10 See
Interpreter Bible, I:560.
13
indo-european mythology and religion
Iranians are represented in Herodotus as worshipping the
“circle of heaven” (Ahura, from Ashur/Anshar – circle
of heaven) as well as the heavenly bodies. The Iranians
discussed by Herodotus, however, did not build temples
or worship statuary representations of their deities
(I,131), and this emphasises their ancient affiliation with
the Scythians, whereas the Mitanni – and the Hittite-
Hurrians, however, were certainly not averse to such
representations. Besides, the Iranian rituals are described
by Herodotus as not involving fire, even though the later
Zoroastrian religion—like the Indic—is indeed typified
by its worship of fire, Atar. This suggests that the later
Iranians must have come into contact in the south with
the Purūrava Ailas [Elamites/Hurrians], who, as we shall
see,11 derived their worship of fire from the Gandharvas
who are related to the settlers of the Bactro-Margiana
Archaeological Complex in Afghanistan.12
The earliest historical branch of the Indo-Āryans is
manifest in the 16th century B.C. in northern Mesopotamia,
in the kingdom of the Mitanni. The original home of the
Mitanni remains uncertain. The Mitanni themselves may
be identifiable with the Medes, and, as Herodotus (VII,69)
reveals, the Medes were once universal y called Arians.
The Medes may have been related to the proto-Iranians,
since several Median words are traceable in Old Persian.
The Mitanni kings have Sanskritic names distinguished
by their charioteering affiliation, and this expertise is
reflected also in the names (Keres-aspa, Pourus-aspa)
of the Iranian branch of the Āryan family, as well as in
the extraordinary prestige ascribed to the horse by the
Indo-Āryans in their sacred rituals. The close relation
between the Indo-Āryans and Iranians and the Scythians
is confirmed by the veneration of the horse among the
11 See p.96.
12 See p.72.
14
alexander jacob
Scythians reported by Herodotus (IV,61). However, the
Mitanni exhibit an adherence to a Vedic (and not to the
later Zoroastrian Avestan) form of religion, along with a
worship of Hurrian deities, thus establishing the relative
lateness of the Zoroastrian religion.
The sons of Gamer, in the biblical Table of Nations,
include Ashkenaz (the Scythians, who are eastern,
shatem-language speaking Japhetites), Riphath
(Paphlagonians, according to Josephus) and Thokarmah
(Phrygians, according to Josephus, or Armenians,
according to Hippolytus of Rome).13 The Celts and the
Scythians are closely associated, as is indicated by Strabo
(XI,7,2), who states that the Greek authors called all the
northern populations Scythians or Celtoscythians. Also,
Asclepiades of Thrace (4 th c. B.C.) refers to the legendary
king Boreas as a king of the Celts while in other authors
he appears as a king of the Scythians, even though
the Scythians are younger than the Cimmerians. The
Scythians are located by Herodotus north of the Black
Sea in close proximity to the Cimmerians. According to
Herodotus (IV,3), the Scythians considered themselves as
the “youngest of all nations”. However, the wide territory
of the Scythians extended through Russia to Central Asia.
The Scythians are also closely associated with the Indo-
Iranians with whom they shared an eastern “shatem”
Āryan language and much of their religious practices.
The predominance of the Iranian language in the regions
inhabited by Cimmerians and Scythians, that is, from the
Danube to the Dnieper, is evidenced also by the names
of the Danube, Dnieper, and Dniester, which employ
the Avestan term “danu” for river. Indeed, this area
corresponds to that inhabited by the Slavs and we may
13 That the name may denote the Armenians is made probable by
the fact that their ancestor is called Tcorghom (see A.E. Redgate, The Armenians, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p.14).
15
indo-european mythology and religion
reasonably consider the Scythians as the forebears of the
latter.
Herodotus’ account of the Scythians (IV,59) however
suggests that they did not possess much sophistication
in their religious rituals. Darius I (522-486 B.C.) himself
refers to the Sakas as “unruly” and not devoted to Ahura
Mazda. Herodotus’ account of the religious customs of
the Scythians (IV,59) indeed reveals their sharp focus on
martial life, since they apparently did not set up altars
or statues to any god except Ares, god of war. Eliade’s
researches also point to a very rudimentary practical
application of the spiritual bases of the cosmological
religion of the ancient Near East to quasi-shamanistic
rituals. This also explains their ancient designation as
“hoamavarga”, or “soma-drinking”, Scythians.
Indeed all the Āryan peoples may be traced back
ultimately to the Hut Grave and Catacomb Grave
cultures of the Ukraine (ca. 2800 B.C.) and, earlier, to the
Yamnaya Culture (fourth millennium B.C.), also north
of the Black Sea. But it is interesting to note that both
the Indians and the Avestan Iranians seem original y
to have been nomadic peoples akin to the Scythians, as
is attested by the language of the Old Avesta, wherein
the cosmos is viewed as an enormous tent. However,
there may have been other waves of Indo-Āryans that
settled in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex
[situated in present-day Afghanistan and Turkmenistan]
around 2200–1700 B.C. and the Gandhara region
[around Peshawar] around 1700 B.C., for these seem to
have followed a religion based on fire-rituals. Elaborate
fire altars are evident in the ruins of the BMAC complex
which correspond to the Āryan fire-sacrifices. The
temples also contain rooms with “all the necessary
apparatus for the preparation of drinks extracted from
16
alexander jacob
poppy, hemp and ephedra” that may have been used for
the soma-rituals.14
When we investigate the crucial issue of the
institution of fire-rituals among the Indo-Āryans, we
should remember that neither the earliest Iranians, nor
the Mitanni Indo-Āryans, nor the Scythians give any
evidence of such fire-worship. In the Purānas, Purūravas,
the early Aila [Elamite?] king, is said to have obtained
sacrificial fire from the “Gandharvas”, who also taught
him the constitution of the three sacred fires of the
Āryans. This suggests that the early Hurrians of Elam and
the earliest Iranians did not worship fire and learnt it from
a later wave of Āryans. However, even the Gandharvas
are included among the Aila [Elamite?] dynasties in the
Purānas, which suggests that they to
o were a northern
and eastern branch of proto-Hurrians identifiable with the
Japhetic.
***
As for the western “centum” Aryans, even though
the Cimmerians or Celts, represented by Gamer, are
considered the first-born of Japheth, the earliest historical
evidence of a “centum” language is from Anatolia,
among the Hittites. The so-called Hittites were, unlike
the native Hatti, Āryans. But they, like the Cimmerian
Japhetites (as well as the Semites and Hamites) do not
provide archaeological evidence of any fire-rituals in their
religious worship. The Hittite kingdom also shows a strong
neo-Hurrian cultural influence from the fifteenth century
B.C. and many of the Hittite queens bear Hurrian names,
just as in the case of the Mitanni. The Hittite religion is
14 See J.P. Mallory and V.H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, London: Thames and Hudson, 2008, p.262.
17
indo-european mythology and religion
ful y Sumero-Hurrian but has particular affinities with the
Mitanni and Indo-Āryan as wel .
Greeks most probably arrived in the Hel adic region
around 2200 B.C. from Anatolia, though it is possible that
Japhetic tribes from the shores of the Black Sea moved
overland to Greece as wel . The pre-Greek Minoan culture
of Crete, however, was instrumental in developing the
Linear A script (before 1700 B.C.) which preceded the
Āryan Mycenean Linear B (1300 B.C.). And just as the
Cretan script is at the base of the Mycenean, so too their
religion is continued unchanged by the later immigrants.
It is not surprising thus that the Cretan Zeus, who is
identifiable with Dionysus, is called Zagreus, which
suggests an origin of the deity in the Zagros mountains of
western Iran.
Farther west, one of the oldest branches of the
Germanic peoples is called the Alemanni. According
to Snorri Sturluson, the author of the Prose Edda, the
Germans first derived their religion from Anatolians
who moved into Europe. The first Anatolian (one of the
“Aesir” [Asuras]) who migrated into Germany is said to be
“Voden” or “Odin”, the god of Wind [the original Germanic
form, Wotan, is clearly related to the Indo-Iranian Wāta,
a form of the wind-god, Vāyu]. Odin, however, is said to
be a distant descendant of “Tror” or “Thor”,15 the son of a
Trojan king called Mennon or Munon [=Manu?] who had
married a daughter of King Priam. Thor himself is said to
have first wandered to Thrace and then to other parts of
the world. We will note that Thrace is also the source of
the Dionysiac cult.
Odin’s three sons, Vegdeg, Beldeg (Baldur) and
Sigi ruled over East Germany, Westphalia, and France,
respectively. Further expeditions took Odin to Denmark,
15 Cf. Ch.VII.
18
alexander jacob
Sweden, and Norway, whereby he succeeded in spreading
the “language of Asia” all over Europe. We see therefore
the centrality of Anatolia as the land whence most of
the western Indo-European cultures were derived, even
though the Celtic Cimmerians were largely located north
of the Black Sea.
According to Tacitus, Mannus [cognate with the Indic
Manu] was the ancestor of the Germanic race, and he
had three sons represented by the Ingaevones (the north
Germans including the Scandinavians and the ancestors
of the Anglo-Saxons), Herminones (the West Germans
including the Goths, Burgundians and Lombardians)
and Istaevones (the Low Germans, Franks, Dutch and
Belgians). The first Germanic tribe to have crossed the
Rhine and ousted the indigenous Celts were the Tungri (a
Belgic tribe), whose other name, Germani, was used for
all the tribes.
The chief god of the Germans is said by Tacitus to
be the creator god Tuisto [from Tvashtr/Tvoreshtar/
Tartarus], though Ingvi, another name for Freyr, must
have been the god of the Ingaevones just as Hermin, a
name for Wotan, must have been the chief deity of the
Herminones, while Istae remains obscure.
***
As regards the cosmological and philosophical insights
that inform the ancient religions, it is likely that they
were developed first through yogic meditation, as the
Brahmānda Purāna I,i,3,8, for instance, declares. It is
significant that, in the Mahabhārata, Shalyaparva, 44,
Skanda or Muruga, the Dionysiac god of the Dravidians,
is described as being endowed with yogic powers while
his father Shiva is in Mahābhārata, Anushāsanaparva, 14,
19
indo-european mythology and religion
addressed as the “soul of yoga” and the object of all yogic
meditation. Since it is most likely that the Noachidian
people were proto-Dravidian/proto-Hurrian, it is probable
that this profound yogic knowledge of the universe is
characteristic of it.
The religion of the ancients was based on a spiritual
vision of the formation of the cosmos.16 After the cosmic
the Divine Soul, Ātman, within the cosmic ocean (the
Abyss) gradual y recreates the cosmos assuming the form
of an Ideal Macroanthropos, or Cosmic Man. The breath
or life-force (Vāyu/Wotan) of the cosmic Man first unites
with matter (Earth) to form a closely united complex of
Heaven (the substance of the Purusha) and Earth. But the
temporal aspect (Kāla, Chronos) of the rapidly moving
breath or wind also separates the two elements, an event
represented as a castration of the Purusha. The semen that
fal s from the castrated phal us impregnates the Purusha
himself with a Cosmic Egg from which emerge the
manifest cosmos comprised, again, of Earthly substance
and Heavenly light (Brahman). This luminous Brahman is
also represented anthropomorphical y as a Cosmic Man.
However, this light, again represented in
anthropomorphic form, continues to possess a stormy
quality which is a persistence of Chronos in the manifest
cosmos. This force, represented as Zeus/Seth/Ganesha,
shatters the light and forces it to descend to the lower
regions of Earth, where it lies moribund as, for instance,
Osiris. However, the same storm-force has, in its assault
on the manifest light, swallowed the divine phal us and it
eventual y revives the moribund light in the underworld
with its potency. Separating the substance of Earth, into
which the cosmic light has sunk, into the earthly regions
16 For a more elaborate study of the cosmology of the ancient Indo-Europeans see A. Jacob, Ātman. 20
alexander jacob
and heaven of our universe, it emerges through the cleft
between the two into the mid-region of the stars as a
universal Tree of Life, or Phal us. The seed of this newly
formed universe is then emitted within our galaxy, first as
&nbs
p; the moon, and then the solar force final y emerges above
the top of the Tree (Phal us) as the sun.
The process of developing life on earth is supervised by
the seventh Manu of our age whom we have encountered
as the King of Drāvida. This Manu is responsible for
the continuance of mankind on the earth as well as
for its spiritual evolution. In this task, he is assisted by
seven sages, who represent the wisdom and culture of
enlightened man. The brāhmans derive their ancestry
from these seven sages and so we see that the Brāhmanical
religion is indeed the oldest and one original y marked by
yogic spiritual elevation.
Since we have identified the proto-Indo-Europeans
as proto-Hurrians or proto-Dravidians, we may pause
to consider what the earliest form of their religion may
have been. We have noted that the Cimmerians are the
most ancient of the Japhetic Aryans and we know that
their priests were called Druids, so it is possible that the
Druids are indeed descendants of the proto-Dravidians
themselves. The phonetic similarity of “Druid” to
“Drāvida” is obvious.17 In classical texts, the name of the
Druids appears mostly in a plural form, as “druidai“ (Gk.)
or “druidae“ or “druides“ (Lt.).18 In Irish, “drai“ or “druí“
is the singular form of a word meaning “wise man“, of
which “draod“ or “druid“ is the plural. The association of
the Druids with the Greek word for “oak“, first made by
Pliny ( Historia Naturalis XVI,95), is probably a later one due to the importance of tree-worship among the ancient
17 In ancient Indo-European ‘v’ is typical y pronounced ‘u’.
18 See S. Piggott, Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. , London: Cassel , 1962, p.89.
21
indo-european mythology and religion
Druids, as well as amongst most of the ancient Indo-
European peoples, since the sacred tree serves as a symbol
of the divine phal us representing the life of the universe.
The Druids seem to have been the priests of the
Cimmerian Celts, especial y in Gaul and Britain. Since
there is no evidence of them in other Celtic territories
such as the Danube, Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul it is
possible that they are themselves of non-Celtic origin.19
However, among the Gauls, the Druids, along with the
“equites”, constituted the higher “castes”. Piggott believed