9
Cosmos and Canon
If chapters had subtitles, this one’s would be something like ‘Indo-European
perceptions of the world, and their codification’. In the first part I deal with
cosmology and cosmogony; in the second part with the forms of expression
in which beliefs and opinions on these matters were typically encapsulated ––
not articulated poetic compositions but catechisms, proverbs, riddles, and the
like.
COSMOLOGYHeaven and earthWe saw in Chapters 3 and 4 that there was a fundamental opposition between
celestials (gods) and terrestrials (humans), and that Heaven and Earth were
paired as deities. Similarly heaven and earth are regularly coupled as a polar
expression of the world about us. In Vedic they combine in the dvandva
compound dya ̄ ́va ̄ks
̇
a ̄ ́ma ̄ (RV 1. 35. 9, 52. 14, 61. 8, al.) or dya ̄ ́va ̄bhu ̄ ́mı ̄ (10. 65.
4, 81. 3). In Hittite ne ̄bis de ̄gan(na)‘heaven (and) earth’ is often used for ‘the
universe’; for example the god Wasezzili is told ne ̄bis de ̄gann-a [h
̆
arsi], ‘you
hold heaven and earth’.^1 The Armenian fragment about the birth of Vahagn
begins ‘Heaven was in labour, earth was in labour’, before adding ‘the purple
sea too was in labour’, the sea being where the flame appeared that produced
the divine hero.
Often the complementary terms are amplified to ‘the heaven above’ and/or
‘the earth below’. So in Hittite texts: nuza se ̄r ne ̄bis sa ̄it, katanma de ̄gan sa ̄it,
‘the sky above was angry, the earth below was angry’.^2 Zarathushtra wonders,
(^1) CTH 733, KUB 8. 41 ii 6 (E. Laroche, JCS 1 (1947), 187).
(^2) CTH 327, KUB 7. 41 i 56 f., cf. iii 27 f. (H. Otten, ZA 54 (1961), 120, 130). Likewise in
Akkadian, Enu ̄ma elisˇ 1. 1 f. ‘When on high the heavens were unnamed, | (and) below, the earth
unmentioned by name’.