I have already mentioned a tendency to think in pairs. There is also a tendency to think in threes. This tendency to think in threes forms the basis of Georges Dumézil's "tripartite ideology." Now this theory is still controversial, with some rather heated emotions on both sides. I fall somewhere in the middle; it seems to explain a lot about Indo-European culture, but is not the be all and end all.
This theory states that Indo-European culture (and, by extension, PIE culture) was divided up into three groups, which Dumezil calls "functions." The first function is the magical-religious one. This consists of the priests and the rulers. The second function is that of the warrior. The third is that of the producers. Shan M. M. Winn has summed it up nicely in a book title: "Heaven, Heroes, and Happiness."
As with all such systems there are elements that do not fit. For instance, the king, although identified with the first function, does not really fit there. He comes out of the second function (he is in fact a warrior), is inaugurated by the first function, but must support all three functions. He is called "transfunctional," then.
There are also those who are outside the structure entirely. These may be slaves, or foreigners, or artisans. They occupy an ambiguous place in society, sometime forming a fourth function (such as in India), and sometime being viewed as somewhat dangerous.
Although I have described them as if they were classes, that is not their entire role. Dumezil named them "functions" rather than "classes" for a reason. They show up in the oddest places. Medicine, for instance, was divided into three types, prayers and magic (first function), surgery (second function), and herbs (third function). In this way the three functions ordered the thinking of the PIEs.
As an interesting case, take the modern American government. Based on a combination of originally Pagan Common Law, Roman government, and Athenian democracy (don't ever let anyone tell you that our system of government is based on Judaeo-Christian principles), it has the Supreme Court (the "priests" who interpret the sacred document), the President (the commander in chief) and the Congress (the representative of the mass of the people). And the Chief Executive is the representative of the second function, who must be inaugurated by the chief of the first function, but serve the country as a whole. The tripartite ideology does indeed show up in the oddest places.
One aspect of the functions which Dumezil did not seem to have noticed, and which has been set up as an alternative theory by others (particularly Michael York), is a binary division, mentioned earlier. Outside/Inside, Female/Male -- the binary division runs through our culture. But it is also a part of the tripartite ideology. The first function may be divided into the enforcers of religious law (the priests) and the enforcer of social law (the king). The second function is divided into the good warrior who protects society and the dangerous one whom we must be protected from. And there is the odd fact that the deities associated with the third function tend to be twins; since one is frequently mortal and one immortal, this may be a recognition of life and death as two sides of the same coin (not that the PIEs had coins, mind you).
So the ideology of the PIEs is an interplay between three and two.
So far I've discussed what is termed the "Indo-European ideology" as the term is used in a technical sense, to refer to Georges Dumézil's system of three functions. In a more everyday sense, though, "ideology" covers more ground, and this is the ground that you might have been thinking about when you opened this page. I'd like to talk about two principles that lie behind Proto-Indo-European religion and society.
The first is what I call the ghosti-principle. *ghóstis is a PIE word which means "one with whom one has a reciprocal obligation of hospitality." Our words "guest" and "host" both come from this word, and that is just what the ghosti-principle implies. There is an interaction among people, and between people and the gods, according to the laws of hospitality. Society is bound together by an exchange of gifts, by acting as guest on one occasion and host on another. In the same way, we are bound to the gods through the giving of gifts and the receiving of blessings. This is the origin of the Indo-European version of sacrifice. When one was performed, some of the animal was burned to go to the gods, and then the people who offered it ate the rest, which was most of the meat. The sacrifice was thus a shared meal, in which the people served as hosts and the gods as guests. Since the gods know the rules the rules of hospitality, they would then be obligated to serve as hosts on another occasion, and they would do so by granting us favors. Although some see this as a cold contractual exchange, it is through this exchange that a relationship is created between the gods and us, bind us closely to them in a shared society.
The second is the *Xártus, which is the pattern of the universe. This word comes from the root *xar- (in the usual notation, *H2er-), meaning "to fit together, particularly according to a pleasing pattern; to dovetail." Both linguistically and ideologically Xártus is the root of the Vedic rta, and the concept is similar as well to the Germanic wyrd. The Xártus is the pattern of the cosmos, but not one that’s imposed from without. Instead it grows from the cosmos itself. (For more on the concept of the see Putting it All Together in Proto-Indo-European and Speculations on the *Xártus.)
The Proto-Indo-Europeans saw the cosmos as centered around a tree and surrounded by water, which also rose up through a well to feed the tree. The tree was the cosmos itself, an ordered arrangement of things and actions, and the water was chaos, disorder. Notice that order is fed by disorder. Left to itself, order, like an unwatered tree, becomes brittle and dead. An influx of chaos is vital to its life. Chaos is dangerous and not capable of supporting life on its own, however, and only becomes meaningful when it is drawn into Order. It is through this interaction (a kind of ghosti-relationship) that the universe can continue to exist.
Order gifts chaos in another way. Things passing out of existence, not only as in living things dying, but even as each moment passing away, are going from order into disorder. If cosmos is seen as the tree, then its dying bits are fruits or nuts. This imagery is found clearly in the Norse cosmology, in which drops of honeydew fall into the surrounding waters. In this way again chaos and cosmos are joined together into a relationship. Chaos gifts order, and order gifts chaos.
If the cosmos is a tree, then its branches form a pattern, which is the Xártus. Notice a number of things. First, the pattern forms itself out of the growth of the tree itself – as the cosmos grows, and actions and things arise and are added to the cosmos, the pattern of the branches changes. The Xártus therefore arises from the cosmos, rather than from outside it.
Note as well that although the cosmos grows the Xártus, the Xártus has an affect on the cosmos. The growth of the tree is not completely free; branches can’t grow from anywhere, and they can’t grow in any way they wish. It may be said that the Xártus impels but does not compel.
We form our lives within the organizing Xártus, and then our lives, like all things that happen in the cosmos, are fed into the Xártus. The things we do, as they pass away, and eventually we ourselves, also fall into the waters of chaos. Eventually, however, like the water from the well, all that we have given to chaos returns to cosmos, transformed first in the waters, and then by the tree. Like the tree, we have been fed by chaos, and we then feed chaos in turn.
In both the ghosti-principle and the functioning of the Xártus, we see the working of the central ideology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, that of reciprocity. This is at the root of our relationship with other people and with the gods, and at the nature of the cosmos. It is impossible to understand PIE religion without understanding reciprocity.
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