Tracks on the road-myth: Indo-European religions beyond Georges Dumezil’s moyen d’analyser

Authors

• Peter Jackson Uppsala University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67246

Keywords:

Dumézil, Georges, 1898-1986, Indo-European philology, Mythology, Indo-European, Language and religion, Language -- Etymology

Abstract

Dumézil regarded the insistence on etymological equations as a blockage in consideration of the Indo-European ideology, whereas the occurrence of a comparative grammar and a common religious nomenclature necessitated the advantage of genetic comparisons over comparisons excluding the notions of organic contiguity. He considered it self-evident that societies sharing a political, juridical, ethical, and religious vocabulary likewise share a coherent system of thought, and that this system may be sought beyond the manifestations of signs. This presupposition led Dumézil to compare sets of ideas, circumscribed by their inherent systematic constancy, yet dissolved in an irreversible cluster of formal variability.