Indo-European and Indo-Iranian

The notion “Indo-European”#

A linguistic term denoting the comparativistically reconstructible protolanguage that underlies the following language groups.

2nd millennium B.C.: Indic, Anatolian, Greek branches.
1st millennium B.C.: Iranian, Italic.
Christianization: Celts. Germanics. Baltics, Slavs.
1st millennium A.D.: Armenians
Spread of Indic Buddhism: Tocharian

with the times being the times that the corresponding language groups gained literacy and transited from prehistory to history.

Where, When?#

Archeology of recent vintage points to a specific cultural presence in the Eurasiatic steppe region north and east of the Caspian Sea, between the Volga River and the Altai Mountains, and, from radiocarbon dating, its dynamic spread westward during the third millennium B.C. Characteristics of the culture:

inhumation burials in barrows,
horse and cattle breeding,
the use of wheeled vehicles.

Moreover postulating such a third-millennium trans-Caspian starting point for the Indo-European migrations, many linguistic elements fall into place.

Indo-Iranian group#

This is a self-contained subunit under the Indo-European umbrella that affords a simpler, 2-dimensional (i.e. without time) laboratory for initial testing of the tenets of diachronic myth study on the monogenetic model. It is evident on formal and substantive linguistic grounds alike that Indic and Iranian are parallel offshoots of a joint Indo-Iranian prototype, a distinct subunit subsequent to Proto-Indo-European itself.

In particular, the oldest Vedic Sanskrit and the earliest attested form of Iranian, the Gathas of the Avesta are so close in language and in poetic and formulaic style as to allow a glimpse of the prototype not frar belowe the prehistoric horizon. The same is true of religion and myth. There is a readily inferrable proto-Iranian level that in most essentials closely matches Vedic tradition.

But it should be noticed that the Indo-Iranian subgroup inched close to history only as they came to inpinge on the culture cradles of the Near East and gained literacy. The earliest attestation comes from neither India nor Iran but northern Mesopotamia, and became known only with the discovery and interpretation of the Hittite royal archives. Circa 1400 B.C., around Mitanni on the upper Euphrates, a kind of buffer state between Egypt, Semites to the east, and Hittites to the north, with population in the main Hurrian, was overlaid with a horse-breeding ruling aristocracy whose language was essentially Old Indic. Also when about 1380 B.C. the weak Mitannian king sealed by treaty his allegiance to the king of the Hittities he listed among the divine guarantors of his loyalty (punishers of his potential oath breaking) a set of Old Indic deities (Mitra, Uruwana/Aruna, Indara, Nasattiya - corresponding to Mitra, Varuna, Indra, the twin Nasatyas)- how it strayted and briefly flowered separated by thousands of miles of mountain and desert from India? Also note that it was already specifically Indic, no longer Common Indo-Iranian in kind, thus Indo-Iranian linguistic and cultural unity must have become sundered well before the Indic component bifurcated en route.

Reconstructing an Indo-European protomyth#

To reconstruct an Indo-European protomyth, it means recapturing via the comparative method a piece of the onetime living religion of a hypothetical protosociety. The procedure is to evaluate in relation to one another such survival versions as can be judiciously isolated and identified. The least changed varieties would best reflect the prototype and hence there is a premium on the conservatism of the tradition. The most retentive societies would tend to be those that are the most sedentary, self-sufficient, and self-enclosed. Conversely, migratory groupos, with rapid changeover of environment and exposure to alien ways, usually undergo much change, especially if the contact element is culturally superior.

Myth can be transmitted either in its immediate shape (sacred narrative anchored in theology and interlaced with liturgy and ritual), or in transmuted form, as past narrative that has severed its ties to sacred time and instead functions as an account of purportedly secular, albeit extraordinary happening (e.g. into heroic saga, for instance, the superseded Vedic myth finds its epic use in the Mahabharata and Ramayana). In India, Iran, and Scandinavia all such literary matter is a belated sideline to the direct transmission of living or at least embalmed myth. In Rome, however, it plays a more central role, because myth as such is not present as sacred lore in the native tradition.

Rome has ritual stripped of discernible myth on the one hand and quasi-historical epicaized narrative with a patriotic tinge on the other. Yet these remaining ingredients are so archaic and basic that Rome is nevertheless, paradoxically, crucial to Indo-European comparative mythology.