INDO-EUROPEAN RELIGIONS: AN OVERVIEW

The study of Indo-European religion has a relatively recent origin, for the very existence of the Indo-European language grouping was not recognized until a celebrated lecture given by Sir William ("Oriental") Jones in 1786. Speaking to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Jones first observed that there were striking philological similarities between Greek, Latin, Sanskrit (the ancient language of India), and Persian, too numerous and precise to be explained by simple borrowing or chance. Going further, he suggested that the Celtic and Germanic languages exhibited many of the same features and argued that all of these geographically and historically far-flung languages were best understood as separate derivates of a common parent language, a language nowhere preserved in written form, but which might be reconstructed through systematic comparison of the derivate stocks.

Later research has confirmed the relations among these languages, adding not only Germanic and Celtic firmly to the family now known as Indo-European but also Baltic, Slavic, Armenian, Albanian, Anatolian (chiefly Hittite), and Tokharian (an obscure language found in western China and Turkestan). Rigorous and systematic comparison of words in these various languages has permitted scholars to posit numerous prototypes as a means to explain the systematic resemblances that have been adduced. As a simple example of how this is done one might consider certain words for "god," assembling a set of correspondences (to which other reflexes might be added) as shown in table 1.

From these correspondences, along with the knowledge of Indo-European phonetics gained from hundreds of other such comparisons, linguists can reconstruct a prototype *deywo-s (the asterisk denotes a reconstructed form unattested in any written source), which means "god, deity." Phonetic rules explain the various sound shifts in each language, but one must also note semantic changes in certain stocks, each of which is instructive for the history of the corresponding religion. Thus, for instance, the old word for "god" has become the most important word for demonic beings in Avestan (the Iranian language in which the most ancient Zoroastrian scriptures were composed), a transformation that seems to originate in the prophet Zarathushtra's renunciation of the old Indo-Iranian pantheon.

The Greek reflex of *deywo-s has also lost its sense as "deity," being replaced in this usage by theos. The older term survives as an adjective, however, which reveals one of the fundamental attributes of deity in Indo-European thought: gods are celestial beings, characterized by light, for the word *deywo-s (whence the Greek dios, "celestial") is derived from a verb that means "to shine." In contrast, one of the most important words for "human" identifies people as "terrestrial" beings (note the relation of the Latin homo, "man," and humus, "soil"), while humans and deities are further contrasted in other terminology that identifies them as "mortals" and "immortals" respectively.

This relatively simple example reveals some of the possibilities and some of the pitfalls of research into Indo-European religion. Careful examination of lexical items provides insight into the nature of thought on religious topics. But each of the separate Indo-European families differs from the other families in important regards, and just as Latin phonology differs from Iranian phonology for all that they are related (to cite but one example), so Roman religion is not identical to Iranian: a deus is not the same thing as a daēva.

Reconstruction that proceeds along linguistic lines is relatively safe, however, compared to research that seeks out correspondences in the myths, rituals, laws, cosmologies, and eschatologies of the various Indo-European peoples and that attempts to recover their hypothetical antecedents. Such research is possible, to be sure, but in all instances it is extremely risky and difficult, involving the adducement of parallel phenomena (usually called "correspondences" or "reflexes") attested in the religions of several different Indo-European families; the study of each reflex in its cultural specificity; the isolation of those features that the scattered reflexes hold in common; the explanation of those features that diverge (often called "transformation"); and the positing of a hypothetical prototype that is capable of accounting for evident similarities, along with a train of historical development that explains the forces producing each transformation. Finally, the reconstructed prototype ought to be set within a plausible set of assumptions regarding the nature of Indo-European culture in general.

Based on linguistic and archaeological research, the ancient Indo-European peoples are generally considered to have been semisettled pastoralists, whose wealth consisted of relatively large herds, including domesticated sheep, pigs, goats, and, most important, cattle. Horses were also highly significant, especially when yoked to chariots and used in warfare, but cattle remained the normal draft animals for peaceful purposes, the source of most foods, and the fundamental measure of wealth. Some agriculture seems to have been practiced, although this was much less important and prestigious an activity than herding or war. The pursuit of warfare, especially the raiding of livestock from neighboring peoples, was facilitated not only by use of chariots but also by an elaborate weaponry built on a single metal, probably copper or bronze.

Linguistic data are insufficient to posit the existence of either a homeland or a proto-Indo-European community, and it is possible to view the similarity of the various Indo-European languages as the cumulative result of complex borrowings, influences, and cultural interrelations between multiple social and ethnic groups over many centuries. Some scholars have sought to employ archaeological evidence to demonstrate a specific point of origin for proto-Indo-European society. Of such theories, the most widely accepted is that of Marija Gimbutas, who has delineated what she calls the Kurgan culture, dating to the middle of the fifth millennium bce and located in the southern Russian steppes, in the area that stretches from the Urals to the land north of the Black Sea, and including such groups as the Jamna culture of the Ural-Volga region north of the Caspian and the Srednii Stog II culture north of the Black Sea.

Mythic Legitimations of Society, Economy, and Polity

Comparison of texts in which are described the patterns of social organization among the Indian, Iranian, and Celtic peoples reveals a common structure, which is also preserved in the ideal republic envisioned by Plato. This system is characterized by the distinction of three hierarchically differentiated classes—or "functions," as they are called by Georges Dumézil (1958), who was first to recognize their importance. Moreover, it is possible to reconstruct a number of myths that describe the origin of these classes, their nature, and their sometimes problematic interrelationships.

Most important of these is the creation myth, a complex, polyphonic story that told how the world was created when the first priest (often bearing the name Man, *Manu) offered his twin brother, the first king (often named Twin, *Yemo), in sacrifice, along with the first ox. From Twin's body, the world was made, in both its material and social components. Portions of two reflexes of this myth may conveniently be cited: the first, from the Indic "Song of Purusa" (Ṛgveda 10.90.11–14) dates to about 900 bce; the second, the Old Russian Poem on the Dove King, is mentioned in sources dating to the thirteenth century ce and was still circulating orally in the nineteenth century:

When they divided Purusa, how many pieces did they prepare?
What was his mouth? What are his arms, thighs, and feet called?
The priest was his mouth, the warrior was made from his arms;
His thighs were the commoner, and the servant was born from his feet.
The moon was born of his mind; of his eye, the sun was born;
From his mouth, Indra and fire; from his breath, wind was born;
From his navel there was the atmosphere; from his head, heaven was rolled together;
From his feet, the earth; from his ears, the directions.

Our bright light comes from the Lord,
The red sun from the face of God,
The young shining moon from his breast,
The bright dawn from the eyes of God,
The sparkling stars from his vestments,
The wild winds from the Holy Spirit.
From this our little Tsars are on earth—
From the holy head of Adam;
From this princes and heroes come into being—
From the holy bones of Adam;
From this are the orthodox peasants—

From the holy knee of Adam.

Although this article shall return to the cosmic dimensions of this myth, it is its social contents that are of concern now. Among these, the following four should be noted:

1. Society consists of vertically stratified classes, with priests or sovereigns in the first position, warriors in the second, and commoners—those entrusted with the bulk of productive labor—in the third. To these, a fourth class of relative outsiders—servants, or the like—was sometimes added, as in the Indian example cited above.
2. The characteristic activity of each of these classes is explained and chartered by the part of Twin's body from which they originated. Thus, the intellectuals who direct society by exercise of thought and speech come from his head; those who defend society by their physical prowess come from his chest (heart) and arms; those who produce food, reproduce, and provide material support for the other classes come from the lower body, including belly, loins, legs, and feet.
3. The priest, following the model of Man, has as his prime responsibility the performance of sacrifice, sacrifice being the creative act par excellence.
4. The king, following the model of Twin, combines within himself the essence of all social classes and is expected to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole.

Another myth, which has as its central character the first warrior, whose name was Third (*Trito), provided an analysis of the warrior class. Within this story, it was related that cattle originally belonged to Indo-Europeans but were stolen by a monster, a three-headed serpent who was, moreover, specifically identified as a non-Indo-European. Following this theft, it fell to Third to recover the stolen cattle, and he began his quest by invoking the aid of a warrior deity to whom he offered libations of intoxicating drinks. Having won the god's assistance, and himself fortified by the same intoxicant, Third set forth, found the serpent, slew him, and recovered the cattle, which had been imprisoned by the monster.

This myth, which is attested in more reflexes than any other (its traces are still apparent in countless fairy tales), speaks to the eternal themes of wealth and power. It asserts, first, that cattle—the means of production and of exchange in the most ancient Indo-European societies—rightly belong exclusively to Indo-Europeans, falling into other hands only as the result of theft. Theft is condemned here because of its reliance on stealth and treachery, and it is set in contrast to raiding, which—far from being condemned—is heartily endorsed. Raiding emerges as a heroic action sanctioned by the gods, hedged with ritual, and devoted to regaining what rightfully belongs to the Indo-European warrior or his people. Throughout Indo-European history, Third in his various reflexes has remained the model for warriors, who repeatedly cast themselves in his image—raiding, plundering, and killing their non-Indo-European neighbors, convinced all the while that they were engaged in a sacred and rightful activity.

Yet another myth emphasized the importance of the commoner class to the social totality, although no individual heroic figure was provided as a model for commoners. Rather, the myth begins with separation and even hostility existing between the generalized representatives of the upper classes and those of the commoners. After an inconclusive struggle, however, members of all classes recognize their need for one another, and they merge into a larger, all-encompassing society. Thereafter the classes are expected to cooperate and live harmoniously, although the commoners continue to occupy a subordinate position, a considerable portion of their labor being diverted for the support of the noble classes of priests, warriors, and kings. At the level of mythic ideology, however, if not of actual social process, commoners were assured of their superiority to even the most privileged members of society, for an important set of myths, recently studied by Cristiano Grottanelli, focused on the conflict of a humble woman who was the mother of twins (thus signifying abundant reproductive power) with a king's horses (the emblem of martial and royal power), in which the lowly woman emerged victorious.

Cosmology and the Gods

While Georges Dumézil and his followers have consistently argued that the Indo-European pantheon mirrored the organization of social classes, other scholars have at times been skeptical of this view. Chief among its difficulties is the fact that Dumézil's proposals include none of the gods for whom names can be linguistically reconstructed, all of whom are personified natural phenomena—Shining Sky (*Dyeus), Sun (*Swel), Dawn (*Ausos), and so forth—while reconstructible names exist for none of the deities he proposes.

In general, as noted above, deities were characterized as radiant celestial beings. In addition to the *deywo-s, however, there was another class of divinities associated with the waters beneath the earth's surface and with darkness. These deities—whose names were regularly formed with the preposition signifying downward motion (*ne-, as in Latin Neptunus, Greek Nēreus, Germanic Nerthus, Sanskrit Nirṛti )—figure in myths that are nothing so much as meditations on the interconnections between "above" and "below," involving immergence into and emersion out of the world ocean, as has recently been demonstrated by Françoise Bader.

Speculation on the nature of the cosmos also forms an important part of the creation myth, the social contents of which was touched on above. It must be noted, however, that beyond this social discourse, the myth established a series of homologic relations between parts of the human body and parts of the physical universe—that is to say, an extended parallelism and consubstantiality was posited between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Many texts thus tell of the origin of the sun from the eyes of the first sacrificial victim, stones from his bones, earth from his flesh, wind from his breath, and so forth, while others invert the account—as for instance, in the following medieval accounts, the first Germanic and the second Slavic:

God made the first man, that was Adam, from eight transformations: the bone from the stone, the flesh from the earth, the blood from the water, the heart from the wind, the thoughts from the clouds, the sweat from the dew, the locks of hair from the grass, the eyes from the sun, and he blew in the holy breath. (from the Old Frisian Code of Emsig )

And thus God made man's body out of eight parts. The first part is of the earth, which is the lowliest of all parts. The second is of the sea, which is blood and wisdom. The third is of the sun, which is beauty and eyes for him. The fourth is of the celestial clouds, which are thought and weakness. The fifth is of the wind—that is, air—which is breath and envy. The sixth is of stones, that is, firmness. The seventh is of the light of this world which is made into flesh, that is humility and sweetness. The eighth part is of the Holy Spirit, placed in men for all that is good, full of zeal—that is the foremost part. (from the Old Russian Discourse of the Three Saints )

In these and other texts the elements of the physical universe are converted into the constituent parts of a human body, as cosmogony (a story of the creation of the cosmos) becomes anthropogony (a story of the creation of humankind). In truth, cosmogony and anthropogony were regarded as separate moments in one continuous process of creation, in which physical matter eternally alternates between microcosmic and macrocosmic modes of existence. Bones thus become stones and stones become bones over and over again, matter and change both being eternal, while the body and the universe are only transient forms, alternate shapes of one another.

Ritual Action

The myths that have been under consideration were closely correlated with and regularly represented in numerous ritual forms. Thus, the creation myth was inextricably connected to sacrifice, the most important of all Indo-European rites. Insofar as the first priest created the world through the performance of a sacrifice in which a man and an ox were the victims, so each subsequent priest recreated the cosmos by sacrificing humans or cattle. This was accomplished through manipulation of the homologies of macrocosm and microcosm, such that when the victim was dismembered, its material substance was transformed into the corresponding parts of the universe. Thus, for example, an Indic manual of ritual practice, the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (2.6), provides instructions for the sacrificial dismemberment of an animal victim in terms drawn directly from the creation myth:

Lay his feet down to the north. Cause his eye to go to the sun. Send forth his breath to the wind, his life-force to the atmosphere, his ears to the cardinal points, his flesh to the earth. Thus, the priest places the victim in these worlds.

Without this matter drawn from the bodies of sacrificial victims all the items of the material world—earth, stones, sun, wind, water, and the like—would become depleted; it is only because they are replenished in sacrifice that the cosmos continues to exist.

If sacrifice is thus a sort of "healing" of the cosmos based on principles articulated in the creation myth, medical practice was also based on the same principles and bears a curious relation to sacrifice. For if in sacrifice the priest shifted matter from the body to the universe, then in the healing of a broken limb—as attested in the famous Second Merseberg Charm and corresponding materials throughout the Indo-European world—the healer took matter from the universe and restored it to a broken body, creating new flesh, bones, blood, and the like out of earth, stones, and water.

Royal investiture was based on yet another elaboration of ideas contained within the creation myth, as is suggested by the researches of Daniel Dubuisson. Investigating accounts of ancient "coronation" rituals in Ireland and India, he has shown that a king was ritually constructed by having the essential properties of the three Indo-European social classes placed within his body, symbolic gifts, clothing, unctions, and the like being employed toward this end.

Other rituals were closely related to the myth of Third. Embarking on cattle raids—which were raised to the status of a sacred act as a result of this mythic charter—Indo-European warriors invoked the assistance of martial deities, poured libations, partook of intoxicating drinks, and aspired to states of ecstatic frenzy. Moreover, each young warrior had to pass through certain initiatory rituals before he attained full status as a member of the warrior class. Regularly his first cattle raid was something of a rite of passage for the young warrior, and other initiations were consciously structured on the myth of Third and the serpent. It appears that in some of these, a monstrous tricephalous dummy was constructed, and the initiand was forced to attack it. If able to summon up the necessary courage to do so, he discovered that his seemingly awesome opponent was only a joke, with the implicit lesson that all of his future enemies, however fearsome they might seem, would be no more formidable than this dummy. Those enemies, of course, were to be cast in the role of the serpent—a monster, a thief, and, what is most important, an alien (i.e., a non-Indo-European)—the plunder and murder of whom was established by myth as not only a rightful but also a sacred act.

While the use of intoxicants was an important part of warrior ritual, these had other applications as well. The oldest Indo-European intoxicating beverage was mead, later followed by beer, wine, and a pressed drink known as soma to the Indians and haoma to the Iranians; the symbolism and ideology surrounding all of these remained relatively constant. In all instances, the drink appears as a heightener of abilities and activities. When consumed by a priest, it increases his powers of vision and insight. Similarly, it makes a poet more eloquent, a warrior more powerful, a king more generous and just.

A large group of rituals served to forge bonds of community and to cement important social relations. Extremely important in this regard were certain formalized reciprocal obligations, including hospitality and gift exchange, whereby individuals, lineages, and even larger units were brought into repeated contact and friendly interchange. Marriage also must be considered as a prolonged exchange relationship between social groups, given the predominant preference for exogamy. An individual marriage was thus as much a part of an ongoing exchange between lineages or clans as it was a permanent bond between two individuals.

Verbal rituals—including those of vow, oath, and treaty—played a highly important part in the establishment and preservation of social bonds; accordingly, truth and fidelity were cardinal virtues. Initially, this must be related to the lack of literacy among the most ancient Indo-European peoples, a state of affairs that also contributed to the high development of verbal art (epic poetry, for instance) and mnemonic techniques. But even after the introduction of writing among the scattered Indo-European peoples, a marked preference for the oral transmission of religious lore remained, for the spoken word was perceived as a live vehicle, in contrast to the dead written letter, and was preferred accordingly.

If verbal rituals could serve to establish social connectedness, they could also be used to sunder unwanted connections, as is attested in a formula of outlawry that survives in Hittite and Germanic reflexes, the former dating to 1600 bce. Here, particularly disreputable individuals (an abductor and murderer in the first instance, a grave robber in the second) are told "You have become a wolf" and "May he be a wolf" respectively, the wolf being the most feared predator of pastoral societies, a dangerous outsider ever to be kept at bay. Ironically, however, it was not only outlaws who were regarded as wolves, for Indo-European warriors also styled themselves wolflike beings, as is attested by the many ethnic names derived from the word for "wolf" (thus the Luvians, Lykians, Hirpini, Luceres, Dacii, Hyrcanii, and Saka Haumavarka), personal names so formed (Wolfram, Wolfhart, Wolfgang), and the Greek term lussa ("rabies, wolfish rage"), which denotes the highest pitch of fury attained by heroes such as Achilles and Hector in the Iliad. Apparently what legitimated the wolfish violence of these heroes is that it was directed outside the community of Indo-Europeans, in contrast to that of outlaws, which was directed internally, an inference that is supported by the fascinating name of a heroic warrior attested in the Ṛgveda: Dasyave Vṛka, "wolf to the Dasyu," that is, to the non-Indo-European.

Death, Resurrection, and Eschatology

A central issue in Indo-European religions, as in most religions, was what becomes of an individual after death. Although several scholars have devoted attention to certain details of funerary ideology, the full nature of Indo-European thought on this topic remains to be worked out. Among the major contributions thus far are the studies of Hermann Güntert (1919), who showed that there was a goddess *Kolyo ("the coverer") whose physical form incarnated the mixture of fascination and horror evoked by death, for she was seductively beautiful when seen from the front, while hiding a back that was repulsive—moldy and worm-eaten—in the extreme. Paul Thieme (1952) has also contributed an important study of the view of death as a reunion with departed ancestors, and Kuno Meyer (1919) has shown that in Ireland as in India it was the first mortal (*Yemo, the twin) who founded the otherworld.

If ideas regarding the fate of the soul are unclear—no reconstructible word approximates the semantic range of the English soul, the nearest equivalent being a term for "life-breath"—those on the fate of the body are extremely precise and reveal a remarkable religious content. For death is seen as the last sacrifice that an individual can offer, in which his or her own body is itself the offering. Moreover, that body is transformed into the elements of the physical universe, just as were those of Twin at the time of creation, each death being not only a sacrifice but a representation of the cosmogonic sacrifice. Such a view is preserved, for instance, in Euripides' The Suppliant Women:

Let the corpses now be covered with the earth,
From which each of them came forth to the light
Only to go back thither: breath to the air
And body to earth. (531–534)

Or in the funeral hymn of the Ṛgveda:

Your eye must go to the sun. Your soul must go to the wind. You must go to the sky and the earth, according to what is right.
Go to the waters, if you are placed there. You must establish the plants with your flesh. (10.16.3)

This is not a final fate, however, for it would seem that nothing within the cosmos was perceived as final. Just as cosmogony was seen to alternate with anthropogony, so also death and resurrection. That matter that assumes its cosmic form when one specific human body dies will once again assume bodily form when that specific cosmos itself dies, as must inevitably happen. Greek, Germanic, and Indo-Iranian evidence permits reconstruction of a temporal scheme involving four world ages, the first of which is most pure and stable, followed by ages in which human virtue and the very order of the cosmos gradually break down. At the end of the fourth world age, there is an apocalyptic collapse, followed by the creation of a new, pure, and regenerated world. One of the cardinal features of the eschatological destruction of the cosmos, however, is the resurrection of the dead, their bodies being formed out of the material substance freed when the cosmos falls apart. The new creation that follows is then in most versions accomplished with an initial act of sacrifice. Descriptions of the resurrection are preserved, inter alia, in the Pahlavi Rivāyat Accompanying the Dādistān i dīnīg, a Zoroastrian text of the ninth century ce, and in Plato's Politicus:

[In order to accomplish the resurrection] Ohrmazd summons the bone from the earth, the blood from the water, the hair from the plants, and the life from the wind. He mixes one with the other, and in this manner, he keeps on creating. (Pahlavi Rivayat 48.98–107)

When the transition of the old people to the nature of a child is completed, it follows that those lying [dead] in the earth are put back together there and brought back to life, the process of birth being reversed with the reversal of the world's rotation. (Politicus 271b)

Behind these formulations stand several very simple, yet very profound, principles: (1) matter is indestructible; (2) matter is infinitely transmutable; (3) living organisms and the physical universe are composed of one and the same material substance; (4) time is eternal. While change is thus constant, it is also meaningless, for nothing that is essentially real is ever created or destroyed. Worlds come and go, as do individuals of whatever species, but being—material being—is always there.

The gods are also subject to the same rhythms of dissolution and reemergence, but in truth the gods seem to have been of much less concern than mythic ancestors such as Man, Twin, and Third. Certain statements made above, however, must be corrected in light of what has just been said about the nature of time and the cycles of creation and destruction. For whereas this article initially called these figures the "first" king, priest, and warrior respectively, it must now be concluded that they were merely the first of the current world age, time and the world receding infinitely into the past as well as stretching eternally into the future.

Bibliography

Among the most interesting and important general studies of Indo-European religion are (in chronological order): Joseph Vendryes's "Les correspondances de vocabulaire entre l'indo-iranien et l'italo-celtique," Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 20 (1918): 265–285; Hermann Güntert's Der arische Weltkönig und Heiland (Halle, 1923); Paul Thieme's Mitra and Aryaman (New Haven, 1957); Georges Dumézil's L'idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens (Brussels, 1958); Émile Benveniste's Indo-European Language and Society, translated by Elizabeth Palmer (Coral Gables, Fla., 1975); Franco Crevatin's Ricerche d'antichità indeuropee (Trieste, 1979); and my own Priests, Warriors, and Cattle: A Study in the Ecology of Religions (Berkeley, Calif., 1981).

Specialized studies of particular merit are Marija Gimbutas's numerous articles on the archaeological record of the Indo-Europeans, most complete of which to date is "An Archaeologist's View of PIE in 1975," Journal of Indo-European Studies 2 (Fall 1974): 289–308; Georges Dumézil's three-volume Mythe et épopée (Paris, 1968–1973), in which he demonstrates the ways in which many myths were transformed into epic, pseudohistory, and other genres; Stig Wikander's Der arische Männerbund (Lund, 1938) and Lily Weiser's Altgermanische Jünglingsweihen und Männerbunde (Baden, 1927) on warriors; Wilhelm Koppers's "Pferdeopfer und Pferdekult der Indogermanen," Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik 4 (1936): 279–411, and Kasten Rönnow's "Zagreus och Dionysos," Religion och Bibel 2 (1943): 14–48, on sacrifice (both to be used with caution, however); Daniel Dubuisson's "Le roi indo-européen et la synthèse des trois fonctions," Annales économies sociétés civilisations 33 (January–February 1978): 21–34, on kingship; Hermann Güntert's Kalypso (Halle, 1919); Kuno Meyer, "Der irische Totengott und die Toteninsel," Sitzungberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1919): 537–546; and Paul Thieme's Studien zur indogermanischen Wortkunde und Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952) on death and the otherworld; and my own Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass., 1986) on the creation myth.

Two papers presented at a panel on Indo-European religion held during the Ninth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences (Vancouver, 1983) were of considerable importance: Françoise Bader's "Une mythe indo-européene de l'immersion-émergence" and Cristiano Grottanelli's "Yoked Horses, Twins, and the Powerful Lady: India, Greece, Ireland and Elsewhere."

On the problems and insecurities of research in this area in general, see Ulf Drabin, "Indogermanische Religion und Kultur? Eine Analyse des Begriffes Indogermanisch," Temenos 16 (1980): 26–38; Jean-Paul Demoule, "Les Indo-Européens ont-ils existé?" L'histoire 28 (1980): 108–120; and Bernfried Schlerath, "Ist ein Raum/Zeit Modell für eine rekonstruierte Sprach möglich?" Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft 95 (1981): 175–202.

New Sources

Ballantyne, Tony. Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire. New York, 2002.

Berry, Ellen E., and Anesa Miller Pogacar. Re-Entering the Sign: Articulating New Russian Culture. Ann Arbor, 1995.

Davidson, H. R. Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Syracuse, N.Y., 1989.

Davidson, H. R. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe. New York, 1993.

Green, Miranda. Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art. New York, 1989.

Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London, 1991.

Siebers, Tobin. Religion and the Authority of the Past. Ann Arbor, 1993.

Winn, Shan M. M. Heaven, Heroes, and Happiness: The Indo-European Roots of Western Ideology. Lanham, Md., 1995.

Bruce Lincoln (1987)

Revised Bibliography