Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body
of myths and stories associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
Although these stories are not directly attested,
they have been reconstructed by scholars of
comparative mythology based on the similarities
in the belief systems of various Indo-European
peoples.
Various schools of thought exist regarding
the precise nature of Proto-Indo-European
mythology, which do not always agree with
each other. Vedic mythology, Roman mythology,
and Norse mythology are the main mythologies
normally used for comparative reconstruction,
though they are often supplemented with supporting
evidence from the Baltic, Celtic, Greek, Slavic,
and Hittite traditions as well.
The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes
well-attested deities such as *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr,
the god of the daylit skies, his daughter
*Haéusōs, the goddess of the dawn, the divine
twins, and the storm god *Perkwunos. Other
probable deities include *Péh2usōn, a pastoral
god, and *Seh2ul, a female solar deity.
Well-attested myths of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
include a myth involving a storm god who slays
a multi-headed serpent that dwells in water
and a creation story involving two brothers,
one of whom sacrifices the other to create
the world. The Proto-Indo-Europeans may have
believed that the Otherworld was guarded by
a watchdog and could only be reached by crossing
a river. They also may have believed in a
world tree, bearing fruit of immortality,
either guarded by or gnawed on by a serpent
or dragon, and tended by three goddesses who
spun the thread of life.
== Methods of reconstruction ==
=== Schools of thought ===
The mythology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
is not directly attested and it is difficult
to match their language to archaeological
findings related to any specific culture from
the Chalcolithic. Nonetheless, scholars of
comparative mythology have attempted to reconstruct
aspects of Proto-Indo-European mythologies
based on the existence of similarities among
the deities, religious practices, and myths
of various Indo-European peoples. This method
is known as the comparative method. Different
schools of thought have approached the subject
of Proto-Indo-European mythology from different
angles. The Meteorological School holds that
Proto-Indo-European mythology was largely
centered around deified natural phenomena
such as the sky, the Sun, the Moon, and the
dawn. This meteorological interpretation was
popular among early scholars, but has lost
a considerable degree of scholarly support
in recent years. The Ritual School, on the
other hand, holds that Proto-Indo-European
myths are best understood as stories invented
to explain various rituals and religious practices.
Bruce Lincoln, a member of the Ritual School,
argues that the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed
that every sacrifice was a reenactment of
the original sacrifice performed by the founder
of the human race on his twin brother. The
Functionalist School holds that Proto-Indo-European
society and, consequently, their mythology,
was largely centered around the trifunctional
system proposed by Georges Dumézil, which
holds that Proto-Indo-European society was
divided into three distinct social classes:
farmers, warriors, and priests. The Structuralist
School, by contrast, argues that Proto-Indo-European
mythology was largely centered around the
concept of dualistic opposition. This approach
generally tends to focus on cultural universals
within the realm of mythology, rather than
the genetic origins of those myths, but it
also offers refinements of the Dumézilian
trifunctional system by highlighting the oppositional
elements present within each function, such
as the creative and destructive elements both
found within the role of the warrior.
=== Source mythologies ===
One of the earliest attested and thus most
important of all Indo-European mythologies
is Vedic mythology, especially the mythology
of the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas. Early
scholars of comparative mythology such as
Max Müller stressed the importance of Vedic
mythology to such an extent that they practically
equated it with Proto-Indo-European myth.
Modern researchers have been much more cautious,
recognizing that, although Vedic mythology
is still central, other mythologies must also
be taken into account.Another of the most
important source mythologies for comparative
research is Roman mythology. Contrary to the
frequent erroneous statement made by some
authors that "Rome has no myth", the Romans
possessed a very complex mythological system,
parts of which have been preserved through
the characteristic Roman tendency to rationalize
their myths into historical accounts. Despite
its relatively late attestation, Norse mythology
is still considered one of the three most
important of the Indo-European mythologies
for comparative research, simply due to the
vast bulk of surviving Icelandic material.Baltic
mythology has also received a great deal of
scholarly attention, but has so far remained
frustrating to researchers because the sources
are so comparatively late. Nonetheless, Latvian
folk songs are seen as a major source of information
in the process of reconstructing Proto-Indo-European
myth. Despite the popularity of Greek mythology
in western culture, Greek mythology is generally
seen as having little importance in comparative
mythology due to the heavy influence of Pre-Greek
and Near Eastern cultures, which overwhelms
what little Indo-European material can be
extracted from it. Consequently, Greek mythology
received minimal scholarly attention until
the mid 2000s.Although Scythians are considered
relatively conservative in regards to Proto-Indo-European
cultures, retaining a similar lifestyle and
culture, their mythology has very rarely been
examined in an Indo-European context and infrequently
discussed in regards to the nature of the
ancestral Indo-European mythology. At least
three deities, Tabiti, Papaios and Api, are
generally interpreted as having Indo-European
origins, while the remaining have seen more
disparate interpretations. Influence from
Siberian, Turkic and even Near Eastern beliefs,
on the other hand, are more widely discussed
in literature.
== Pantheon ==
Linguists are able to reconstruct the names
of some deities in the Proto-Indo-European
language (PIE) from many types of sources.
Some of the proposed deity names are more
readily accepted among scholars than others.The
term for "a god" was *deiwos, reflected in
Hittite, sius; Latin, deus, divus; Sanskrit,
deva; Avestan, daeva (later, Persian, div);
Welsh, duw; Irish, dia; Old Norse, tívurr;
Lithuanian, Dievas; Latvian, Dievs.
=== Heavenly deities ===
==== Sky Father ====
The head deity of the Proto-Indo-European
pantheon was the god *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr,
whose name literally means "Sky Father". He
is believed to have been regarded as the god
of the daylit skies. He is, by far, the most
well-attested of all the Proto-Indo-European
deities. The Greek god Zeus, the Roman god
Jupiter, and the Illyrian god Dei-Pátrous
all appear as the head gods of their respective
pantheons. The Norse god Týr, however, seems
to have been demoted to the role of a minor
war-deity prior to the composition of the
earliest Germanic texts. *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr
is also attested in the Rigveda as Dyáus
Pitā, a minor ancestor figure mentioned in
only a few hymns. The names of the Latvian
god Dievs and the Hittite god Attas Isanus
do not preserve the exact literal translation
of the name *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr, but do preserve
the general meaning of it.*Dyḗus Pḥatḗr
may have had a consort who was an earth goddess.
This possibility is attested in the Vedic
pairing of Dyáus Pitā and Prithvi Mater,
the Roman pairing of Jupiter and Tellus Mater
from Macrobius's Saturnalia, and the Norse
pairing of Odin and Jörð. Odin is not a
reflex of *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr, but his cult
may have subsumed aspects of an earlier chief
deity who was. This pairing may also be further
attested in an Old English ploughing prayer
and in the Greek pairings of Ouranos and Gaia
and Zeus and Demeter.
==== Dawn Goddess ====
*Haéusōs has been reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European
goddess of the dawn. Twenty-one hymns in the
Rigveda are dedicated to the dawn goddess
Uṣás and a single passage from the Avesta
honors the dawn goddess Ušå. The dawn goddess
Eos appears prominently in early Greek poetry
and mythology. The Roman dawn goddess Aurora
is a reflection of the Greek Eos, but the
original Roman dawn goddess may have continued
to be worshipped under the cultic title Mater
Matuta. The Anglo-Saxons worshipped the goddess
Ēostre, who was associated with a festival
in spring which later gave its name to a month,
which gave its name to the Christian holiday
of Easter in English. The name Ôstarmânôth
in Old High German has been taken as an indication
that a similar goddess was also worshipped
in southern Germany. The Lithuanian dawn goddess
Aušra was still acknowledged in the sixteenth
century. Uṣás in the Sanskrit tradition
and Eos in the Greek have very similar attributes,
indicating that these attributes were established
by at least the Greco-Aryan period. Both goddesses
are also portrayed as taking mortal lovers.
==== Sun and Moon ====
*Seh2ul and *Meh1not are reconstructed as
the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the Sun
and god of the Moon respectively. *Seh2ul
is reconstructed based on the Greek god Helios,
the Roman god Sol, the Celtic goddess Sul/Suil,
the North Germanic goddess Sól, the Continental
Germanic goddess *Sowilō, the Hittite goddess
"UTU-liya", the Zoroastrian Hvare-khshaeta
and the Vedic god Surya.*Meh1not- is reconstructed
based on the Norse god Máni, the Slavic god
Myesyats, and the Lithuanian god *Meno, or
Mėnuo (Mėnulis). They are often seen as
the twin children of various deities, but
in fact the sun and moon were deified several
times and are often found in competing forms
within the same language.The usual scheme
is that one of these celestial deities is
male and the other female, though the exact
gender of the Sun or Moon tends to vary among
subsequent Indo-European mythologies. The
original Indo-European solar deity appears
to have been female, a characteristic not
only supported by the higher number of sun
goddesses in subsequent derivations (feminine
Sól, Saule, Sulis, Solntse—not directly
attested as a goddess, but feminine in gender
— Étaín, Grían, Aimend, Áine, and Catha
versus masculine Helios, Surya, Savitr, Usil,
and Sol) (Hvare-khshaeta is of neutral gender),
but also by vestiges in mythologies with male
solar deities (Usil in Etruscan art is depicted
occasionally as a goddess, while solar characteristics
in Athena and Helen of Troy still remain in
Greek mythology). The original Indo-European
lunar deity appears to have been masculine,
with feminine lunar deities like Selene, Minerva,
and Luna being a development exclusive to
the eastern Mediterranean. Even in these traditions,
remnants of male lunar deities, like Menelaus,
remain.Although the sun was personified as
an independent, female deity, the Proto-Indo-Europeans
also visualized the sun as the eye of *Dyḗus
Pḥatḗr, as seen in various reflexes: Helios
as the eye of Zeus, Hvare-khshaeta as the
eye of Ahura Mazda, and the sun as "God's
eye" in Romanian folklore. The names of Celtic
sun goddesses like Sulis and Grian may also
allude to this association; the words for
"eye" and "sun" are switched in these languages,
hence the name of the goddesses.
=== Divine Twins ===
==== Horse Twins ====
The Horse Twins are a set of twin brothers
found throughout nearly every Indo-European
pantheon who usually have a name that means
'horse' *ekwa-, but the names are not always
cognate and no Proto-Indo-European name for
them can be reconstructed. In most Indo-European
pantheons, the Horse Twins are brothers of
the Sun Maiden or Dawn goddess, and sons of
the sky god.They are reconstructed based on
the Vedic Ashvins, the Lithuanian Ašvieniai,
the Latvian Dieva deli, the Greek Dioskouroi
(Kastor and Polydeukes), the Roman Dioscuri
(Castor and Pollux), and the Old English Hengist
and Horsa (whose names mean "stallion" and
"horse"). References from the Greek writer
Timaeus indicate that the Celts may have had
a set of horse twins as well. The Welsh Brân
and Manawydan may also be related. The horse
twins may have been based on the morning and
evening star (the planet Venus) and they often
have stories about them in which they "accompany"
the Sun goddess, because of the close orbit
of the planet Venus to the sun.
==== Twin Founders ====
The Proto-Indo-European Creation myth seems
to have involved two key figures: *Manu- ("Man";
Indic Manu; Germanic Mannus) and his twin
brother *Yemo- ("Twin"; Indic Yama; Germanic
Ymir). Reflexes of these two figures usually
fulfill the respective roles of founder of
the human race and first human to die.
=== Storm deities ===
*Perkwunos has been reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European
god of lightning and storms. His name literally
means "The Striker." He is reconstructed based
on the Norse goddess Fjǫrgyn (the mother
of Thor), the Lithuanian god Perkūnas, and
the Slavic god Perúnú. The Vedic god Parjánya
may also be related, but his possible connection
to *Perkwunos is still under dispute. The
name of *Perkwunos may also be attested in
Greek as κεραυνός (Keraunós), an
epithet of the god Zeus meaning "thunder-shaker."
A possible alternative name, through the root
*(s)tenh₂, is responsible for Thor as well
as Hittite Tarhunt and Celtic Taran/Taranis.
The Roman god Mars is also a speculated descendent,
since he originally had thunderer characteristics.
=== Water deities ===
Some authors have proposed *Neptonos or *H2epom
Nepōts as the Proto-Indo-European god of
the waters. The name literally means "Grandson
[or Nephew] of the Waters." Philologists reconstruct
his name from that of the Vedic god Apám
Nápát, the Roman god Neptūnus, and the
Old Irish god Nechtain. Although such a god
has been solidly reconstructed in Proto-Indo-Iranian
religion, Mallory and Adams nonetheless still
reject him as a Proto-Indo-European deity
on linguistic grounds.A river goddess *Dehanu-
has been proposed based on the Vedic goddess
Dānu, the Irish goddess Danu, the Welsh goddess
Don and the names of the rivers Danube, Don,
Dnieper, and Dniester. Mallory and Adams,
however, dismiss this reconstruction, commenting
that it does not have any evidence to support
it.Some have also proposed the reconstruction
of a sea god named *Trihatōn based on the
Greek god Triton and the Old Irish word trïath,
meaning "sea." Mallory and Adams reject this
reconstruction as having no basis, asserting
that the "lexical correspondence is only just
possible and with no evidence of a cognate
sea god in Irish."
=== 
Nature deities ===
*Péh2usōn, a pastoral deity, is reconstructed
based on the Greek god Pan and the Vedic god
Pūshān. Both deities are closely affiliated
with goats and were worshipped as pastoral
deities. The minor discrepancies between the
two deities can be easily explained by the
possibility that many attributes originally
associated with Pan may have been transferred
over to his father Hermes. The association
between Pan and Pūshān was first identified
in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz.In
1855, Adalbert Kuhn suggested that the Proto-Indo-Europeans
may have believed in a set of helper deities,
whom he reconstructed based on the Germanic
elves and the Hindu ribhus. Though this proposal
is often mentioned in academic writings, very
few scholars actually accept it. There may
also have been a female cognate akin to the
Greco-Roman nymphs, Slavic vilas, the Huldra
of Germanic folklore, and the Hindu Apsaras.
=== Societal deities ===
It is highly probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans
believed in three fate goddesses who spun
the destinies of mankind. Although such fate
goddesses are not directly attested in the
Indo-Aryan tradition, the Atharvaveda does
contain an allusion comparing fate to a warp.
Furthermore, the three Fates appear in nearly
every other Indo-European mythology. The earliest
attested set of fate goddesses are the Gulses
in Hittite mythology, who were said to preside
over the individual destinies of human beings.
They often appear in mythical narratives alongside
the goddesses Papaya and Istustaya, who, in
a ritual text for the foundation of a new
temple, are described sitting holding mirrors
and spindles, spinning the king's thread of
life. In the Greek tradition, the Moirai ("Apportioners")
are mentioned dispensing destiny in both the
Iliad and the Odyssey, in which they are given
the epithet Κλῶθες (Klothes, meaning
"Spinners"). In Hesiod's Theogony, the Moirai
are said to "give mortal men both good and
ill" and their names are listed as Klotho
("Spinner"), Lachesis ("Apportioner"), and
Atropos ("Inflexible"). In his Republic, Plato
records that Klotho sings of the past, Lachesis
of the present, and Atropos of the future.
In Roman legend, the Parcae were three goddesses
who presided over the births of children and
whose names were Nona ("Ninth"), Decuma ("Tenth"),
and Morta ("Death"). They too were said to
spin destinies, although this may have been
due to influence from Greek literature.In
the Old Norse Völuspá and Gylfaginning,
the Norns are three cosmic goddesses of fate
who are described sitting by the well of Urðr
at the foot of the world tree Yggdrasil. In
Old Norse texts, the Norns are frequently
conflated with Valkyries, who are sometimes
also described as spinning. Old English texts,
such as Rhyme Poem 70, and Guthlac 1350 f.,
reference Wyrd as a singular power that "weaves"
destinies. Later texts mention the Wyrds as
a group, with Geoffrey Chaucer referring to
them as "the Werdys that we clepyn Destiné"
in The Legend of Good Women. A goddess spinning
appears in a bracteate from southwest Germany
and a relief from Trier shows three mother
goddesses, with two of them holding distaffs.
Tenth-century German ecclesiastical writings
denounce the popular belief in three sisters
who determined the course of a man's life
at his birth. An Old Irish hymn attests to
seven goddesses who were believed to weave
the thread of destiny, which demonstrates
that these spinster fate-goddesses were present
in Celtic mythology as well. A Lithuanian
folktale recorded in 1839 recounts that a
man's fate is spun at his birth by seven goddesses
known as the deivės valdytojos and used to
hang a star in the sky; when he dies, his
thread snaps and his star falls as a meteor.
In Latvian folk songs, a goddess called the
Láima is described as weaving a child's fate
at its birth. Although she is usually only
one goddess, the Láima sometimes appears
as three. The three spinning fate goddesses
appear in Slavic traditions in the forms of
the Russian Rožanicy, the Czech Sudičky,
the Bulgarian Narenčnice or Urisnice, the
Polish Rodzanice, the Croatian Rodjenice,
the Serbian Sudjenice, and the Slovene Rojenice.
Albanian folk tales speak of the Fatit, three
old women who appear three days after a child
is born and determine its fate, using language
reminiscent of spinning.
Although the name of a particular Proto-Indo-European
smith god cannot be linguistically reconstructed,
it is highly probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans
had a smith deity of some kind, since smith
gods occur in nearly every Indo-European culture,
with examples including the Hittite god Hasammili,
the Vedic god Tvastr, the Greek god Hephaestus,
the Germanic villain Wayland the Smith, and
the Ossetian culture figure Kurdalagon. Many
of these smith figures share certain characteristics
in common. Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths,
and Wayland the Smith, a nefarious blacksmith
from Germanic mythology, are both described
as lame. Additionally, Wayland the Smith and
the Greek mythical inventor Daedalus both
escape imprisonment on an island by fashioning
sets of mechanical wings from feathers and
wax and using them to fly away.The Proto-Indo-Europeans
may have had a goddess who presided over the
trifunctional organization of society. Various
epithets of the Iranian goddess Anahita and
the Roman goddess Juno provide sufficient
evidence to solidly attest that she was probably
worshipped, but no specific name for her can
be lexically reconstructed. Vague remnants
of this goddess may also be preserved in the
Greek goddess Athena.Some scholars have proposed
a war god *Māwort- based on the Roman god
Mars and the Vedic Marutás, companions of
the war-god Indra. Mallory and Adams, however,
reject this reconstruction on linguistic grounds.
Likewise, some researchers have found it more
plausible that Mars was originally a storm
deity, while this cannot be said for Ares.
== Mythology ==
=== Dragon or serpent ===
One common myth found in nearly all Indo-European
mythologies is a battle ending with a hero
or god slaying a serpent or dragon of some
sort. Although the details of story often
vary widely, in all iterations, several features
remain remarkably the same. In iterations
of the story, the serpent is usually associated
with water in some way. The hero of the story
is usually a thunder-god or a hero who is
somehow associated with thunder. The serpent
is usually multi-headed, or else "multiple"
in some other way.In Hittite mythology, the
storm god Tarhunt slays the giant serpent
Illuyanka. In the Rigveda, the god Indra slays
the multi-headed serpent Vritra, which had
been causing a drought. In the Bhagavata Purana,
Krishna slays the serpent Kāliyā.
Several variations of the story are also found
in Greek mythology as well. The story is attested
in the legend of Zeus slaying the hundred-headed
Typhon from Hesiod's Theogony, but it is also
in the myths of the slaying of the nine-headed
Lernaean Hydra by Heracles and the slaying
of Python by Apollo. The story of Heracles's
theft of the cattle of Geryon is probably
also related. Although Heracles is not usually
thought of as a storm deity in the conventional
sense, he bears many attributes held by other
Indo-European storm deities, including physical
strength and a knack for violence and gluttony.The
original Proto-Indo-European myth is also
reflected in Germanic mythology. In Norse
mythology, Thor, the god of thunder, slays
the giant serpent Jörmungandr, which lived
in the waters surrounding the realm of Midgard.
Other dragon-slaying myths are also found
in the Germanic tradition. In the Völsunga
saga, Sigurd slays the dragon Fafnir and,
in Beowulf, the eponymous hero slays a different
dragon.
Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European dragon-slaying
myth are found throughout other branches of
the language family as well. In Zoroastrianism
and Persian mythology, Fereydun, and later
Garshasp, slays Zahhak. In Slavic mythology,
Perun, the god of storms, slays Veles and
Dobrynya Nikitich slays the three-headed dragon
Zmey. In Armenian mythology, the god Vahagn
slays the dragon Vishap. In Romanian folklore,
Făt-Frumos slays the fire-spitting monster
Zmeu. In Celtic mythology, Dian Cecht slays
Meichi. The myth is believed to have symbolized
a clash between forces of order and chaos.
In every version of the story, the dragon
or serpent always loses, although in some
mythologies, such as the Norse Ragnarök myth,
the hero or god dies as well.
=== Twin founders ===
The analysis of different Indo-European tales
indicates that the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed
there were two progenitors of mankind: *Manu-
("Man") and *Yemo- ("Twin"), his twin brother.
A reconstructed creation myth involving the
two is given by David W. Anthony, attributed
in part to Bruce Lincoln: Manu and Yemo traverse
the cosmos, accompanied by the primordial
cow, and finally decide to create the world.
To do so, Manu sacrifices either Yemo or the
cow, and with help from the sky father, the
storm god and the divine twins, forges the
earth from the remains. Manu thus becomes
the first priest and establishes the practice
of sacrifice. The sky gods then present cattle
to the third man, *Trito, who loses it to
the three-headed serpent *Ngwhi, but eventually
overcomes this monster either alone or aided
by the sky father. Trito is now the first
warrior and ensures that the cycle of mutual
giving between gods and humans may continue.
Reflexes of *Manu include Indic Manu, Germanic
Mannus; of Yemo, Indic Yama, Avestan Yima,
Norse Ymir, possibly Roman Remus (< earlier
Old Latin *Yemos).
The early "history" of Rome is widely recognized
as a historicized retelling of various old
myths. Romulus and Remus are twin brothers
from Roman mythology who both have stories
in which they are killed. The Roman writer
Livy reports that Remus was believed to have
been killed by his brother Romulus at the
founding of Rome when they entered into a
disagreement about which hill to build the
city on. Later, Romulus himself is said to
have been torn limb-from-limb by a group of
senators. Both of these myths are widely recognized
as historicized remnants of the Proto-Indo-European
creation story.The Germanic languages have
information about both Ymir and Mannus (reflexes
of *Yemo- and *Manu- respectively), but they
never appear together in the same myth. Instead,
they only occur in myths widely separated
by both time and circumstances. In chapter
two of his book Germania, which was written
in Latin in around 98 A.D., the Roman writer
Tacitus claims that Mannus, the son of Tuisto,
was the ancestor of the Germanic peoples.
This name never recurs anywhere in later Germanic
literature, but one proposed meaning of the
continental Germanic tribal name Alamanni
is "Mannus' own people" ("all-men" being another
scholarly etymology).
=== Fire in water ===
Another important possible myth is the myth
of the fire in the waters, a myth which centers
around the possible deity *H2epom Nepōts,
a fiery deity who dwells in water. In the
Rigveda, the god Apám Nápát is envisioned
as a form of fire residing in the waters.
In Celtic mythology, a well belonging to the
god Nechtain is said to blind all those who
gaze into it. In an old Armenian poem, a small
reed in the middle of the sea spontaneously
catches fire and the hero Vahagn springs forth
from it with fiery hair and a fiery beard
and eyes that blaze as suns. In a ninth-century
Norwegian poem by the poet Thiodolf, the name
sǣvar niþr, meaning "grandson of the sea,"
is used as a kenning for fire. Even the Greek
tradition contains possible allusions to the
myth of a fire-god dwelling deep beneath the
sea. The phrase "νέποδες καλῆς
Ἁλοσύδνης," meaning "descendants
of the beautiful seas," is used in The Odyssey
4.404 as an epithet for the seals of Proteus.
=== Binding of evil ===
Jaan Puhvel notes similarities between the
Norse myth in which the god Týr inserts his
hand into the wolf Fenrir's mouth while the
other gods bind him with Gleipnir, only for
Fenrir to bite off Týr's hand when he discovers
he cannot break his bindings, and the Iranian
myth in which Jamshid rescues his brother's
corpse from Ahriman's bowels by reaching his
hand up Ahriman's anus and pulling out his
brother's corpse, only for his hand to become
infected with leprosy. In both accounts, an
authority figure forces the evil entity into
submission by inserting his hand into the
being's orifice (in Fenrir's case the mouth,
in Ahriman's the anus) and losing it. Fenrir
and Ahriman fulfill different roles in their
own mythological traditions and are unlikely
to be remnants of a Proto-Indo-European "evil
god"; nonetheless, it is clear that the "binding
myth" is of Proto-Indo-European origin.
== Cosmogony ==
In the cosmogonic myths of many Indo-European
cultures a Cosmic Egg symbolizes the primordial
state from which the universe arises.
== Cosmology ==
=== Underworld ===
Most Indo-European traditions contain some
kind of Underworld or Afterlife. It is possible
that the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have believed
that, in order to reach the Underworld, one
needed to cross a river, guided by an old
man (*ĝerhaont-). The Greek tradition of
the dead being ferried across the river Styx
by Charon is probably a reflex of this belief.
The idea of crossing a river to reach the
Underworld is also present throughout Celtic
mythologies. Several Vedic texts contain references
to crossing a river in order to reach the
land of the dead and the Latin word tarentum
meaning "tomb" originally meant "crossing
point." In Norse mythology, Hermóðr must
cross a bridge over the river Giöll in order
to reach Hel. In Latvian folk songs, the dead
must cross a marsh rather than a river. Traditions
of placing coins on the bodies of the deceased
in order to pay the ferryman are attested
in both ancient Greek and early modern Slavic
funerary practices. It is also possible that
the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have believed
that the Underworld was guarded by some kind
of watchdog, similar to the Greek Cerberus,
the Hindu Śárvara, or the Norse Garmr.
=== World tree and serpent ===
The Proto-Indo-Europeans may have believed
in some kind of world tree. It is also possible
that they may have believed that this tree
was either guarded by or under constant attack
from some kind of dragon or serpent. In Norse
mythology, the cosmic tree Yggdrasil is tended
by the three Norns while the dragon Nidhogg
gnaws at its roots. In Greek mythology, the
tree of the golden apples in the Garden of
the Hesperides is tended by the three Hesperides
and guarded by the hundred-headed dragon Ladon.
In Indo-Iranian texts, there is a mythical
tree dripping with Soma, the immortal drink
of the gods and, in later Pahlavi sources,
a malicious lizard is said to lurk at the
bottom of it.
== See also ==
Interpretatio graeca, the comparison of Greek
deities to Germanic, Roman, and Celtic deities
Neolithic religion
Proto-Indo-European society
== 
Notes ==
== 
References ==
=== Bibliography ===
