--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@> wrote:
> > When and where does this Semitic/IE contact ocurr? Semitic homeland
> is sometimes depicted as Arabian or Northeastern African.
>
> Syria?
>
> Richard.
<
http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/AbVh.pdf>
Bull and IE:
"Some form of bull-cult is not unknown among several of the other IE
peoples ....Among the Iranians, the bull
"appears as one of the incarnations of Verethraghna", the Avestan
equivalent of Indra (Macdonell
1995: 150); there is also the myth of the first man Gayomart and the
first bull Gosh, which may have
been the source of the Mithraic sacrificial bull in Iran and
subsequently other countries. In Greece,
Zeus becomes a bull and carries off Europa, Dionysos is described as a
"bull-god" (Kerényi 1982:
109), Talos the Sun is also called TαÜρος Taurus `the bull' (GM 92,
7), while Achilles sacrifices
several oxen during the cremation of his friend Patroclos's corpse
(Iliad 24, 165-7); the significance
of the bull in Greece probably derives in large part from Minoan times
when bull-rites were common.
Writing of the "great bull" in Ulster (Ireland), A. and B. Rees cite
G. Dumézil to the effect that the
animal "symbolizes the warrior function both in Rome and India' (1995:
124). In India too, apart from
the glorious bulls depicted on Harappan seals, we find that Manu had a
miraculous bull who could kill
demons and foes with his mere snorting; he was sacrificed and his
power passed eventually into the
sacrificial ritual itself (SZatapatha Braahman-a I, 1, 4, 14). In the
same text (II 5, 3, 18) the bull is said to
be Indra's form; earlier, in the RV(=R®gveda) Indra is repeatedly
called a bull vrrswabha"
Some IE peoples have a horse cult and some have a bull cult but the
Vedic people have BOTH (Kazanas, n.d; linked above)
M. Kelkar
>