Nick J.

Allen

Dyaus and Bhma, Zeus and Sarpedon

In: Gaia : revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grce Archaque. Numro 8, 2004. pp. 29-36.

Citer ce document / Cite this document : Allen Nick J. Dyaus and Bhma, Zeus and Sarpedon. In: Gaia : revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grce Archaque. Numro 8, 2004. pp. 29-36. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/gaia_1287-3349_2004_num_8_1_1460

Rsum Les linguistes savent depuis longtemps que le dieu vdique Dyaus (Ciel) est tymolo- giquement li Zeus. Mais dans son apport considrable aux tudes comparatives sur la culture indo-europenne, Dumzil n'a gure attach d'importance ce phnomne. D'autre part, son analyse de Dyaus comme incarn dans le Mahbhrata par le hros Bhs.ma pose la question de savoir si Zeus est li un hros pique comparable Bhsrna. En fait, Zeus a un fils, Sarpdon, qui ressemble Bhsma par plusieurs traits. Tous deux combattent et meurent dans le camp des perdants dans le conflit central de leur pope respective. Tous deux sont des chefs de premier plan, infrieurs seulement au premier des mauvais, auquel tous deux adressent des critiques. Tous deux ont peut-tre une vie qui s'tend sur plus de trois gnrations et tous deux sont associs une pluie de sang. Ainsi, il est vraisemblable que les deux personnages remontent un proto-hros li au dieu indo-europen du Ciel *Dyeus. Il est pourtant ncessaire que la comparaison embrasse aussi les similitudes entre Bhsma et Hector. Tous deux se prsentent en premre position dans une squence de quatre chefs de guerre, et tous deux sont tus par le champion des bons, secouru par une aide fminine. L'hypothse propose est que ces traits caractrisaient d'abord le proto-hros fondamental qui est l'anctre de Bhsrna-Sarpdon, et qu'ils furent dplacs sur un autre personnage au cours du dveloppement de la tradition grecque. Abstract Linguists have long known that the Vedic god Dyaus (Heaven) is etymologically cognate with Zeus, but in his massive contribution to Indo-European cultural comparati- vism Dumzil made little use of this fact. On the other hand, his discussion of Dyaus as incarnated in the Mahbhrata hero Bhsma prompts the question of whether Zeus is linked to a Greek epic hero comparable with Bhsma. In fact, Zeus has a son, Sarpedon, who resembles Bhsma in the following ways. Both fight and die for the Losers in the central conflict of their respective epics. Both are major leaders, second only to the loser supremo, whom they both criticise. Possibly both are active over three generations and are associated with bloody rain. Thus the two figures no doubt go back to a proto-hero linked with the Indo-European Sky god *Dyeus. However, the comparison needs to include also the similarities between Bhsma and Hektor. Both come first in a sequence of four battlefield leaders, and both are killed by the Winners' champion widi female help. It is suggested that these features originally belonged to the proto-hero who lies behind Bhsma and Sarpedon, but were transferred from him to another figure during the development of the Greek tradition.

Dyaus and Bhsma, Zeus and Sarpedon Towards a history of the Indo-european sky god

NickJ. Allen University of Oxford

In the days of Max Miiller the polytheism of the pre-Christian IndoEuropean speakers was a central topic in human studies and attracted much attention. However, the results proved disappointing, and in the first half of the last century Indo-European comparativism contracted : when not being misused by Nazi racists, it was mainly pursued by comp arative philologists, whose centre of gravity was purely linguistic. In the last half century the field has been revived by Georges Dumzil, and my present paper, like my other ones in this area, is broadly speaking Dumzilian. DumziPs central concern was how far the linguists' model can be transferred to extra-linguistic culture : if I-E languages can be analysed in terms of divergent historical descent from a proto-language, how far can I-E cultures, especially early ones, be understood in terms of diver gent descent from an original protoculture? Dumzil's famous three functions are just one among the many proposals that arose from asking the central question, and will be mentioned today only in passing. The central question itself is a perfectly sensible one, which can of course be asked of any language family. However, for various reasons, Dumzil's work is still regarded as controversial. Among the good reasons are weaknesses internal to his arguments (weaknesses which necessitate, I think, a shift of focus from triads to pentads). Some of the reasons are bad ones, e.g. blindness to structure, or misrepresentations ultimately motivated by the desire of narrower specialists to defend the borders of their own fields. Some are just matters of fact, e.g. the relative paucity of those who are, or think they are, equipped to handle Latin, Greek and Sanskrit materials on the same footing, and the difficulty of coming to terms with an uvre on the scale of Dumzil's. But, as I hope to show here, not only is the central question reasonable, but the field is an excit ing one. It may be too philological for most anthropologists, too cultural GaiaS, 2004, p. 29-36. 29

GAIA 8 for most linguists, too comparative for the narrower philologists, but it offers scope for unexpected findings. Linguists long ago established that Latin Jupiter, Greek Zeus and Sanskrit Dyaus (or Dyu) are cognate : these three theonyms (and there are others) must descend from a common origin, which can be recon structed as PI- *Dyeus. *Dyeus must have been a father, must have meant sky, and was surely an important god, perhaps even a sovereign, as are Zeus and Jupiter; but it was difficult to go further (Dunkel 1988-1990). The myths do not help. The major Roman gods have little surviving indigenous mythology, and although many Vedic deities are well supplied with it, Dyaus is not. Zeus of course has myths in plenty, but one cannot reconstruct using a single source. Dumzil, prompted by Stig Wikander, showed the way ahead. Although he has some divine relatives, Dyaus practically never appears in Vedic narrative, but a millennium later, in classical Sanskrit, Dyaus does appear in one story in the Mahbhrata. Together with his seven brothers he is cursed to be born on earth, and his human form or incar nation is the hero Bhsma. Bhs.ma is a major figure right from his birth in Book 1 up to his death in Book 1 3 (90 % of the way through the epic), and as Dumzil showed, in certain respects Bhs.ma resembles the Scan dinavian god Heimdall. The resemblance is close enough to point to a common origin for the narrative features in question, and Dumzil con cludes (1968 : 190) that they were originally part of the mythology of *Dyeus; they then descended to Dyaus and his human form. In his mature work Dumzil usually avoided comparisons involving Greece1, but his discovery is suggestive. If we can learn about the mythology of *Dyeus by comparing Dyaus' incarnation Bhs.ma with a Norse god, can we learn more by comparing him with Greek gods ? I have attempted this elsewhere (Allen in press). It turns out that Bhs.ma can be compared not only with Dyaus's etymological cognate Zeus, but also with his semantic cognate Ouranos (which, like Dyaus, means Sky). These rapprochements, like the Norse one, link a Sanskrit hero with non-Sanskrit gods. But does Bhs.ma resemble any Greek heroes} This question brings us to Sarpedon.

Bhsma and Sarpedon Greek gods sometimes take human form for short periods, but they do not incarnate for a whole life-span, as Indian gods often do. So we can-

1 . Except when discussing Plato and Herakles. 30

Dyaus and Bhlsma, Zeus and Sarpedon not expect an incarnation of Zeus parallel to the Indian incarnation of Dyaus. But the conceptual gap between being a god's incarnation and being a god's son cannot be great, if only because the Pndavas, the Winn ers in the Mahbhrata, are presented in both ways2. Now Zeus, though he lacks incarnations, has numerous human sons, born of mortal women (unlike Ouranos, who has none, and need not concern us fur ther). A salient fact about Bhma is that he is a major leader on the losing side in the great war that dominates the Sanskrit epic. The great war that dominates Greek epic is at Troy, the Losers are the Trojans, and one of the major Trojan leaders is Sarpedon, son of Zeus. So let us explore a Bhsma-Sarpedon rapprochement. Winners and Losers The two sides in the Sanskrit are the Pndavas and Kauravas. The Pn4avas are the Winners ; they represent the gods as opposed to the demons, and are the side with which the audience fundamentally identif ies. In Homer too, the Winners, the Greeks, are the side with which the Greek audience should ultimately identify. It is therefore striking that the human form of the old I-E sky god fights for the opposition, for the Losers - one is tempted to say the Baddies3. One might of course won der whether in other respects Pndavas correspond to Greeks, Kauravas to Trojans. The question is complicated, for comparison can also be made with the other Sanskrit epic, the Rmyan, where Rma repre sents Winners/Goodies and Rvana Losers/Baddies. But the complicat ion does not invalidate a Bhs.ma-Sarpedon comparison. Important Loser Leader Bhs.ma is not just a major Kaurava warrior. He is the first in a set of five successive Kaurava marshals (one of the pentads I mentioned in passing). On day 10 he is shot down and disabled ; he lives on for two months, but is succeeded by three other marshals in turn, each of whom dies on the battlefield. Since the whole war only lasts eighteen days, Bhsma holds office for longer than all his successors put together.

2. Sons most fully in 1. 114-5; partial incarnations in 1. 61.84-5 (e.g. King Yudhis.thira was a portion of [the god] Dharma ). 3. As regards Dyaus and Bhs.ma, Dumzil recognizes the puzzle (1968: 254), but has only the most tentative answer to it. My own answer needs a wider comparative frame work than would be appropriate here. 31

GAIA 8 Similarly, Sarpedon is not just a major Trojan warrior. In 12.101 he leads all the epikouroi, the allies who have come from outside Troy and its immediate environs. No Homeric heroes live on immobilised like Bhs.ma, and Sarpedon is straightforwardly killed (by Patroklos). Forms Pair with Loser Supremo Supreme authority among the Kaurava warriors lies not with the mars hal (senapati) but with the crown prince, Duryodhana, who appoints the marshals and is himself a great warrior. Thus, during his ten days as marshal, Bhsma is effectively paired with his supremo ; they are the two leaders par excellence. Duryodhana's father, King Dhrtarstra - blind and indecisive - is a non-combatant, and stays in the royal city. Among the Trojans the warrior supremo is of course Hektor, until he is killed by Achilles. Hektor is the eldest son of the aged non-combatant king Priam, who stays in Troy and can be compared with Dhrtarstra ; and in several ways Hektor and Sarpedon form a pair. Consider the two passages that enumerate the Trojan forces. In 2.876, the list of seventeen contingents starts with the Trojans themselves led by Hektor, and ends with the Lycians led by Sarpedon and Glaukos. Similarly, in 12.88, the list of five companies starts with the biggest and best, led by Hektor and Polydamas, and ends with the allies, led by Sarpedon; so in both cases these two names come effectively first and last. Or take the fact that only this pair inflict damage on the Greek defences : Sarpedon pulls down some battlements, then Hektor shatters a gate (12.398, 461). A fourth argument builds on the generally recognised pairing of Patroklos and Achilles - paired for instance because of their long and close associ ation, because Patroklos in Achilles' armour leads Achilles' troops, and because they alone when they die are honoured by funeral games. But the most important enemies of this pair - Patroklos and Achilles - are respectively Sarpedon and Hektor. Thus in both epics the human form of Dyaus/Zeus not only fights for the Losers but does so as a leader subordinate only to his side's supremo. Critical ofLoser Supremo Although Bhs.ma renounced marriage and had no children, he is regarded and referred to as the grandfather both of Duryodhana and of his opposite numbers, the five Pndava brothers. He often criticises Duryodhana's immoral behaviour (e.g. 1.195), but his wise advice is ignored, whereas towards the Pndavas he shows genuine affection and respect, which is reciprocated.

32

Dyaus and Bhsma, Zeus and Sarpedon At his first appearance in the narrative (as distinct from the Catalogue) we find Sarpedon strongly criticising Hektor for lack of dynamism (5.493). Hektor is energised, but a little later he pointedly ignores a piti ful plea from Sarpedon, who has just been badly wounded by Tlepolemos (5.689). Sarpedon's uneasy relation with Hektor is clear enough, though unlike Bhs.ma, he does not show any particular affection for the Winn ers. On the other hand, he has a sort of doublet in his Lycian compat riot and first cousin, Glaukos : for instance, after Sarpedon's death, it is Glaukos who criticises Hektor for lack of valour and lack of gratitude (17.140). So it may be significant that Glaukos provides the only clear instance ofaristeia Diomedes' friendship it transpires between that warriors he and on Glaukos opposite are sides. ritual During friends (6.224), and their intended duel turns into an amicable exchange of gifts. Active over Three Generations Bh$ma's warrior prowess, already apparent in his fight with Parasuvama at the time of his brother's wedding (5.180.19 ff.), is undiminished when as the grandfather he becomes marshal two generations later. Homer's Sarpedon is not presented as aged, but Apollodorus (3.1.2) tells us that this hero received from Zeus the privilege of living for three gen erations. The statement is often understood as a secondary rationalisa tion of the fact that Sarpedon is the name of another son of Zeus (the brother of Minos and Rhadamanthus) born two generations earlier. But in view of the other Sarpedon-Bhicma similarities, it is more likely that here (as quite often) Apollodorus preserves an ancient tradition - i.e., of vigour persisting over three generations. Bloody Rain When Bhma is appointed as marshal, a bloody dirty rain appears in a clear sky4, accompanied by other fearsome portents. When Zeus is per suaded by Hera that Sarpedon must die, just before the fatal fight with Patroklos, he honours his son by pouring down bloody raindrops {haimatoessas psiadas, 16.459). Since in both traditions bloody rain occurs in a few other contexts as well, the comparison is not biunique ; nev ertheless, it is worth noting.

4. Anabhre varsam rudbirakardamam (5 . 153.28). 33

GAIA 8 Even if the last two headings are omitted, the similarities between Bhs.ma and Sarpedon are too solid to be dismissed as coincidence, and there must once have existed a protonarrative concerning the human form of *Dyeus - let us provisionally call him the protofigure . Natur ally, divergence has been considerable, and one could assemble a sys tematic list of differences by working through the dossiers of Bhsma and Sarpedon. But an obvious one is simply the relative size of the two dossiers. Bhma is far more important in the Sanskrit epic than Sarpe don is in the Greek, and we need to consider two possibilities. If the Greek is the more conservative, a Sarpedon-like protofigure has expanded to produce Bhs.ma, perhaps simply by invention of new narrat ive, but perhaps - more interestingly - by absorbing other figures. If the Sanskrit is the more conservative, a Bhis.ma-like protofigure has con tracted to produce Sarpedon, either simply by the elimination of certain features or episodes or - more interestingly - by losing them to other figures. Intuitively, the son of an important sky god ought to have a larger role rather than a smaller one, and for many reasons I prefer the hypothesis of Sanskrit traditionalism. I have already mentioned the argument that Bhs.ma, the incarnated god, corresponds in some features to the Greek gods Zeus and Ouranos. Expressed in diachronic terms, this could mean that the proto-figure lost parts of his dossier to the two gods, but whether or not this is the case, we cannot assume that all the surviving dossier that was attached to mortals was attached to Sarpedon. We need to ask whether Bhs.ma resembles any other warrior. A rapprochement was briefly made above between the two loser supremos, Duryodhana and Hektor, eldest sons of the non-combatant king, but here too we cannot assume that the comparativist's task is sim ple. It will be recalled that Hektor and Sarpedon are closely linked (as Homerists recognise)5, and in at least two respects Bhs.ma parallels Hektor, not Sarpedon.

Bhsma and Hektor A Sequence of Four Battlefield Leaders Bhs.ma, as we know, is the first of the five Kaurava marshals, but the fifth, Asvatthman, is heterogeneous, e.g. in fighting by night and in an

5. Zeus is very fond of both. Sarpedon is described by Zeus as the dearest of men, philtatos andrn (16.433), while Hektor is also described by Zeus as a dear man, philon andra (22.168) and the dearest o men, philtatos andrn (24.67) - dearest of the Trojans to the gods in general. 34

Dyaus and Bhsma, Zeus and Sarpedon enclosure, not on the battlefield. There are only four battlefield mars hals . But extra-Homeric sources tell us that after Hektor is killed by Achilles, the Trojans are led successively by Penthesilea, Memnon and Eurypylos; so the Trojans too have four battlefield leaders (Allen 2002). The three leaders just mentioned all come from areas at some distance from Troy, and I suppose that at earlier (unattested) stages of Greek tra dition the sequence began with Sarpedon the Lycian (or an earlier form of that figure), who then lost to Hektor the position of first overall bat tlefield leader. It is as if Bhma lost to Duryodhana the position of senpati, while remaining the second most important leader among the Losers. We can perhaps see a hint of the shift in Homer. In book 12 Hektor is the first to leap into the Greek camp (entering through the gate he broke, 12.462, 466), but after he kills Sarpedon, Patroklos says that his victim was the first to do so (16.558). Killed by Winners' Champion with Female Help Bhma is shot down by two warriors acting together : Arjuna, supreme champion of the Pndavas, and Sikhandin, who is only involved because he was born a woman (Bhma has vowed not to fight anyone who counts as female). This is the only death in the great war that crucially involves a female or quasi-female . Hektor too is killed by two figures acting together. Achilles is the supreme Greek champion, but he is helped greatly, even unfairly, by Athena. This feature too, I suppose, originally belonged to the death of Sarpedon (or the like), but was transferred to Hektor alongside the bat tlefield supremacy. If the protonarrative here resembled the Sanskrit, the loser supremo survived until after the death of the fourth loser bat tlefield leader. Concluding remarks The body of the paper has presented a rapprochement between Bhs,ma and Sarpedon : the two heroes are to be seen as divergent reflexes of a protofigure, the son of the proto-I-E god *Dyeus. Towards the end I briefly suggested that the Sanskrit was the more conservative tradition and that, as the Greek tradition diverged, a more or less Bhma-like protofigure lost parts of his persona to at least one other hero. In this case, Hektor, the recipient of the lost parts, no doubt derives his core from a different protonarrative human, but such a process cannot be taken for granted: rather than being transferred, fragments of a 35

GAIA 8 protofigure could, as it were, simply become free-standing. A number of logical possibilities can be envisaged for the process of divergence, which may well have been very complex. To factor in the other traditions, for instance the Norse, will multiply the complexities. Nevertheless, something has been achieved. In particular, we now know, as we did not previously, that *Dyeus had a human form (whether son or incarnation), who participated with the Losers in a more or less epic protonarrative. Of course *Dyeus provides exceptionally favourable opportunities for the comparativist since the etymological picture is so clear. But serious comparisons can be undertaken even between deities whose names lack a common origin. Examples might include DumziPs Dyaus-Heimdall comparison, or my own (Allen 2001) between Durga and Athena. In spite of the complications, the history of the IE pantheon is less unknowable than has usually been thought6.

References Allen NJ. 2001, Athena and Durga: warrior goddesses in Greek and Sanskrit epic. Pp. 367-382 in S. Deacy and A. Villing (eds) Athena in the Classical World. Leiden : Brill ; , 2002, Mahabharata and Iliad : a common origin ? Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute 83 : 165-177 (with many misprints !); , in press, Bhs.ma and Hesiod's Succession Myth. To appear in Inter national Journal of Hindu Studies 1 . Dumzil G. 1968, Mythe et pope, I. Paris: Gallimard. Dunkel George E., 1988-1990. Vater Himmels Gattin. Die Sprache 34: 1-26.

6. Revised form of paper given to the conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Chester, September 2003. 36