It may be, as McCone has argued most fully, that this all reflects an
Indo-European institution of initiatory character, by which boys after several
years of fosterage joined the local war-band and became Wolves.^13
Cattle raidsA form of aggression often celebrated in the Indo-European literatures is the
cattle raid.^14 The domestication of the horse allowed the early pastoralists
of the Eurasian steppe to herd much larger numbers of animals than before,
roaming over a vaster area. It also provided a convenient means of driving
off other people’sflocks and herds. This was the easiest and quickest way to
acquire wealth, which was commonly measured in cattle. But it was liable to
provoke fighting.
Such was the association in Vedic India between warfare and cattle-rustling
thatgávis
̇
t
̇i-, literally ‘desire for cows’, often signifies an expedition to win
them (e.g. RV 5. 63. 5; 6. 59. 7; 8. 24. 5). Other derivatives from the ‘cow’ root
show parallel semantics: gavyánt-,gavyú-,gavés
̇
an
̇a-, ‘desiring cows, eager for
booty’. RV 10. 38 is a prayer to Indra for support in battle:
In this glorious battle, Indra,
this energetic tumult, urge us on to win,
in the cattle raid where among the bold beringed ones [warriors]
the arrows fly in all directions for men’s defeat (1).In MBh. 4. 29–61 the princes of the Kurus take advantage of the absence
of Vira ̄ta, king of Matsya, to drive off sixty thousand head of cattle. Cattle-
raiding was a feature of life that Zarathushtra condemned; the Zoroastrian
creed contains the declaration ‘I abjure thievery and cattle-raiding, despoiling
and devastating the Mazdayasnian clans’ (Y. 12. 2; cf. Yt. 10. 38).
The earlier of the two great wars of Greek mythology, the Theban War,
was fought according to Hesiod (Op. 163) μ λων aνεκ, Ο!διπο ́ δαο,‘on
account of Oedipus’flocks’. One of Heracles’ canonical Labours was the
capture of Geryon’s cattle, and cattle-rustling is a recurrent motif in Greek
heroic legend.^15
(^13) K. McCone in Meid (1987), 101–54; McCone (1990), 213–18; id. in R. P. Das–Gerhard
Meiser (edd.), Geregeltes Ungestüm. Bruderschaften und Jugendbünde bei den indogermanischen
Völkern (Bremen 2002), 43–67; criticized by J. Untermann, Kratylos 34 (1989), 50 f.; S. Zimmer,
JIES 32 (2004), 209 f.
(^14) Cf. Dillon (1975), 121; B. Lincoln, JIES 3 (1975), 337 n. 4; Sergent (1995), 285 f.; EIEC
138b.
(^15) e.g. Il. 1. 154, 11. 670–84, 20. 91; Od. 11. 288–93, 20. 51, 21. 18 f.; ‘Hes.’ fr. 37. 1–7, 193. 16–
18 (with Scut. 11 f.), 204. 46–51; E. Cingano in Richard Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of
Women: Constructions and Reconstructions (Cambridge 2005), 147.
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