Proto-Indo-Iranian religion
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Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is the term for the religion and beliefs of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, that is, the common predecessor of the various Indo-Iranian peoples.
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[edit] Introduction
The Indo-Iranians, i.e. speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, includes four different subgroups: speakers of the Indo-Aryan languages (that is, the Indic branch); speakers of the Iranian languages (both east and west); speakers of the Dardic languages and those of the Nuristani languages.
From the beliefs of these various and dispersed cultures, a set that is common to all may be reconstructed. This hypothetical (because unattested) set is then what is in academic circles recognized as the beliefs of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, and from which the various religions of the various Indo-Iranian peoples then descended. Divinities and divine concepts that can be reconstructed for this hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranian religion include *rta (Vedic rta, Avestan asha), *sauma (Vedic Soma, Avestan Haoma), *mitra (Vedic Mitra, Avestan Mithra).
However, the beliefs developed in different ways as cultures separated and evolved. For example, while in 'Indic' branch Bhaga is a divinity in its own right, in the Iranian branch 'Baga' is a generic term for a (otherwise nameless) deity or group of deities. Similarly, the cosmological mythology of the peoples that remained on the Central Asian steppes is to a great degree unlike that of the Indians, perhaps in part because the Indians tended to focus on the divinities individually, while in Iranian lore the greater scheme - in which the divinities each play a part - gained the attention. By the time of Zoroaster, Iranian culture had also been subject to the upheavals of the Iranian Heroic Age (late Iranian Bronze Age, 1800-800 BCE), an influence that the Indians were not subject to. Moreover, the Indians, unlike the more conservative Iranians, were quite creative in their treatment of their divinities. As a result, the figures with conflated with others, or hypostatical splitting occurred, that is, aspects of a divinity developed into divinities in their own right.
Sometimes legends developed into stories altogether different from their counterparts: For example, Rig-Vedic Saraswati is linguistically and functionally cognate with Avestan *Haravati Aredvi Sura Anahita. In the Rig-Veda (6,61,7) she battles a serpent called Vritra, who has hoarded all of the earth's water. In contrast, Iranian *Haravati is the world-river that flows down from the mythical Mount Hara upon which the world rests. But *Haravati does no battle - she is blocked by an obstacle (Avestan for obstacle: verethra) placed there by Ahriman. This tale, already attested in a very early portion of the Avesta, remained in common use as late as the 1st century CE, for from that century we have a Greek inscription dedicated to "Great Anaitis of High Hara". Avestan Verethra is also evident in the name Bahrain, the city next to the great barrier that divides the Persian gulf into two.
[edit] Cognate terms and concepts
The following is a list of cognate terms and concepts that may be gleaned from comparative linguistic analysis of the RigVeda and Avesta. Both collections are from the period after the proposed date of separation (ca. 2nd millennium BCE) of the Proto-Indo-Iranians into their respective Indic and Iranian branches.
| Indo-Iranian | Vedic term | Avestan term | Common meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apam Napat | Apam Napat | the "water's offspring" (see Ap (water), Aban) | |
| aryaman | airyaman | "friend", "companion" | |
| *(a)rta | rta | asha | "truth", extending to "order" & "righteousness" |
| *athar-van- | atharvan | athravan | "priest" |
| *azi | ahi | azhi | "snake", "serpent" |
| *daiva | deva | daeva | celestial deities, deified natural phenomena |
| *manu | manu | manu | primeval man, homo sapiens; see also Mannaz |
| *mi-tra- | Mitra | Mithra | "oath" |
| *nsura | asura | ahura | deified social order |
| *saras-vnt-ih | Sarasvati | Haraxuwati (Aredvi Sura) | a mythological river, a river goddess |
| *sau-ma- | soma | haoma | a plant and its extract, deified |
| *suhr/svahr-ya- | surya | hvar | the Sun, also cognate to helios, sol |
| *vr-tra- | Vrtra- | verethra (see Vahram) | "obstacle" |
| *yama | Yama | Yama/Yima => (Jamshid) | the first man, mythical twin, see also Dioscurism |
| *yaj-na- | yajña | yasna, rel: yazata | "worship, sacrifice, oblation" |
[edit] Relationship to Proto-Indo-European religion
- Main article: Proto-Indo-European religion
In the 1800s, because Vedic texts were (until then) the oldest surviving evidence of early Indo-European speaking peoples, it was assumed that these texts preserved aspects of Proto-Indo-European culture with particular accuracy. It was thus thought that Indo-Iranian divinities were linkable to Celtic, Norse, Greek and Roman belief systems.
Many ethnologists hoped to unify these various European pantheons into a Proto-Indo-European belief system. Many such thinkers, following Max Müller, believed that all the Indo-Iranian religions began as forms of sun worship. Such ideas influenced the emergence of New Age thinking about myth, and theories such as Jung's notion collective unconscious.
Although the unification theories of the 19th and early 20th century no longer merit scholastic attention, modern scholarship still considers Proto-Indo-Iranian religion (with its components of old Indic and old Iranian religion) to be an archaic offshoot of a similarly unattested Indo-European religion, but (and not unlike scholars of Indic and Iranian religion) has moved away from considering them near-identical.
