Indo-European cosmogony
The Indo-European cosmogony refers to the reconstructed cosmogony of the Proto-Indo-European mythology.
The comparative analysis of different Indo-European tales has led scholars to reconstruct an original Proto-Indo-European creation myth involving twin brothers, *' and *', as the progenitors of the world and mankind, and a hero named * who ensured the continuity of the original sacrifice.
Although some thematic parallels can be made with Ancient Near East, and even Polynesian or South American legends, the linguistic correspondences found in descendant cognates of *Manu and *Yemo make it very likely that the myth discussed here has a Proto-Indo-European origin.
Historiography
Hermann Güntert, stressing philological parallels between the Germanic and Indo-Iranian texts, argued in 1923 for an inherited Indo-European motif of the creation of the world from the sacrifice and dismemberment of a primordial androgyne.Following a first paper on the cosmogonical legend of Manu and Yemo, published simultaneously with Jaan Puhvel in 1975, Bruce Lincoln assembled the initial part of the myth with the legend of the third man Trito in a single ancestral motif.
Since the 1970s, the reconstructed motifs of Manu and Yemo, and to a lesser extent that of Trito, have been generally accepted among scholars.
Myths
Primordial state
The basic Indo-European root for the divine creation is *dʰeh₁, "to set in place, lay down, or establish", as attested in the Hittite expression nēbis dēgan dāir, the Young Avestan formula kə huvāpå raocåscā dāt təmåscā?, the name of the Vedic creator god Dhātr, and possibly in the Greek name Thetis, presented as a demiurgical goddess in Alcman's poetry. The concept of the Cosmic Egg, symbolizing the primordial state from which the universe arises, is also found in many Indo-European creation myths. A similar depiction of the appearance of the universe before the act of creation is given in the Vedic, Germanic and, at least partly, in the Greek tradition.The Rigveda describes it as a state when "neither non-being was nor being was at that time; there was not the air, nor the heaven beyond it... Neither death was nor the immortal then, nor was there the mark of night and day...". In the Germanic tradition, the Wessobrun Prayer tells us that "...earth was not, nor heaven above, nor tree... nor mountain there was, not a single star, nor the sun shone, nor the moon gave light, nor the bright sea...", and the author of the Völuspá writes that "...there was not sand nor sea nor the cool waves; earth was nowhere nor heaven above; Ginnunga Gap there was, but grass nowhere..."
Although the idea of a created world is untypical of early Greek thinking, similar descriptions have been highlighted in Aristophanes's The Birds: "...there was Chasm and Night and dark Erebos at first, and broad Tartarus, but earth nor air nor heaven there was..." The analogy between the Greek Χἁος and the Norse Ginnungagap has also been noted by scholars. The importance of heat in Germanic creation myths has also been compared with similar Indian beliefs emphasized in the Vedic hymn on "cosmic heat".
Cosmic sacrifice
The first man Manu and his giant twin Yemo are crossing the cosmos, accompanied by the primordial cow. To create the world, Manu sacrifices his brother and, with the help of heavenly deities, forges both the natural elements and human beings from his twin's remains.Manu thus becomes the first priest after initiating sacrifice as the primordial condition for the world order. His deceased brother Yemo turns into the first king as social classes emerge from his anatomy.
Although the European and Indo-Iranian versions differ on this matter, the primeval cow was most likely sacrificed in the original myth, giving birth to the other animals and vegetables. Yemo may have become the King of the Otherworld, the realm of the dead, as the first mortal to die in the primordial sacrifice, a role suggested by the Indo-Iranian and, to a lesser extent, in the Germanic, Greek and Celtic traditions.
First Warrior
To the third man Trito, the celestial gods offer cattle as a divine gift, which is stolen by a three-headed serpent named *.Trito first suffers at his hands, but fortified by an intoxicating drink and aided by a helper-god, together they go to a cave or a mountain, and the hero finally manages to overcome the monster. Trito then gives the recovered cattle back to a priest for it to be properly sacrificed. He is now the first warrior, maintaining through his heroic deeds the cycle of mutual giving between gods and mortals.
Interpretations
Three Functions
According to Lincoln, Manu and Yemo seem to be the protagonists of "a myth of the sovereign function, establishing the model for later priests and kings", while the legend of Trito should be seen as "a myth of the warrior function, establishing the model for all later men of arms". He has thus interpreted the narrative as an expression of the priests's and kings's attempt to justify their role as indispensable for the preservation of the cosmos, and therefore as essential for the organization of society. The motif indeed recalls the Dumézilian tripartition of the cosmos between the priest, the warrior, and the herder.Primeval hermaphrodite
Some scholars have proposed that the primeval being Yemo was depicted as a two-folded hermaphrodite rather than a twin brother of Manu, both forming indeed a pair of complementary beings entwined together. The Germanic names Ymir and Tuisto were understood as twin, bisexual or hermaphrodite, and some myths give a sister to the Vedic Yama, also called Yamī. The primordial being may therefore have self-sacrificed, or have been divided in two, a male half and a female half, embodying a prototypal separation of the sexes that continued the primordial union of the Sky Father with the Mother Earth.Cattle-raiding myth
The story of Trito served as a model for later cattle raiding epic myths and most likely as a moral justification for the practice of raiding among Indo-European peoples. In their legends, Trito is portrayed as only taking back what rightfully belongs to his people, those who sacrifice properly to the gods. Although cattle raiding is a common theme found in every societies keeping cattle, it was particularly popular among Indo-European peoples, as attested by the legends of Indra and the Panis, Beowulf and Grendel, the quest of Queen Medb for the Bull, or Odysseus hunting down the cattle of Helios.The myth has been variously interpreted as a cosmic conflict between a heavenly hero and an earthly serpent; as a depiction of the male fellowships' struggle to protect society against external evil; or as an Indo-European victory over non-Indo-European people, the monster symbolizing the aboriginal thief or usurper. The Vedic serpent Viśvarūpa is indeed described as a *dāsa, an aboriginal inhabitant who is inimical to the Indo-European invaders; the Iranian serpent Aži Dahāka carries in his name the pejorative suffix -ka; and the Latin inimical giant Cācus is depicted as a non-Indo-European aborigine, hostile to Romans and Greeks alike. According to Martin L. West, the Proto-Indo-European name *Trito may have been a "poetic or hieratic code-name, fully comprehensible only with specialized knowledge".
Evidence
Linguistic
Manu and Yemo
s deriving from the Proto-Indo-European First Priest *Manu include the Indic Mánu, legendary first man in Hinduism, and Manāvī, his sacrificed wife; the Germanic Mannus, mythical ancestor of the West Germanic tribes; and the Persian Manūščihr, Zoroastrian high priest of the 9th century AD.From the name of the sacrificed First King *Yemo derive the Indic Yama, god of death and the underworld; the Avestan Yima, king of the golden age and guardian of hell; the Norse Ymir, ancestor of the giants ; and most likely Remus, killed in the Roman foundation myth by his twin brother Rōmulus. Latvian jumis, Latin geminus and Middle Irish emuin are also linguistically related.
| Tradition | First Priest | First King | First mammal | Heavenly gods |
| Proto-Indo-European | *Manu | *Yemo | Primordial Cow | Sky-Father, Storm-God, Divine Twins |
| Indian | Mánu, Puruṣa | Yama, | Manu's bull | The Vedic gods |
| Iranian | Ahriman, Spityura, Manūščihr | Yima, Gayōmart | Primordial Ox | – |
| Germanic | Mannus | Ymir, Tuisto | Primordial Cow | Óðinn and his brothers |
| Roman | Rōmulus | *Yemos | She-wolf | The senators |
Trito and Ngʷhi
s stemming from the First Warrior *Trito include the Vedic Trita, the hero who recovered the stolen cattle from the serpent Viśvarūpa; the Avestan Thraētona, who won back the abducted women from the serpent Aži Dahāka; and the Norse þriði, one of the names of Óðinn. Other cognates may appear in the Greek expressions trítos sōtḗr, an epithet of Zeus, and tritogḗneia, an epithet of Athena; and perhaps in the Slavic mythical hero Troyan, found in Russian and Serbian legends alike.*Ngʷhi, a term meaning "serpent", is also related to the Indo-European root for negation. Descendent cognates can be found in the Iranian Aži, the name of the inimical serpent, and in the Indic áhi, a term used to designate the monstrous serpent Viśvarūpa.
| Tradition | First Warrior | Three-headed Serpent | Helper God | Stolen present |
| Proto-Indo-European | *Trito | * | The Storm-god or Hₐnēr | Cattle |
| Indian | Trita | Viśvarūpa | Indra | Cows |
| Iranian | Thraētona | Aži Dahāka | *Vr̥traghna | Women |
| Germanic | þriði, Hymir | Three serpents | Þórr | Goats |
| Graeco-Roman | Herakles | Geryon, Cācus | Helios | Cattle |
Mythological
Many Indo-European beliefs explain aspects of human anatomy from the results of the original dismemberment of Yemo: his flesh usually becomes the earth, his hair grass, his bone yields stone, his blood water, his eyes the sun, his mind the moon, his brain the clouds, his breath the wind, and his head the heavens. The traditions of sacrificing an animal before dispersing its parts following socially established patterns, a custom found in Ancient Rome and India, has been interpreted as an attempt to restore the balance of the cosmos ruled by the original sacrifice. sucking the milk of the primeval cow Auðumbla. 1790.The Indo-Iranian legendary first mortal man or king *YamHa is presented as the son of the solar deity *Hui-uas-uant. In the Indo-Iranian version of the myth, his brother Manu also sacrifices the cow, and from the parts of the dead animal are born the other living species and vegetables. In the European reflexes, the cow serves only as a provider of milk and care for the twins before the creation. This divergence may be explained by the cultural differences between the Indo-Iranian and European branches of the Indo-European family, with the former still strongly influenced by pastoralism, and the latter much more agricultural, perceiving the cow mainly as a source of milk. According to Lincoln, the Indo-Iranian version of the creation myth best preserves the ancestral motif, since they lived closer to the original Proto-Indo-European pastoral way of life.Both the Rigveda and the Younger Avesta depict the slaying of a three-headed serpent by a hero named Trita Āptya or Thraēta Āthwya in order to recover cattle or women. The two names are cognates deriving from PIE *Trito, and the Indo-Iranian *Atpya may refer to the name of a family of heroes. They are both known as preparers of the Indo-Iranian sacred beverage *sauma, which the hero *Trita Atpya probably drank to obtain god-like powers. The Greek story of Herakles recovering the stolen cattle from the thee-headed monster Geryon is probably related, and a Germanic reflex may be found in the depiction of a three-head man fighting three serpents while holding a goat.
Indian
appears in the Rigveda as the first sacrificer and the founder of religious law, the Law of Mánu. He is the brother of Yama, both appearing as the sons of Vivasvat. The association of Mánu with the ritual of sacrifice is so strong that those who do not sacrifice are named amanuṣāḥ, which means "not belonging to Mánu", "unlike Mánu", or "inhuman". The Song of Puruṣa tells how the body parts of the sacrificed primeval man led to the creation of the cosmos and the Hindu castes. In the later Śatapatha Brāhmana, both a primordial bull and Mánu's wife Manāvī are sacrificed by the demi-gods Asuras. According to Lincoln, this could represent an independent variant of the original myth, with the figure of Yama laying behind that of Manāvī.Invoked in funeral hymns of the Rigveda, Yama is depicted as the first man to die, the one who established the path towards death after he freely chose his own departure from life. Although his realm was originally associated with feasting, beauty and happiness, Yama was gradually portrayed as a horrific being and the ruler of the Otherworld in the epic and puranic traditions. Some scholars have equated this abandonment of his own body by Yama with the sacrifice of Puruṣa. In a motif shared with the Iranian tradition, touched in the Rigveda and told in later traditions, Yama and his twin sister Yamī are presented as the children of the sun-god Vivasvat. Discussing the advisability of incest in a primordial context, Yamī insists to have sexual intercourse with her brother Yama, who rejects it, thus forgoing his role as the creator of mankind.
In the Vedic tradition, Trita Āptya and Indra maintain a relationship of mutual assistance, Trita giving soma to the god so that he can, in return, provide help to the hero in his fight against the monster Viśvarūpa. Trita confronts the three-headed dragon, and kills him to let the cows go out. Finally, Indra cuts off three heads of Viśvarūpa and drives the cows home for Trita.
Iranian
After a religious transformation led by Zarathustra that degraded the status of prior myths and deities, *Manuš was replaced in the Iranian tradition by three different figures: Ahriman, who took his role as first sacrificer; Manūščihr, who replaced him as ancestor of the priestly line; and Zarathustra himself, who took his role as priest par excellence. Manūščihr is described in the Greater Bun-dahišnīh as the ancestor of all Mōpats of Pars, and it has been proposed that *Manuš was originally regarded as the First Priest among pre-Zoroastrian tribes.In pre-Zoroastrian Iran, Yima was seen as the first king and first mortal. The original myth of creation was indeed condemned by Zarathustra, who makes mention of it in the Avesta as the two spirits that "appeared in the beginning as two twins in a dream... who first met and instituted life and non-life". Yima in particular is depicted as the first to distribute portions of the cow for consumption, and therefore explicitly condemned for having introduced the eating of meat. After a brief reign on earth, the king Yima was said in a later tradition to be deprived of his triple royal nimbus, which embodied the three social classes in Iranian myths. Mithra receives the part of the Priest, Thraētona that of the Warrior, and Kərəsāspa that of the Commoner. The saga ends with the real dismemberment of Yima by his own brother, the daiwic figure Spityura. In another myth of the Younger Avesta, the primal man Gayōmart and the primeval world ox Gōšūrvan are sacrificed by the destructive spirit Ahriman. From the ox's parts came all plants and animals, and from Gayōmart's body the minerals and humankind. In the Vīdēvdāt, Yima is presented as the builder of an underworld, a sub-terrestrial paradise eventually ruled by Zarathustra and his son. The story, giving a central position to the new religious leader, is once again probably the result of a Zoroastrian reformation, and Yima may have been the original ruler of the realm of the dead.In the Younger Avestan, the stolen cattle of *Trito was replaced with his two beautiful wives, said to have been abducted by the serpent Aži Dahāka and whom the hero Thraētona eventually wins back after confronting the monster. Vantā, which means "female who is desired", has been compared with Indo-Iranian *dhainu, a frequent word for "cow" also used to designate female humans. Although Thraētona was aided in his quest by several deities, the pre-Zoroastrian warrior-god *Vr̥traghna seems the most probable original helper-god, since it was the name introduced in the Armenian version of the myth as Vahagn.
Graeco-Roman
Roman writer Livy relates the murder of Remus by his brother Rōmulus at the legendary founding of Rome, following a disagreement about which hill to build the city on. In a version of the myth, Rōmulus himself is said to have been torn limb-from-limb by a group of senators for being a tyrant, perhaps a reflex the gods who sacrificed the twin giant in the original motif. Like in the Proto-Indo-European creation myth, the sacrifice of Remus led ultimately to the birth of the three Roman "tribes", and to the enthronement of his brother as the "First King".It is likely that Remus was originally seen as the main protagonist of the Latin myth, since the formula initially went by Remo et Romulo, and he was often used as an elliptic replacement for the whole couple, as in Remi nepotes, a poetic name for the Romans. While the name Rōmulus is interpreted as a back-formation of the city of Rōma, Remus is derived from PIE *Yemo, via the Proto-Latin form *Yemos or *Yemonos. The initial 'y' sound may have shifted to 'r' as a result of long and frequent associations with the names Roma and Rōmulus in Latin stories. In the legend reported by Livy, Rōmulus and Remus were nurtured as infants by a she-wolf, a motif that parallels the cow nourishing Ymir in the Old Norse version.Some scholars have proposed that the original motifs of Yemo, the Proto-Indo-European sacrificed twin ancestor and ruler of the dead, have been transferred in Greek mythology to three different figures: Kronos, Rhadamanthys and Menealos.
A possible reflex of the original legend of the Third Man *Trito may be found in a Greek myth told by Hesiod. A three-headed monster named Geryon, the grandson of Medusa, is said to have been killed by Herakles to recover a stolen cattle. The Greek hero is helped by the sun-god Helios, from whom he borrows the cup in order to cross the western Ocean and reach the island of Erythea. Together with his herdsman Eurytion and his dog, Herakles finally overcomes the monster and drives the cattle back to Greece.
Roman versions of myth, which relied on earlier Greek texts, have been remodelled around an opposition between Hercules and a fire-breathing ogre named Cācus, living in a cave on the Aventine. They have nonetheless retained some features of the original three-headed monstrous opponent: Hercules' club, with which he kills Cācus with three strikes, is said to be three-noded; and Hercules runs around the mountain three times after finding the monster's cave, batters the door three times, and sits down to rest three times before finally breaking in. Like in the Iranian and Greek versions, Cācus is portrayed as the one who initially stole the cattle which rightfully belongs to the hero, Hercules.
Germanic
is depicted in the Eddas as the primal being and a frost giant. After Óðinn and his brothers killed him, they made the earth out of his flesh, the mountains from his bones, the trees from his hair, the sky from his skull, and the sea and lakes from his blood; and from his two armpits came a man and a woman. The Germanic name Ymir meant "Twin", and some scholars have proposed that it was also understood as hermaphrodite or bisexual. In fact, one of his legs is said to make love to the other, fathering a six-headed son, the ancestor of the giants. In another Old Norse story, the primeval cow Auðhumla is said to be formed from melting ice like Ymir, and she fed him with her milk.In Germania, Tacitus reports the belief in a myth involving an earth-born god named Tuisto who fathered Mannus, the ancestor of West Germanic peoples. Tuisto has begotten Mannus on his own, and his name is also understood to mean hermaphrodite. Some scholars have proposed that the Germanic tribal name Alamanni meant "Mannus' own people", although "all-men" remains the most widely accepted etymology among linguists.
A Germanic reflex of myth of Trito fighting the three-headed serpent Ngʷhi may be found on the Golden Horns of Gallehus, where a thee-headed man is portrayed as holding a goat and confronting three serpents. One of the names of Óðinn, Þriði, is also linguistically related to *Trito. Another reflex may be found in the Norse legend of the giant Hymir who employed an ox head to capture the serpent Jǫrmungandr with the help of the storm-god Thor.