The Indo-European Cattle-Raiding Myth

Europeans knew it. There I argued that this myth told of two brothers, *Manu"Man" (Sanskrit Manu, Avestan *Manus, Germanic Mannus being linguistic correspondences; Old Norse Odinn and Latin Romulus being structurally related) and *Yemo"Twin" (Sanskrit Yama, Avestan Yima, Old Norse Ymir, and Latin Remus being linguistic matches; Germanic Tuisco being a semantic match; Sanskrit Mandvi and Purusa, Pahlavi Gayomart being structurally related). Originally, this myth told of how *Manu, a priest, sacrificed *Yemo, a king, together with a bovine animal, and then created the world from their respective bodies: the physical world and the three I-E social classes (sovereigns, warriors, and commoners)2 coming from the body of the sacrificed 1 History of Religions 15, no. 2 (November 1975): 121-45. See also the article of Jaan Puhvel, "Remus et Frater," in the same issue, which supports and extends the argument. 2 These classes have been well established by the work of Georges Dumezil. For a convenient summary of his views, see his L'Ideologie tri-partie des indoeuropeens (Brussels: Collection Latomus, 1958); or C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumezil, 2d ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). I do differ with Dum6zil on the nature of the so-called Third Function and regard it as something of a catchall class for anyone not belonging to the upper classes. Thus, I prefer the term "Commoners" to any of his designations.