From: CeiSerith@...
Message: 17886
Date: 2003-01-21
I think, for example, of the
brother rivalry between *Manus and *Yemos, the latter of
which was killed by *Manus and which I identify as the god of
the earth and ultimately of the dead who are buried in the
earth afterall.
So, if *Yemos is the earth, who is *Manus supposed to be?
Although I think he is meant to be the "first man", our
not-so-perfect ancestor who commits a tragic sin, I have a
feeling that he has a special link with the sky. Hence the
dual opposition idea.
But *Yemos isn't the earth. His skull becomes the sky, his brain the clouds, his eyes the sun and moon. He is rather the cosmos.
I think that the idea of binary opposition in PIE religion is worth investigating, however. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov seem to at least be hinting at the "original" pairing of the god of the bright sky (*Dyeus Pater) and the god of the dark, i.e., stormy, sky (likely *Perkwunos). Personal theory: as PIE society developed into a a complex one, and as it developed from an ergative language into one with three genders, triplicity became at least as important as duality. This gave rise to the Dumezilian functions. *Dyeus Pater got bumped to the first function, and *Perkwunos took the second. This helps explain how such deities as Thor, Indra, and Mars all have agricultural sides to them; it is left over from when they were simply storm deities, that is, rain deities.
David Fickett-Wilbar