Death, War, and Sacrifice; Studies in Ideology and Practice
One of the world's leading specialists in Indo-European religion and society, Bruce Lincoln expresses in these essays his severe doubts about the existence of a much-hypothesized prototypical Indo-European religion.\ Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures....
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One of the world's leading specialists in Indo-European religion and society, Bruce Lincoln expresses in these essays his severe doubts about the existence of a much-hypothesized prototypical Indo-European religion. Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures. While Lincoln later rejects this methodology, these chapters remain the best available source of data for the topics they address. In Part II, Lincoln takes the data for each essay from a single culture area and shifts from the topic of dying to that of killing. Of particular interest are the chapters connecting sacrifice to physiology, a master discourse of antiquity that brought the cosmos, the human body, and human society into an ideologically charged correlation. Part III presents Lincoln's most controversial case against a hypothetical Indo-European protoculture. Reconsidering the work of the prominent Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil, Lincoln argues that Dumézil's writings were informed and inflected by covert political concerns characteristic of French fascism. This collection is an invaluable resource for students of myth, ritual, ancient societies, anthropology, and the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln is professor of humanities and religious studies at the University of Minnesota.
Foreword, by Wendy Doniger Preface I. Indo-European Religions: An Introduction Part One: Death and Funerary Geography in Indo-European Myth 2. On the Imagery of Paradise 3. The Lord of the Dead 4. Waters of Memory, Waters of Forgetfulness 5. The Ferryman of the Dead 6. Mithra(s) as Sun as Savior 7. The Hellhound 8. The House of Clay 9. The Two Paths Part Two: War, Sacrifice, and the Science of the Body 10. Homeric Iyssa: "Wolfish Rage" 11. War and Warriors: An Overview 12. Warriors and Non-Herdsmen: A Response to Mary Boyce 13. Sacrificial Ideology and Indo-European Society 14. The Druids and Human Sacrifice 15. On the Scythian Royal Burials 16. Debreasting, Disarming, Beheading: Some Sacrificial Practices of the Scyths and Amazons 17. Physiological Speculation and Social Patterning in a Pahlavi Text 18. Embryological Speculation and Gender Politics in a Pahlavi Text Part Three: Polemic Pieces 19. Shaping the Past and the Future 20. Kings, Rebels, and the Left Hand 21. Myth and History in the Study of Myth: An Obscure Text of Georges Dumézil, Its Context and Subtext Acknowledgments Indexes
