lpetrich

Something interesting to think about -- one can get some details of a really old-time religion without endlessly arguing about what some statuettes really mean. Some good URL's: <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/61" target="_blank">the American Heritage Dictionary</a> and <a href="http://www.indoeuropean.net" target="_blank">Cyril Babaev's site</a>. A good book: J.P. Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans".

At first sight, one might wonder what the connection is, because words can easily be borrowed from one language to another, and those that tend not to be borrowed are the more basic sorts of words which contain little cultural information. What can one get from "is" or "Sun" or "name"?

However, there is a fair amount of nontrivial Indo-European vocabulary that can be reconstructed. The ancestral IE speakers had a variety of domesticated animals, such as cows, sheep, pigs, horses, and dogs, but no cats or donkeys. They knew about wheels and axles, and they had a word for conveying by vehicle. However, they had only one word for a kind of metal, and no word for iron (the historical words look like multiple inventions), suggesting only a limited acquaintance with metals.

On the cultural side, there being several words for a husband's relatives but not for a wife's relatives suggests that married couples would stay with the husband's family rather than with the wife's family or with neither.

There is no evidence of literacy; words for writing are multiple inventions and borrowings in the later languages. Instead, people would memorize big epics.

As to religion, we can reconstruct this deity name: "Father Sky" (*dyeus p@ter), but beyond that, we need to go beyond reconstructed vocabulary and turn to reconstructible cultural and religious features. One has to be careful here, since there are many features in the historical societies that do not quite correspond.

But one can reconstruct a three-functions ideology, in which society is divided up into the functions of command (priests, rulers), force (soldiers), and nourishment (common people). Each function had its characteristic deities; the command function had a god of the shining sky, the force function had a god of storms and war who would fight a snake monster, and the nourishment function had its own characteristic deities. Names do not correspond as well as attributes; Thor ("thunder") and Indra ("man") are both second-function deities.

Some places, like Rome and India, had a priestly caste which respected similar taboos, like not owning dogs, while other places did not; ancestral Indo-European society may have had a similar sort of caste. Such a caste would have faded out in many places, but instead got strengthened and became the model for other castes in India.

One can even reconstruct a creation myth. In the beginning was Man (*mannus) and Twin (*yemos &gt; *yemonos). Man killed and dismembered Twin and formed the familiar Universe from Twin's body parts. This story is reconstructed from such stories as that of Ymir (Norse) and Yama and Yami (Vedic); the story of Romulus and Remus is likely that story turned into the creation myth of the city of Rome, but with a few tweaks here and there.

One problem with reconstructing Indo-European religion is tbecause the various descendant populations often adopted the myths and religions of those they conquered or came in contact with; Greece is a good example of that, with the Ouranos - Kronos - Zeus succession likely being borrowed from a similar Hurrian story, and with several deities likely being borrowed also. Religious exclusivism was apparently absent, as it was in historical times before the emergence and arrival of the Abrahamic religions.

The ancestral Indo-European place and time are most likely just north of the Black Sea about 6000 years ago, which is older than the oldest written records, and certainly much older than the Bible

emotional

Gathering cultural information from shared vocabulary doesn't always work. One philologist did a reductio ad absurdum of the whole thing by spoofing the Latin and its Romance derivatives: you can learn from the Romance languages that the Romans were ruled by a monarch (re, rey, roi) and that they were constantly warring (guerre, guerra). As it happens, the Roman word rex is just the concept (they did have kings at first, but they threw them out quite early), and as for guerra, for "war", it is a Germanic borrowing (from werra, hence English war) which came in during the barbarian invasions and replaced the Latin bellum.

Not much you can learn from vocabulary. However, the fact that the word for cattle and money is the same in many of the Indo-European languages (Latin pecus, Gothic fehu, English fee, German Vieh, Sanskrit pacu) points to that the old Indo-Europeans valued cattle highly.

phaedrus

Names do not correspond as well as attributes; Thor ("thunder") and Indra ("man") are both second-function deities.

What do you mean?

Thor : deity common to all the early Germanic peoples, a great warrior represented as a red-bearded, middle-aged man of enormous strength, an implacable foe to the harmful race of giants but benevolent toward mankind. His figure was generally secondary to that of the god Odin, who in some traditions was his father;
Thor's name was the Germanic word for thunder, and it was the thunderbolt that was represented by his hammer, the attribute most commonly associated with him

Indra : chief of the Vedic gods of India. A warlike, typically Aryan god, he conquered innumerable human and demon enemies, vanquished the sun, and killed the dragon Vrtra, who had prevented the monsoon from breaking.

His weapons are lightning and the thunderbolt, and he is strengthened for these feats by drinks of the elixir soma, the offering of the sacrifice.

(Emphasis obviously mine source : britannica)

lpetrich

Devnet is quite right about language proper -- not much one can recover in detail. One has to do comparative mythology to get the Man-Twin story and stuff like that.

They are both connected with the "force" function of Dumezil's three functions (command, force, nourishment). Which ought to be obvious from their attributes. Thor and Indra are both associated with lightning and thunder, and they both fight numerous enemies, including big snake monsters (Midgard, Vrtra).

However, their names are not cognate; "Thor" is cognate with English "thunder" and Latin "tona:re", "to thunder" (IE *(s)ten@-). "Indra" is cognate with Greek "ane:r, andr-" "man (male)" (IE *(@)ner-).

lpetrich

Checking on the American Heritage Dictionary's section on Proto-Semitic Language and Culture (like the Indo-European one), we can make some inferences there also:

They had dogs, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and donkeys, and lots of agriculture, featuring wheat, barley, oats, millet, grapes, figs, garlic, onions, almonds, and date palms, which were often watered, but the only metal they were acquainted with was silver. Their religious vocabulary included a word for "(cult) statue" -- were they idolators?

Early Semitic objects of worship included the Sun, the Moon, the morning and evening stars, thunder, and the like; they clearly had not heard of the Only God.

Ancestral IE and Semitic share acquaintance with dogs, cows, pigs, and sheep -- and both have only a limited acquaintance with metals.
In agriculture, the Semitic speakers seem more advanced than the IE ones, which had only a generic word for grain shared across its length (western IE has more shared agricultural vocabulary). Among equines, IE speakers knew about horses but not donkeys, while Semitic speakers knew about donkeys but not horses.

This ought to be a stake in the heart of the Tower of Babel theory, if it needed any more; I'm sure that the Tower of Babel story was a Just So Story intended for accounting for multiple languages.

This is because the Indo-European homeland is clearly outside of the Middle East, while the Semitic one is in it. Also, the basic vocabulary looks very different:

Indo-European has *no:mn- for "name", while Semitic has *s"m-, IE has *sa:wel- for "Sun", while Semitic has *s"ms"-, IE has *wed- for "water", while Semitic has *my-, etc.

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

phaedrus

lpetrich

1. Both are not second-rung souls as you pointed out (not indra)

2. I still dont understand what you mean by your statement Names do not correspond as well as attributes; Thor ("thunder") and Indra ("man") are both second-function deities.

Indulge moi What are you claiming here? We are looking at only the cognates and not so much at the meaning of the words in their cultures?

lpetrich

Phaedrus, you are being unreasonable. I was showing that Thor and Indra have similar attributes -- but that their names have different origins. Also, note where they fall in Dumezil's hierarchy of functions.

ohwilleke

I am somewhat skeptical of the origins of caste set forth. What I had understood, was that India was conquered by successive waves of invaders, each of which did not fully integrate with the native population producing several caste layers.

phaedrus

*innocent look* No i am not, i am but merely asking for further information.

Anyhows, jokes apart, yes i was wondering about whether you are more interested in similar sounding words or meanings of the words. Ofcourse now that you bring origins into the picture, the word "indra" came into existence coz of the greek and thor due to latin. Is this with you are trying to suggest/claim?

lpetrich

Phaedrus, I suggest that you study some historical linguistics; I was not claiming that "Indra" comes from Greek or that "Thor" comes from Latin -- I was claiming that they were cognates of Greek and Latin words, that they share the same ultimate sources as those words.