance from
valiant Vahagn². Vahagn is, like the Iranian Vrthraghna whose name
he bears, a warrio-god (Dumézil 1938c). We are surprised on the other hand to find the
third function (³plenteous fertility²) devolving upon a god who bears the name of Ahura
Mazda, and inversely to find a goddess, Iranian Anahita, presiding over
sovereignty. But this is merely the proof that the Armenian triad is original and not
borrowed; and, as de Lamberterie concludes, ³the important thing is in any case that the
three benefits granted by the gods directly reflect the Indo-European three-function
ideology².
8. The Greek pantheon and the three functions
Greece offers the surprising example of a tradition which the poetic formulary shows
to be particularly faithful and in whose legends the three-function model is present
(Dumézil 1953) to such an extent that the philosopher Plato makes it the organizational
principle of his ideal city-state, although the structure of the pantheon owes nothing to
such a model; for, despite the existence of a sovereign god, Zeus, a warrior-god, Ares,
and several third-function gods, we encounter neither functional triad nor function-based
groups (except Pindar, Nem. 10. 112 f.); and above all, there are great gods, Apollo,
Atremis, Athene, Poseidon and the rest, who do not fit into the
framework of the three functions. An interesting negative example, this case demonstrates a
contrario the significance of the trifunctional interpretation in the case of
pantheons to which this latter is applicable. It also shows that the three-function
structure is not the sole organizing principle of the Indo-European pantheon. The original
Greek pantheon is structured, certainly, but around another principle, that of the
³three-skies² and their colours, together with the daily, annual and cosmic time-cycles.
An annual drama lies behind the union of the sovereign couple, that of Zeus (*dyew-,
³day-sky²) and Hera (*yera-, ³fair season of the year²), originally an
annual union symbolizing the yearly return of light after the night of winter, an
alternation equally embodied by that of Apollo and Dionysus at the temple of Delphi.
Athene and Aphrodite (Friedrich 1970), one and the other ³daughters of Zeus², are
opposite and complementary aspects of the Indo-European Dawn who is at one and the same
time warrior and mistress; the spring, the year¹s dawn, is the season of love and at the
same time marks the beginning of the period of military campaigns which lasts through till
the autumn.
9. From the three skies to the three functions
If the original structure of the Greek pantheon is inherited, as everything seems to
indicate, it must represent a very early stage of Indo-European conceptualization, for
while it seems impossible to explain this structure in terms of the three-function model,
the contrary represents no problem. The gods of the day-sky like Zeus become sovereign
deities ruling over the rest of the gods, *deywos ³them of the day-ski². Those of
the red (dawn and sunset) sky were split up between war and the ³third function², where
they joined divinities of the demons, as did the Asura (originally: ³lords², but
understood as ³masters of the Other World² or ³deprived of sunlight² then ³Devils²)
in India. But on the other hand the chief god of the night-sky, initially associated with
that of the day-sky with whom he alterned, sometimes became (as in Germanic mythology)
even superior to the latter. This gives rise to the double sovereignty whose cosmic origin
is still visible in the Germanic, Baltic and Indo-Iranian pantheons:
Gods of the day-sky
Gods of the night-sky
Germanic peoples:
*Tiwa-
*Wode/ana-
and the *tiwa- ³gods²
(<*deywo-)
Balts:
*Deiva-
*Velina-
and the *deiva- ³gods²
and the *Veles
(<*deywo-)
(souls of the dead)
Indo Iranians:
*Mitra- (³Contract²)
*Varuna- (³Oath²)
and the diurnal *daiva-
³gods²
(<*deywo-)
The lack of simmetry relfects the substitution by the Indo-Iranians of ³political²
concepts (the gods of the ³truth-religion²) for the original cosmic entities. Yet
the Brahmanas preserves the memory of the original nature of these: ³Mitra is
the day, Varuna the night². According to Jouet 1993, the main Irish gods retain
cosmic features: Dagda is the reflex of the day-sky, Ogme of the night-sky, Lug
of the twilight-sky, and Brigit, together with other goddesses and heroines, of the
Dawn.
V. From gods to heroes
As they arrive at the end of their evolutionary cycle, gods tend to take on a human
aspect, wether they have begun as the animate form of an object or of an abstract idea.
This is in a certain sense the counterpart of euphemism, which sees the gods as images of
the men of old ³in former times, the gods were mortal², affirm Brahmanas (e.g. SB
11.1.2.12).
1. Gods and heroes of the three functions
Dumézil and, following him, others have found a trifunctionally organized pantheon in
the legend, history and epic of a number of Indo-European peoples; in becoming man, a god
keeps his functions, the essential part of his nature.
A) The
Mahabharata
Wikander (1947) has shown that the Pandava, heroes of the great Indian epic,
are none other than incarnations of the great Vedic gods of the three functions: the
eldest, Yudhisthira, is the son of Dharma ³law², a first-function entity;
the second, Bhima, is the son of Vayu, and the third, Arjuna, that of
Indra: they represent the two aspects (brutal/chivalrous) of the warrior; the last
two are twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, sons of the twin Asvin, and their
common wife Draupadi is a transposition of the great trifunctional goddess
represented in the Veda by Sarasvati, a fact which explains the presence,
scandalous for Brahmanic India, of a polyandric marriage in the great Indian epic.
B) The
Nartes
The three-function model is preserved in the national epic
of the Ossetes (remote descendents of the Scythians) which deals with the three families
of the Nates: the Alaegatæ who live half-way up the mountain, organize the sacred
feasts; the Aexsaergkatæ, who live at the top, are heroic fighters; while the Boratae,
who dwell at the mountain'¹ foot, are rich and numerous. The two latter families are
continually at war with one another. (Dumézil 1986a: third part; 1978).
C) The
legend of the origin of Rome
The legendary history of the origin and the first
centuries of Rome offers several examples of the three-function model: the series formed
by the first four kings, who by their character and destiny symbolize the three functions
(the first in its two aspects): Romulus, the semi-divine founder; Numa, the
legislator,; Tullus Hostilius the warrior; and finally Ancus Marcius who
busies himself with well-being and development. Two legendary heroes, the one-eyed Horatius
Cocles and the one-armed Mucius Scaevola, recall in their ³qualifying
mutilations² the Nordic divine pair formed by Odin and Tyr. Rome¹s first
war, against the Sabines, is a ³war of foundation² like that between the Ases and
the Vanes. The model is already present with the arrival of Aeneas in Latium (Dumézil
1986a: second part).
D) The Edda and
the sagas
Like the Sabine war, that between the Ases and the Vanes sets the first two functions
against the third in a succession of indecisive battles until a definitive peace unities
them in a trifunctional divine community (Dumézil 1959: ch. 1). The three-function model
similarly appears in the sagas, especially in an episode of Hrolfr Kraki¹s saga (Gerschel
1960). See also Dillmann 1982.
E) The Welsh
theogony
The Welsh theogony of the Mabinogi of Math is clearly trifunctional: under the
trivalent king Math, the children of his sister Don are divided into three groups: 1° the
magician Gwydion and the ³statesmen² Evelydd and Gilvaethwy (1st
function); 2° the ploughman Amaethon and the black-smith Govanon (3rd
function); 3° the ³three prominent warriors² Hyddwm, Hychtwm, Beiddwm (2nd
function) are procreated later. The daughter of Don, Aranrod, completes the functional
group, Dumézil 1985b: 93 f. The three functions are to be found in many other insular
Celtic stories: Irish epic, Welsh tales (Dumézil 1986a: 602 f.; Jouet 1993), and medieval
novels below I.
F) Greek epic and
legend
Although several attempts to apply the three-function model to the entire Iliad have
proved fruitless, we find a reference to it in the structure of the ornamentation of
Achilles¹ shield as analyzed by Yoshida (1964), portraying successively a wedding and a
court-scene (first function); a war (second function); three agricultural scenes, one
pastoral scene and a peasant¹s celebration (different aspects of the third function). The
legend of the judgement of Paris, remote cause of the Trojan war, is trifunctional: the
three goddesses between whom Paris is to choose embody the three functions, and in opting
for Aphrodite who embodies the third of them, he makes the wrong choice and sets
his people on the road to disaster. In addition, the legendary history of the first kings
of Orchomenus is built around the same model as is that of the first king of Rome.
(Dumézil 1986a: 496 n. 1 (bibl.)).
G) The
bylins
Russian epic shows at least one function-triad, that
formed by Volx, ³simultaneously shaman and warrior-prince² (Dumézil 1986a: 625),
Svyatogor the giant ³against whom no one can measure his strength² and ³Mikula
ploughman extraordinary² (Mazon 1931). Nestor¹s chronicle relates the
succession of six princes embodying the three functions, in the case of the first and of
the second function under each of its two aspects (Fisher 1970: 147).
H) The
legend of the first kings of Armenia
Moses of Chorenus, drawing on folklore and heroic songs
which have not come down to us, relates that Hayk, the eponymous ancestor of the
Armenians (Hayk¹) a superhuman personage, was succeeded by Aramaneak, a
purely human sovereign; and his son, also called Aray (Ahyan 1982).
I) Western
Europe's mediaeval legends
Some legends of Western Europe, Celtic or Germanic in
origin, reflect the three function system. For instance, the four symbolic objects in the
cycle of the Grail, the Grail itself, the Lance, the Sword and the Stone, are the reflexes
of the four functional talismans of the Irish Tùatha Dé Dànann: Dagda¹s
caldron, symbol of sovereignty; Nuadu¹s sword and Lug¹s lance, warlike symbols; Fail¹s
stone, symbol of fecundity (Grisward 1979). The cycle of Aymeri de Narbonne rests
on ancient trifunctional matter, probably wisigothic in origin: Earl Aymeri sends his sons
out of the country in order to leave his whole heritage to his youngest son. The other
ones are appointed by their father to tasks which correspond to the three functions:
having lost his liking for adventure on account of his love for Enid, Erec goes through
three groups of trials by which he conquers the three charisms which a king ought to
possess (Allard 1987).
2. Gods and heroes of the time-cycles
Heroic legend, epic, legendary history and folk-tales too, reflect the earliest
structural principle of the Indo-European pantheon, that of the time-cycles. As Krause
(1891, 1893a, 1893b) has perceived, the various forms of the Trojan legend rest on the
mythology of the annual cycle. For example, the Helen who is a willing captive at Troy is
an annual Dawn whom a sun-hero, ³fair-haired Menelaus², is attempting to reconquer. It
has become clear to me, in fact (Haudry 1989b), that the chief events of the Iliad can
be related to the ohases of the annual cycle as embodied by Zeus (day-sky), Hera
(fair season of the year), the divine dawns Athene and Aphrodite, etc. Achilles¹
wrath, Patrocles¹ rash action and death can be accounted for by the mythology of sun and
³Other Sun² (Haudry 1992b). The legend of the sleeping Brünnhilde awoken by Siegfried
and its folk version, Sleeping Beauty (Dornröschen), woken by Prince Charming, also rest
on a mythology of the annual Dawn, or Dawn of the cosmic cycle, beginning with a
creation-myth and concluding with an eschatological myth, the legendary history of the
time being sandwiched between the two. This procedure may be observed in the Armenian
national epic (Haudry 1982a: 17) and in Beowulf (Haudry 1984b and 1986b).
VI. The twilight of the gods
Renan speaks of ³the purple shroud in which dead gods sleep². It is also said that Greek
and Latin are ³dead languages², yet they survive in the Romance and Neo-Hellenic
tongues. The same thing is true in part of the gods of paganism; changed firstly into
heroes of legend or history, as we have just seen, then into genies of the house,
cgaracters in children¹s stories, sometimes demons, they live on, obscurely but
intensely. The Germanic counterpart of Varuna and Jupiter, Wotan, the ³dark hunter² of
the Mesnie Hellequin or Phantasmic Hunt, pursues his carreer, unrecognizably, in the
costume of Harlequin. Others have become saints, such as the dragon-killer of whom
St.Michael is an extension. The question has even been raised of whether the model of
Indo-European function-triads did not play a part in the substitution of a Trinity for the
one god of Judaism. And in spite of prohibitions and persecutions, ancient religious
observances have lived on or taken on new life: the old observance of the winter solstice
underlies and lives on in the Christian festival which was substituted for it, and the
fires of St.John¹s day acclaim those of the summer sun.
[Chapter from the book The
Indo-Europeans, Lyon, Institut d'Etudes Indo-Européennes, 1994.]