The year 1924 saw the first of a long series of publications by Georges
Dumézil that were to give comparative mythology a fresh direction and a
fresh esteem. While pursuing philological equations of names as far as they
went, he held that they were not necessary for establishing connections
between myths in different traditions, as new names had often been sub-
stituted for old ones. More significant, in his view, were parallel structures.
In the 1930s he developed his famous theory of the three fonctions, the sacral,
the martial, and the economic. This gave him a structural formula that he
was able to find in myths, pantheons, and rituals all over the place. At first
he thought that it derived from a real threefold division of Indo-European
society into holy men, warriors, and peasants. Later he retreated from this
position and presented the system rather as a feature of Indo-European
thought, a habit of organizing things in terms of those three categories.
Dumézil’s work has been enormously influential. Some researchers con-
tinue to operate within the framework of his tripartite ideology, and to refer
to the First, Second, or Third Function as if they had the same truth-status as
thefirst, second, or third declension in Latin. Others have been strongly
critical. As the system is essentially a theoretical taxonomy, it is hardly capable
of proof or disproof. You may find it illuminating and useful, or you may not.
Personally I do not. But one must acknowledge Dumézil’s breadth of learning
and combinatorial brilliance, and give due credit for his real discoveries.^9
Meanwhile the more strictly philological approach to the quest for Indo-
European poetry and culture made unspectacular but steady progress under
the pens of such scholars as Paul Thieme, Bernfried Schlerath, Jaan Puhvel,
Calvert Watkins, Marcello Durante, Enrico Campanile, and Wolfgang Meid.
Something of a milestone was set in 1967 by Rüdiger Schmitt’sDichtung und
Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit, a major synthesis of what had been
achieved up to that date in the field of Indo-European poetics and poetic
language. Schmitt did not concern himself with theology and myth, and his
focus is somewhat restricted also in that Celtic and Anatolian evidence
remains outside his purview.
In the last thirty or forty years Indo-European studies of every kind have
gained energy and mass. A journal devoted to their less austerely linguistic
aspects was founded in 1973 and has thrived, calving numerous monographs
by the way. There have been ever more frequent conferences resulting in bulky
(^9) On Dumézil and his development see C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology
(Berkeley–Los Angeles 1966; 3rd edn. 1982); W. W. Belier, Decayed Gods. Origin and Develop-
ment of Georges Dumézil’s Idéologie Tripartite (Leiden 1991) (strongly critical); Sergent
(1995), 328–33; B. Schlerath, Kratylos 40 (1995), 1–48; 41 (1996), 1–67 (critical); Polomé in
E. C. Polomé (ed.), Indo-European Religion after Dumézil (JIESM 16, Washington, DC 1996),
5–12; W. W. Belier, ibid. 37–72.
4 Introduction