Welcome!
Hello, Sindhutvavadin, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a
Wikipedian! Please
sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}}
on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!
Anupam
Talk
05:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. However, adding content without citing a reliable source, as you did to Hinduism, is not consistent with our policy of verifiability. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Buddhipriya 03:59, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I think you should refer to it. You are reverting our edits. It's a good edit. I wll fix up the grammar. Thank you Juthani1 t c s 18:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Plus what you said about horrible grammar is not true. Its perfectly fine. This is an encyclopedia (keep that in mind) Juthani1 t c s 18:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I would appreciate it if you talked to me on my talkpage before reverting me. Juthani1 t c s 18:50, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I'd like to know whether you think that Hinduism is entirely a product of a distinct post IVC Iranian colonizing people, or if your opinion deviates from what my assumption of your beliefs concerning this subject are. Trips ( talk) 14:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
The existence of similarities among the deities and religious practices of the Indo-European (IE) peoples allows glimpses of a common Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion and mythology. This hypothetical religion would have been the ancestor of the majority of the pagan religions of Europe, and of the Indian religions, as well as the religions that developed from them, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Indications of the existence of this ancestral religion can be detected in commonalities between languages and religious customs of Indo-European peoples. The scientific method of triangulation is used by historical linguists to reconstruct the names of gods and goddesses, the names and processes for religious rituals and many related elements of belief and practice. In addition, many texts relating to the Indo-European religions exist, such as mythological tales and descriptions of religious rituals, including explicit instructions on how to perform them. Archaeological evidence is difficult to match to any specific culture in the earliest period of the Indo-European culture, which is defined as the time when all Indo-European-speaking people could still understand each other and conservatively thought to be about 4000 BCE [1] [2]. However, there is a vast amount of archaeological evidence that can be connected to specific Indo-European cultures and especially religious topics, such as temple site digs, votive offerings and inscriptions. The names of gods and goddesses are often the first words we find written in each of the Indo-European languages.
Linguists are able to reconstruct the names of some deities in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language from many types of sources. Some of the proposed deities are more readily accepted among scholars than others. In order to present a consistent notation, the reconstructed forms used here are cited from Mallory and Adams Oxford Introduction [3]. Use of this source does not imply agreement in either direction. The laryngeals He Ha Ho have been capitalized to make them a little easier to read.
A fuller treatment of the subject of the Indo-European Pantheon would not merely list the cognate names but describe additional correspondences in the “family relationships”, festival dates, associated myths (but see Mythology section) and special powers. Once the cognate names are provided (the linguist’s responsibility) everyone can contribute to the research, and I would like to thank especially the Lithuanians, Armenians, Slavs and others who have been contributing information which would otherwise be very difficult to access.
Pandemonium is Jaan Puhvel’s word for the mutual demonization that occurred when Zarathustra demonized the gods of the Sanskrit speakers, and the Sanskrit speakers demonized the gods of the Zoroastrians ( Avestan speakers) in turn. Conspicuous examples are the Devas and the Asuras. Sanskrit speakers referred to the Devas as good gods and the word devi, deva is a word for ‘a god, any god,’ whereas the Ashuras are demons in later Sanskrit literature. The Zoroastrians used the word ahura (cognate with Skt. ashura) as a word for ‘a god, any god,’ and Ahura Mazda was their highest god, whereas the daevas (cognate with Skt. devas) were demonized.
The observation of the mutual demonization was made as early as 1884, by Martin Haug who “postulated his thesis that the transition of both the words [Ashuras and Devas] into the designations of the demons.... is based on a prehistoric schism in religion....” according to Alfred Hillebrandt, p. 264, Vol. 2, Vedic Mythology [17]. The same observation is reported by Jacob Grimm, who describes the Persian introduction of dualism and various devils (p. 985, DM [7]). By the way, this dualism with its long complex history is the reason that the English words ‘divine’ and ‘devil’ have ultimately the same etymology, though they have the opposite meaning. The disparaging meaning given to Daevas had once been attributed by western scholars to a “moral reaction against Vedic polytheism” but it has “no longer any supporter,” according to James Darmesteter (writing in 1895, on page lii, in an intelligent introduction, Vol. 4, SBE [18]), and this was certainly the consensus view among western scholars in the 1800's. However modern western scholars like Mallory and Adams still refer to Zoroastrianism as a “religious reformation” of Vedic religion (p. 408-9, Oxford Intro. [3]).
This demonization is not limited to the Sanskrit and Avestan languages. The close correspondence between the Zoroastrian gods and the Germanic gods has long been recognized, see the Aesir-Asura correspondence which however appears to have been mangled at the moment. Furthermore, this dualism and demonization were absorbed by the Hebrews during their sojourn in Babylon according to Cox, and from there into Christianity, Cox again, quoting M. Bréal, see p. 174 and 562 [19].
Indo-European myths may be defined as narratives which have certain elements, such as god/person X does Y in connection with god/person/being Z, where X and Z are cognates, respectively, in several IE languages, and Y is something specific like “kills monster”. Many IE myths have at their core some simple observation of nature or life, such as that the sun is “born” each morning and “dies” each night, or that wheat must be cut down and threshed (“killed and tortured”) before it can be used to make bread.
Types of sources for the reconstruction of Indo-European myths include: 1) actual mythological tales in which gods act like gods; 2) legends or histories. Many foundation myths of a country or city (including sometimes bare king-lists) consist of a reprise of the nature myths; and 3) folktales. Folktales are highly subject to borrowing but some examples can be determined to conserve native myths based on the forms of the names which modern storytellers are not always able to interpret correctly. Cox gives this list, p. 53-56 [19]; see also Oxford Intro, which lists “myth, history, folklore”, p. 432 [3]. Jacob Grimm gives a more complete list of types of sources including riddles and proverbs, but they must be used with care.
Indo-European Myths: The very brief list of myths which follows can be shown by the cognate names to descend from a common ancestor (as distinguished from a common source) in the Indo-European languages. Most of these were identified and described in 1887 by George Cox, in The Mythology of the Aryan Nations [19], and by many other authors.
Cyclic Myths:
Culture Myths: Stories in which some godlike being teaches the “arts of civilization” (actually technologies) to humans are found in all cultures. The culture myths of the Indo-Europeans tell how the Culture Gods taught humans how to make fire, the proper way to kill and butcher an animal (sacrifice), religious rituals and law codes, smithing, weaving, ploughing and healing. Culture gods (e.g. Prometheus and Loki) sometimes have an intermediate position between gods and humans. They are certainly supernatural, but they often die or are tortured by other gods for their beneficence to humans, nevertheless they are often revived and worshipped like regular gods. Mallory and Adams call them Craft Gods and argue that they are not linguistically reconstructible, however Cox compares Greek Prometheus with Hindu Pramanthu (p. 421, Cox [19]). Smith gods, a subset of the Culture gods, are slightly reconstructible according to Mallory and Adams (p. 410, Oxford Intro. [3]).
Religious Uses of Myths: Many texts state specifically that telling or listening to a myth confers a blessing on the listeners. For example the text of the Táin Bó Cúalnge quoted below has a colophon that reads “A blessing be upon all such as shall faithfully keep the Táin in memory as it stands here and shall not add any other form to it.” Also telling myths is considered a way to praise and honor the gods so myths are often recited or sung especially at festivals for a particular god, see Schultz and Lavenda, pp. 229-232 [21], or as another author puts it “The praises of their gods, and the achievements of their heroes, are usually chanted at their festival meetings”, p. 339, Vol III, Percy's Reliques. This was apparently the original impetus for the tradition of Greek drama at the festivals of Dionysus, although by the time we have a written record of the dramas, they are not restricted in subject matter to the myths of any particular god, p. 5, Moulton [22].
The Myth of how the World was made from the body of a giant human or bovine is one of the best represented and most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans. The following versions of this myth show the range of the material, and the approximate dates indicate the time span. The elements are (1) *Yemós, the ‘twin’ who is (2) dismembered by (3) *Mánu, his brother, and then the parts of the twin’s body are used to (4) create the world according to a specific formula “his bones are the rocks, his blood made the rivers and seas”, etc. While the substance of the formula is essentially folkloric (rocks do look like “bones of the earth”), the use of the formula in this particular context and the linguistic correspondence of the names makes possible the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European myth, as recognized by Cox, p. 189 [19]. This myth is also described by Mallory and Adams, p. 129-130, in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture [15] and other modern authors, which is why it was chosen as an example.
Conclusion This myth appears in 5/11 language groups (five out of eleven languages since Sanskrit and Avestan are counted as one when estimating the range of a myth). It seems that poor Yama is a personification of the cows which were killed and dismembered for food by the Indo-Europeans who were personified as “Man”. This resulted in the formation of the world from the various parts of the body of the cow. This process was ritualized as a “sacrifice” and --perhaps-- the narrative was developed to explain the practice. This presentation addresses only part of this myth, which can be reconstructed further to tell the tale of a great flood which Manu survives, and his subsequent institution of religious rites and law codes.
Correspondences have been noticed between the Indo-European religion and the myths and gods in other religions such as Christianity and Buddhism as well as in other non-Indo-European languages such as the Semitic languages and the Caucasian and Kartvelian languages. Strictly speaking, this is off-topic for a discussion of PIE religion, but it is included here because it seems to be of interest to some people. The Cow Creation Myth (to use this myth as an example because it has been discussed earlier) and one of the names in it-- *Yama --have correspondences in several unrelated languages and religions. In Hindu belief, Yama is the king of the dead because he was the first to die, but he is not a death god, that is, he never kills anyone. He only comes to welcome the dead humans when it is their time to die, so he is considered quite benevolent, however no one is happy to see him! In those languages where he is borrowed he sometimes becomes a death god who kills people, and in religions that have a cruel afterlife, he sometimes tortures the dead.
Mahayana Buddhism and Asian Languages: Sanskrit Yama was absorbed into Mahayana Buddhism. As the judge of the dead, and Buddhist king of hell, Yama was borrowed into Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, and translated or borrowed into the languages of those countries, still with a name like “Yama.” Buddhist iconography in Nepal shows him with the head of a bull [23], but further east he looks like a government bureaucrat, pp. 152-3, Getty [24]. Other Sanskrit gods were borrowed into Mahayana Buddhism too, which is how Indra and Shiva came to be worshipped in Japan.
Yama is also equated to the Erlik Qan (King of the Dead) of the Mongolians by Getty [24], and from there he turns up in the Germanic languages in a poem by Goethe called Der Erlkoenig, which was set to music by Franz Schubert, and then turned into English by Sir Walter Scott as the poem The Erl-King, see the webpage by Bill Hammel. This is obviously a borrowing into the Germanic languages, but it retains something of Yama’s character as a psychopomp or “conductor of souls” as seen in Indo-European belief.
Languages of the Caucasus Mountains: Forms of Yama or Yima appear in the Nart sagas, folktales and songs about the Narts who were superhuman beings who lived in the old days. The Nart sagas are common to several families of languages in the area of the Caucasus mountains west of the Black Sea, including Ossetic (an Indo-European language), and the languages of the Chechens & Ingush; Circassians; Kartvelian-speaking Svans and Georgians which are not Indo-European languages. The examples which follow are all Circassian. In Saga 7, Lady Setenaya and the Magic Apple, Yaminizh is seen as a personification of cholera, who destroys the magic apple tree which gave life and health to the Narts. In Saga 39, a ballad, the hero cannot rest until he avenges his father’s death on Yamina, still thought of as cholera. The hero manages to do this, “he slew him in combat” (and marries his wife!), and so although the name is equivalent according to the translator, the character of *Yama is much different in the Circassian stories, see Colarusso [25]. The Circassian forms Yimis, in Saga 2, (possibly with an epithet Pshimaruquo ‘Prince of Death’ see note 10 on p. 17); Yaminizh, in Saga 7, with a suffix that means evil; and Yamina; along with Georgian Iaman; and Svan Yaman, are all forms of this name which show “influence in the Caucasus from the Iranian world” and the translator compares these names to Sanskrit Yama and Iranian Yima (p. 174, Colarusso [25]). This is just one of many borrowings from the Indo-European religion into the Nart sagas.
Semitic Languages: Among the Phoenicians, a sea-faring people. Yam is a god of the sea. In a Canaanite myth, translated from Ugaritic cuneiform of the Ras Shamra tablets which date from the 14th to the 12th centuries BCE, the god Baal kills Yam and scatters his body, though it doesn’t specifically say that the world was made from it, p. 44, Gibson. [26].
The Phoenician story has a similar structure to the Babylonian Creation myth Enuma Elis which may be dated to circa 1100 BCE, and is known in both Akkadian and Assyrian forms. In this story, Marduk kills Tiamat and then splits her body into two parts "like two halves of a flatfish" to make the sky from one part and the world, with mountains, rivers (the Tigris and Euphrates are named) and hills from the other part, pp. 66-67, Grimal [27]. This clearly shows the creation of the world from her body. The relationship of the names is not clear, although “there is no doubt that Yam-Nahar was the chief Ugaritic counterpart of the Babylonian Tiamat” according to Gibson, p. 7 [26]. A Sumerian source has been offered for the name Tiamat.
In the Hebrew Bible, the word yam appears many times, for example, “you stirred up the sea (presumably translating yam) in your might”, Psalm 74:13. Christians interpret this as a victory of Yahweh over the sea which is supposed to represent forces of chaos, see for example the footnote on verses 12-17, in the St. Joseph Edition of the Bible [28]. However in Hebrew the word “yam” simply means a body of water, and appears in the names of various lakes and seas such as Yam Suph “Reed Sea” (usually called in English the Red Sea), while the concept of a combat between Yahweh and the sea in the Old Testament/ Tanakh is rejected by van der Toorn, p. 869 [29]. A story in which Yahweh does have power over a sea monster is the story of Jonah and the whale, traditionally told at Yom Kippur. However, in this story, no harm comes to the whale, it just spews Jonah up, and there is no world making ( Book of Jonah in the Old Testament of the Bible.).
Christian religion: The name *Yama seems to correspond to James, the name in English of several Christian saints (also Gaelic Seamus). In most languages, the Christian saints James are known by a form of the name Jacob(us), but although the names Jacob and James cannot be linguistic cognates, the persons so named correspond in all points. St. James has various forms some of whom are martyred by being sawn in half, hence the English name for him/them, St. James Sawn-Asunder. Under the names James of Nisibus, James the Persian and in Latin James Intercisus (feast day 11/27), there is a wretched tale in which he/they are tortured to death by being--cut into pieces, see Holweck [30]. In the Syriac martyrologies, (the earliest martyrologies that we have--411 CE), one of the various Sts. James suffers the “nine deaths” in which his fingers and toes are cut off, etc., see Fiey [31]. Nisibus is a city in Persia, and these saints are clearly christianized versions of Persian Jemshid, going back to the IE deity Yima Kshaeta. Many Indo-European gods became saints in the Christian church, including quite a few Zoroastrian gods in the Syriac church. The Roman Catholic Church conceded the point in 1965 when it demoted 200 saints, including the patron saints of many countries, e.g., Santiago de Compostella, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. George of England, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Nicholas of everywhere (Germany, Russia, Holland, looks like the Hanseatic League), and too many more to mention.
Correspondences like these, including entire pantheons, between the Indo-European religion and other religions and other non-Indo-European languages are so widespread that they cannot be explained as coincidences. The pattern of borrowings with the Nart sagas, the Mahayana Buddhist elements, and Christian saints, myths and rituals are fairly well understood historically, however the relationship between the Indo-European languages and the Semitic and Sumerian languages is not at all clear. Since these families of languages are not thought to be related, we shouldn’t expect to see cognates. Traditionally it had been assumed, partly because people believed that the Bible was historically accurate, that any similarities could be explained by borrowing from the Semitic (and Sumerian) languages into the Indo-European languages. However since many IE gods and myths show cognate forms across the Indo-European languages, the IE gods can be reconstructed as being in existence in the Proto-Indo-European language at approximately 4000 BC. That means that if they were borrowed, they would have to have been borrowed by 4000 BCE, the time of the beginning of the break up of the Indo-European languages. None of the great Mesopotamian or other Semitic-speaking cultures had developed into politically or militarily dominant states that early, so it's difficult to see why another culture would borrow entire pantheons from them.
As it is, there are still anomalies in the timelines and problems with the geographic distribution. In any case the difficulties remain unresolved and the subject is a sensitive one, since it concerns the supposed history of several different religions.
Religion is defined as “a set of beliefs...usually involving devotion and ritual observances...” (Random House Dictionary). The rituals of the Indo-European religions are often overlooked but they are very widely described in many places in the individual languages, and some words and even ritual formulas can (hypothetically) be reconstructed to a common ancestral language. Also about a billion Hindus maintain their ancient rituals every day: they still remember.
Émile Benveniste states that “there is no common term to designate religion itself, or cult, or the priest, not even one of the personal gods” pp. 445-6, Indo-European Language and Society [32]. He then provides the first example: the root *ŗta-, usually translated as ‘order’, and reconstructed from Vedic Ŗta, and Iranian arta ‘order’ which provide both an abstract word, and the name of a goddess; also the Sanskrit forms ŗta-van (masc.), and ŗta-vari (fem.); and Iranian forms artavan (masc.), artavari (fem.), all meaning ‘the one who is faithful to arta, who is morally accomplished’ which are common types of formations for those who assist at rituals (e.g., priests and priestesses). Having dismissed the possibility that the Indo-Europeans could have had any basic religious concept, Benveniste states, “We have here one of the cardinal notions of the legal world of the Indo-Europeans to say nothing of their religious and moral ideas (pp. 379-381). He also adds that an abstract suffix -tu formed the Vedic stem Ŗtu-, Avestan ratu- which designated order, particularly in the seasons and periods of time and which appears in Latin ritus ‘rite’ borrowed into English as ‘rite(s).’ The same root appears as -ratri, the element in many names of festivals in India such as Shivaratri, the festival of the celebration of the marriage of Shiva; and in modern Hindi ārties are special hymns which are sung at the end of an offering to make sure the rites come out correctly [33]. Another suffix -ti gives Latin ars, artis ‘the technique for doing something’, and is borrowed into English as ‘art.’ This is one of the most widely attested words and most widely deified goddesses among the Indo-Europeans, and for many more examples see p. 810, G&I [4]; and p. 56, 57, Pokorny [34].
A list of reconstructed IE religious terms is provided by Lyle Campbell (pp. 391-392, Historical Linguistics [35]), for which he credits Michael Weiss. Campbell gives only the bare root and a translation; wherever possible, a page number has been added from the Encyclopedia of IE Culture, abbrev. EIEC [15], which amplifies the information and gives some of the words in various languages.
There are more, but I thought this would do for a start!
The following sources are a small selection of the vast amount of information available on this subject. Links of a more general nature are listed under General Links.
{{
cite journal}}
: Check date values in: |date=
(
help)
Category:Indo-European mythology Category:Indo-European deities Category:History of religion Category:Essential Importance Religion article Category:Articles vandalized by religious bigots since June 18, 2008
Hello, you seem to be involved in an edit war on Sanskrit. Please remember that the three-revert rule prohibits users from making more than three reverts within a 24 hour period. Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, you should discuss the issue on the article's talk page; continuing to revert will accomplish nothing. It may even get you temporarily blocked. J.delanoy gabs adds 20:01, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Hello Brother. Currently some POV users such are reverting changes made by Nexxt 1, who is imputing completely referenced material that Hinduism is the world's most ancient religion, and other material. The POV users are disrupting his changes. Would you please be able to step in and take the side of user Nexxt 1? Thanks. - Angle reflection —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angle reflection ( talk • contribs) 21:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sindhutvavadin,
in my opinion, this edit is POV, because it gives the impression that the one theory is prominent or favored. I know that you just reverted it to an earlier version, but the original version of the article is this one. The part you readded had been added by a banned user: [1]. The "Afghan highlands" theory is already mentioned in the "Historical concepts" section. Putting in the lead of the article is POV. Regards. Tajik ( talk) 21:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, in this edit on 8 February, a user Quinyu introduced some unsourced (and irrelevant) stuff in random places in the article, trying to claim that Sanskrit never existed (or something to that effect: Rgveda was not written in Sanskrit, early inscriptions are not in Sanskrit, etc). In the next two edits, you made some factual corrections to the text. But even with your corrections, the stuff that had been added in those places was simply irrelevant to the surrounding text and looked out of place, so I restored the version before Quinyu had added those changes. For some reason, you reverted my revert, seeming to think that they were "pov changes given without proof"(?). The text still looks irrelevant to the surrounding text, so I've removed it again — this doesn't mean the information shouldn't be in the article, but we need to find some appropriate place for those sentences rather than confusing readers by putting them where they don't belong. Regards, Shreevatsa ( talk) 05:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Farmers point is a minority view. There is no dispute for most scholars. Farmers case has been suffeciently covered in the article. pls see wp:npov about mirity views: Accurately indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view. For example, to state that "According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis" would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field. -- Wangond ( talk) 07:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current
Arbitration Committee election. The
Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia
arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose
site bans,
topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The
arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to
review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on
the voting page. For the Election committee,
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
16:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Welcome!
Hello, Sindhutvavadin, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a
Wikipedian! Please
sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}}
on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!
Anupam
Talk
05:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. However, adding content without citing a reliable source, as you did to Hinduism, is not consistent with our policy of verifiability. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Buddhipriya 03:59, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I think you should refer to it. You are reverting our edits. It's a good edit. I wll fix up the grammar. Thank you Juthani1 t c s 18:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Plus what you said about horrible grammar is not true. Its perfectly fine. This is an encyclopedia (keep that in mind) Juthani1 t c s 18:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I would appreciate it if you talked to me on my talkpage before reverting me. Juthani1 t c s 18:50, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I'd like to know whether you think that Hinduism is entirely a product of a distinct post IVC Iranian colonizing people, or if your opinion deviates from what my assumption of your beliefs concerning this subject are. Trips ( talk) 14:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
The existence of similarities among the deities and religious practices of the Indo-European (IE) peoples allows glimpses of a common Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion and mythology. This hypothetical religion would have been the ancestor of the majority of the pagan religions of Europe, and of the Indian religions, as well as the religions that developed from them, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Indications of the existence of this ancestral religion can be detected in commonalities between languages and religious customs of Indo-European peoples. The scientific method of triangulation is used by historical linguists to reconstruct the names of gods and goddesses, the names and processes for religious rituals and many related elements of belief and practice. In addition, many texts relating to the Indo-European religions exist, such as mythological tales and descriptions of religious rituals, including explicit instructions on how to perform them. Archaeological evidence is difficult to match to any specific culture in the earliest period of the Indo-European culture, which is defined as the time when all Indo-European-speaking people could still understand each other and conservatively thought to be about 4000 BCE [1] [2]. However, there is a vast amount of archaeological evidence that can be connected to specific Indo-European cultures and especially religious topics, such as temple site digs, votive offerings and inscriptions. The names of gods and goddesses are often the first words we find written in each of the Indo-European languages.
Linguists are able to reconstruct the names of some deities in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language from many types of sources. Some of the proposed deities are more readily accepted among scholars than others. In order to present a consistent notation, the reconstructed forms used here are cited from Mallory and Adams Oxford Introduction [3]. Use of this source does not imply agreement in either direction. The laryngeals He Ha Ho have been capitalized to make them a little easier to read.
A fuller treatment of the subject of the Indo-European Pantheon would not merely list the cognate names but describe additional correspondences in the “family relationships”, festival dates, associated myths (but see Mythology section) and special powers. Once the cognate names are provided (the linguist’s responsibility) everyone can contribute to the research, and I would like to thank especially the Lithuanians, Armenians, Slavs and others who have been contributing information which would otherwise be very difficult to access.
Pandemonium is Jaan Puhvel’s word for the mutual demonization that occurred when Zarathustra demonized the gods of the Sanskrit speakers, and the Sanskrit speakers demonized the gods of the Zoroastrians ( Avestan speakers) in turn. Conspicuous examples are the Devas and the Asuras. Sanskrit speakers referred to the Devas as good gods and the word devi, deva is a word for ‘a god, any god,’ whereas the Ashuras are demons in later Sanskrit literature. The Zoroastrians used the word ahura (cognate with Skt. ashura) as a word for ‘a god, any god,’ and Ahura Mazda was their highest god, whereas the daevas (cognate with Skt. devas) were demonized.
The observation of the mutual demonization was made as early as 1884, by Martin Haug who “postulated his thesis that the transition of both the words [Ashuras and Devas] into the designations of the demons.... is based on a prehistoric schism in religion....” according to Alfred Hillebrandt, p. 264, Vol. 2, Vedic Mythology [17]. The same observation is reported by Jacob Grimm, who describes the Persian introduction of dualism and various devils (p. 985, DM [7]). By the way, this dualism with its long complex history is the reason that the English words ‘divine’ and ‘devil’ have ultimately the same etymology, though they have the opposite meaning. The disparaging meaning given to Daevas had once been attributed by western scholars to a “moral reaction against Vedic polytheism” but it has “no longer any supporter,” according to James Darmesteter (writing in 1895, on page lii, in an intelligent introduction, Vol. 4, SBE [18]), and this was certainly the consensus view among western scholars in the 1800's. However modern western scholars like Mallory and Adams still refer to Zoroastrianism as a “religious reformation” of Vedic religion (p. 408-9, Oxford Intro. [3]).
This demonization is not limited to the Sanskrit and Avestan languages. The close correspondence between the Zoroastrian gods and the Germanic gods has long been recognized, see the Aesir-Asura correspondence which however appears to have been mangled at the moment. Furthermore, this dualism and demonization were absorbed by the Hebrews during their sojourn in Babylon according to Cox, and from there into Christianity, Cox again, quoting M. Bréal, see p. 174 and 562 [19].
Indo-European myths may be defined as narratives which have certain elements, such as god/person X does Y in connection with god/person/being Z, where X and Z are cognates, respectively, in several IE languages, and Y is something specific like “kills monster”. Many IE myths have at their core some simple observation of nature or life, such as that the sun is “born” each morning and “dies” each night, or that wheat must be cut down and threshed (“killed and tortured”) before it can be used to make bread.
Types of sources for the reconstruction of Indo-European myths include: 1) actual mythological tales in which gods act like gods; 2) legends or histories. Many foundation myths of a country or city (including sometimes bare king-lists) consist of a reprise of the nature myths; and 3) folktales. Folktales are highly subject to borrowing but some examples can be determined to conserve native myths based on the forms of the names which modern storytellers are not always able to interpret correctly. Cox gives this list, p. 53-56 [19]; see also Oxford Intro, which lists “myth, history, folklore”, p. 432 [3]. Jacob Grimm gives a more complete list of types of sources including riddles and proverbs, but they must be used with care.
Indo-European Myths: The very brief list of myths which follows can be shown by the cognate names to descend from a common ancestor (as distinguished from a common source) in the Indo-European languages. Most of these were identified and described in 1887 by George Cox, in The Mythology of the Aryan Nations [19], and by many other authors.
Cyclic Myths:
Culture Myths: Stories in which some godlike being teaches the “arts of civilization” (actually technologies) to humans are found in all cultures. The culture myths of the Indo-Europeans tell how the Culture Gods taught humans how to make fire, the proper way to kill and butcher an animal (sacrifice), religious rituals and law codes, smithing, weaving, ploughing and healing. Culture gods (e.g. Prometheus and Loki) sometimes have an intermediate position between gods and humans. They are certainly supernatural, but they often die or are tortured by other gods for their beneficence to humans, nevertheless they are often revived and worshipped like regular gods. Mallory and Adams call them Craft Gods and argue that they are not linguistically reconstructible, however Cox compares Greek Prometheus with Hindu Pramanthu (p. 421, Cox [19]). Smith gods, a subset of the Culture gods, are slightly reconstructible according to Mallory and Adams (p. 410, Oxford Intro. [3]).
Religious Uses of Myths: Many texts state specifically that telling or listening to a myth confers a blessing on the listeners. For example the text of the Táin Bó Cúalnge quoted below has a colophon that reads “A blessing be upon all such as shall faithfully keep the Táin in memory as it stands here and shall not add any other form to it.” Also telling myths is considered a way to praise and honor the gods so myths are often recited or sung especially at festivals for a particular god, see Schultz and Lavenda, pp. 229-232 [21], or as another author puts it “The praises of their gods, and the achievements of their heroes, are usually chanted at their festival meetings”, p. 339, Vol III, Percy's Reliques. This was apparently the original impetus for the tradition of Greek drama at the festivals of Dionysus, although by the time we have a written record of the dramas, they are not restricted in subject matter to the myths of any particular god, p. 5, Moulton [22].
The Myth of how the World was made from the body of a giant human or bovine is one of the best represented and most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans. The following versions of this myth show the range of the material, and the approximate dates indicate the time span. The elements are (1) *Yemós, the ‘twin’ who is (2) dismembered by (3) *Mánu, his brother, and then the parts of the twin’s body are used to (4) create the world according to a specific formula “his bones are the rocks, his blood made the rivers and seas”, etc. While the substance of the formula is essentially folkloric (rocks do look like “bones of the earth”), the use of the formula in this particular context and the linguistic correspondence of the names makes possible the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European myth, as recognized by Cox, p. 189 [19]. This myth is also described by Mallory and Adams, p. 129-130, in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture [15] and other modern authors, which is why it was chosen as an example.
Conclusion This myth appears in 5/11 language groups (five out of eleven languages since Sanskrit and Avestan are counted as one when estimating the range of a myth). It seems that poor Yama is a personification of the cows which were killed and dismembered for food by the Indo-Europeans who were personified as “Man”. This resulted in the formation of the world from the various parts of the body of the cow. This process was ritualized as a “sacrifice” and --perhaps-- the narrative was developed to explain the practice. This presentation addresses only part of this myth, which can be reconstructed further to tell the tale of a great flood which Manu survives, and his subsequent institution of religious rites and law codes.
Correspondences have been noticed between the Indo-European religion and the myths and gods in other religions such as Christianity and Buddhism as well as in other non-Indo-European languages such as the Semitic languages and the Caucasian and Kartvelian languages. Strictly speaking, this is off-topic for a discussion of PIE religion, but it is included here because it seems to be of interest to some people. The Cow Creation Myth (to use this myth as an example because it has been discussed earlier) and one of the names in it-- *Yama --have correspondences in several unrelated languages and religions. In Hindu belief, Yama is the king of the dead because he was the first to die, but he is not a death god, that is, he never kills anyone. He only comes to welcome the dead humans when it is their time to die, so he is considered quite benevolent, however no one is happy to see him! In those languages where he is borrowed he sometimes becomes a death god who kills people, and in religions that have a cruel afterlife, he sometimes tortures the dead.
Mahayana Buddhism and Asian Languages: Sanskrit Yama was absorbed into Mahayana Buddhism. As the judge of the dead, and Buddhist king of hell, Yama was borrowed into Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, and translated or borrowed into the languages of those countries, still with a name like “Yama.” Buddhist iconography in Nepal shows him with the head of a bull [23], but further east he looks like a government bureaucrat, pp. 152-3, Getty [24]. Other Sanskrit gods were borrowed into Mahayana Buddhism too, which is how Indra and Shiva came to be worshipped in Japan.
Yama is also equated to the Erlik Qan (King of the Dead) of the Mongolians by Getty [24], and from there he turns up in the Germanic languages in a poem by Goethe called Der Erlkoenig, which was set to music by Franz Schubert, and then turned into English by Sir Walter Scott as the poem The Erl-King, see the webpage by Bill Hammel. This is obviously a borrowing into the Germanic languages, but it retains something of Yama’s character as a psychopomp or “conductor of souls” as seen in Indo-European belief.
Languages of the Caucasus Mountains: Forms of Yama or Yima appear in the Nart sagas, folktales and songs about the Narts who were superhuman beings who lived in the old days. The Nart sagas are common to several families of languages in the area of the Caucasus mountains west of the Black Sea, including Ossetic (an Indo-European language), and the languages of the Chechens & Ingush; Circassians; Kartvelian-speaking Svans and Georgians which are not Indo-European languages. The examples which follow are all Circassian. In Saga 7, Lady Setenaya and the Magic Apple, Yaminizh is seen as a personification of cholera, who destroys the magic apple tree which gave life and health to the Narts. In Saga 39, a ballad, the hero cannot rest until he avenges his father’s death on Yamina, still thought of as cholera. The hero manages to do this, “he slew him in combat” (and marries his wife!), and so although the name is equivalent according to the translator, the character of *Yama is much different in the Circassian stories, see Colarusso [25]. The Circassian forms Yimis, in Saga 2, (possibly with an epithet Pshimaruquo ‘Prince of Death’ see note 10 on p. 17); Yaminizh, in Saga 7, with a suffix that means evil; and Yamina; along with Georgian Iaman; and Svan Yaman, are all forms of this name which show “influence in the Caucasus from the Iranian world” and the translator compares these names to Sanskrit Yama and Iranian Yima (p. 174, Colarusso [25]). This is just one of many borrowings from the Indo-European religion into the Nart sagas.
Semitic Languages: Among the Phoenicians, a sea-faring people. Yam is a god of the sea. In a Canaanite myth, translated from Ugaritic cuneiform of the Ras Shamra tablets which date from the 14th to the 12th centuries BCE, the god Baal kills Yam and scatters his body, though it doesn’t specifically say that the world was made from it, p. 44, Gibson. [26].
The Phoenician story has a similar structure to the Babylonian Creation myth Enuma Elis which may be dated to circa 1100 BCE, and is known in both Akkadian and Assyrian forms. In this story, Marduk kills Tiamat and then splits her body into two parts "like two halves of a flatfish" to make the sky from one part and the world, with mountains, rivers (the Tigris and Euphrates are named) and hills from the other part, pp. 66-67, Grimal [27]. This clearly shows the creation of the world from her body. The relationship of the names is not clear, although “there is no doubt that Yam-Nahar was the chief Ugaritic counterpart of the Babylonian Tiamat” according to Gibson, p. 7 [26]. A Sumerian source has been offered for the name Tiamat.
In the Hebrew Bible, the word yam appears many times, for example, “you stirred up the sea (presumably translating yam) in your might”, Psalm 74:13. Christians interpret this as a victory of Yahweh over the sea which is supposed to represent forces of chaos, see for example the footnote on verses 12-17, in the St. Joseph Edition of the Bible [28]. However in Hebrew the word “yam” simply means a body of water, and appears in the names of various lakes and seas such as Yam Suph “Reed Sea” (usually called in English the Red Sea), while the concept of a combat between Yahweh and the sea in the Old Testament/ Tanakh is rejected by van der Toorn, p. 869 [29]. A story in which Yahweh does have power over a sea monster is the story of Jonah and the whale, traditionally told at Yom Kippur. However, in this story, no harm comes to the whale, it just spews Jonah up, and there is no world making ( Book of Jonah in the Old Testament of the Bible.).
Christian religion: The name *Yama seems to correspond to James, the name in English of several Christian saints (also Gaelic Seamus). In most languages, the Christian saints James are known by a form of the name Jacob(us), but although the names Jacob and James cannot be linguistic cognates, the persons so named correspond in all points. St. James has various forms some of whom are martyred by being sawn in half, hence the English name for him/them, St. James Sawn-Asunder. Under the names James of Nisibus, James the Persian and in Latin James Intercisus (feast day 11/27), there is a wretched tale in which he/they are tortured to death by being--cut into pieces, see Holweck [30]. In the Syriac martyrologies, (the earliest martyrologies that we have--411 CE), one of the various Sts. James suffers the “nine deaths” in which his fingers and toes are cut off, etc., see Fiey [31]. Nisibus is a city in Persia, and these saints are clearly christianized versions of Persian Jemshid, going back to the IE deity Yima Kshaeta. Many Indo-European gods became saints in the Christian church, including quite a few Zoroastrian gods in the Syriac church. The Roman Catholic Church conceded the point in 1965 when it demoted 200 saints, including the patron saints of many countries, e.g., Santiago de Compostella, St. David of Wales, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. George of England, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Nicholas of everywhere (Germany, Russia, Holland, looks like the Hanseatic League), and too many more to mention.
Correspondences like these, including entire pantheons, between the Indo-European religion and other religions and other non-Indo-European languages are so widespread that they cannot be explained as coincidences. The pattern of borrowings with the Nart sagas, the Mahayana Buddhist elements, and Christian saints, myths and rituals are fairly well understood historically, however the relationship between the Indo-European languages and the Semitic and Sumerian languages is not at all clear. Since these families of languages are not thought to be related, we shouldn’t expect to see cognates. Traditionally it had been assumed, partly because people believed that the Bible was historically accurate, that any similarities could be explained by borrowing from the Semitic (and Sumerian) languages into the Indo-European languages. However since many IE gods and myths show cognate forms across the Indo-European languages, the IE gods can be reconstructed as being in existence in the Proto-Indo-European language at approximately 4000 BC. That means that if they were borrowed, they would have to have been borrowed by 4000 BCE, the time of the beginning of the break up of the Indo-European languages. None of the great Mesopotamian or other Semitic-speaking cultures had developed into politically or militarily dominant states that early, so it's difficult to see why another culture would borrow entire pantheons from them.
As it is, there are still anomalies in the timelines and problems with the geographic distribution. In any case the difficulties remain unresolved and the subject is a sensitive one, since it concerns the supposed history of several different religions.
Religion is defined as “a set of beliefs...usually involving devotion and ritual observances...” (Random House Dictionary). The rituals of the Indo-European religions are often overlooked but they are very widely described in many places in the individual languages, and some words and even ritual formulas can (hypothetically) be reconstructed to a common ancestral language. Also about a billion Hindus maintain their ancient rituals every day: they still remember.
Émile Benveniste states that “there is no common term to designate religion itself, or cult, or the priest, not even one of the personal gods” pp. 445-6, Indo-European Language and Society [32]. He then provides the first example: the root *ŗta-, usually translated as ‘order’, and reconstructed from Vedic Ŗta, and Iranian arta ‘order’ which provide both an abstract word, and the name of a goddess; also the Sanskrit forms ŗta-van (masc.), and ŗta-vari (fem.); and Iranian forms artavan (masc.), artavari (fem.), all meaning ‘the one who is faithful to arta, who is morally accomplished’ which are common types of formations for those who assist at rituals (e.g., priests and priestesses). Having dismissed the possibility that the Indo-Europeans could have had any basic religious concept, Benveniste states, “We have here one of the cardinal notions of the legal world of the Indo-Europeans to say nothing of their religious and moral ideas (pp. 379-381). He also adds that an abstract suffix -tu formed the Vedic stem Ŗtu-, Avestan ratu- which designated order, particularly in the seasons and periods of time and which appears in Latin ritus ‘rite’ borrowed into English as ‘rite(s).’ The same root appears as -ratri, the element in many names of festivals in India such as Shivaratri, the festival of the celebration of the marriage of Shiva; and in modern Hindi ārties are special hymns which are sung at the end of an offering to make sure the rites come out correctly [33]. Another suffix -ti gives Latin ars, artis ‘the technique for doing something’, and is borrowed into English as ‘art.’ This is one of the most widely attested words and most widely deified goddesses among the Indo-Europeans, and for many more examples see p. 810, G&I [4]; and p. 56, 57, Pokorny [34].
A list of reconstructed IE religious terms is provided by Lyle Campbell (pp. 391-392, Historical Linguistics [35]), for which he credits Michael Weiss. Campbell gives only the bare root and a translation; wherever possible, a page number has been added from the Encyclopedia of IE Culture, abbrev. EIEC [15], which amplifies the information and gives some of the words in various languages.
There are more, but I thought this would do for a start!
The following sources are a small selection of the vast amount of information available on this subject. Links of a more general nature are listed under General Links.
{{
cite journal}}
: Check date values in: |date=
(
help)
Category:Indo-European mythology Category:Indo-European deities Category:History of religion Category:Essential Importance Religion article Category:Articles vandalized by religious bigots since June 18, 2008
Hello, you seem to be involved in an edit war on Sanskrit. Please remember that the three-revert rule prohibits users from making more than three reverts within a 24 hour period. Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, you should discuss the issue on the article's talk page; continuing to revert will accomplish nothing. It may even get you temporarily blocked. J.delanoy gabs adds 20:01, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Hello Brother. Currently some POV users such are reverting changes made by Nexxt 1, who is imputing completely referenced material that Hinduism is the world's most ancient religion, and other material. The POV users are disrupting his changes. Would you please be able to step in and take the side of user Nexxt 1? Thanks. - Angle reflection —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angle reflection ( talk • contribs) 21:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sindhutvavadin,
in my opinion, this edit is POV, because it gives the impression that the one theory is prominent or favored. I know that you just reverted it to an earlier version, but the original version of the article is this one. The part you readded had been added by a banned user: [1]. The "Afghan highlands" theory is already mentioned in the "Historical concepts" section. Putting in the lead of the article is POV. Regards. Tajik ( talk) 21:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, in this edit on 8 February, a user Quinyu introduced some unsourced (and irrelevant) stuff in random places in the article, trying to claim that Sanskrit never existed (or something to that effect: Rgveda was not written in Sanskrit, early inscriptions are not in Sanskrit, etc). In the next two edits, you made some factual corrections to the text. But even with your corrections, the stuff that had been added in those places was simply irrelevant to the surrounding text and looked out of place, so I restored the version before Quinyu had added those changes. For some reason, you reverted my revert, seeming to think that they were "pov changes given without proof"(?). The text still looks irrelevant to the surrounding text, so I've removed it again — this doesn't mean the information shouldn't be in the article, but we need to find some appropriate place for those sentences rather than confusing readers by putting them where they don't belong. Regards, Shreevatsa ( talk) 05:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Farmers point is a minority view. There is no dispute for most scholars. Farmers case has been suffeciently covered in the article. pls see wp:npov about mirity views: Accurately indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view. For example, to state that "According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis" would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field. -- Wangond ( talk) 07:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current
Arbitration Committee election. The
Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia
arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose
site bans,
topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The
arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to
review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on
the voting page. For the Election committee,
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
16:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)