I.D. Greeks 0022

Chapter 12:

The comparison of formulaic sequences

. . . The syntactic component of the grammar of the Indo-European poetics is the domain of “formulaics”, and the semantic component of the domain of “thematics”. Formulas are the vehicles, the carriers of themes; they are collectively the verbal expression of the traditional culture of the Indo-Europeans themselves. The formula can be something big like a myth (Vedic áhann áhim ‘he slew the serpent); or transposed to a charm (Old Irish gono míl ‘I slay the beast’); a component of a myth (OIr. teora ferba fíra ‘three milk cows’); a value (OIr. milsem cotalta coiblige ‘copulation is the sweetest part of sleep’); a tabu (Greek ??????? ?'????'? = meksy
mi krdhyáh ‘to urinate at upright’); a kenning or other indexical figure (OIr. melg n-etha ‘milk of grain’ = cuirm ‘ale’); or simply a marked designation of things, like a merism (OIr. brechtaib ban ‘by spells of women’) or by a figure of grammar (Oir. Gonas génta(i)r ‘he who kills will be killed’) . . . (pg. 152)

. . . Formulaic examples like those given just above from Vedic, Greek, and Old Irish are synchronic formulas . . . Formulas may make reference to other formulas and derive their full meaning only by comparison with the other formula indexically referred to: a form of “intertextuality” . . . The fact of the long-term preservation og formulaic sequences makes possible the application to them of the Comparative Method. Long-term preservation is assured by repetition; thematic continuity—the preservation of an “an essential idea” (GCM: my emphasis)---implies semantic continuity, which in turn may allow lexical renewal. That is to say, we can have the preservation of formulaic status under partial or even total lexical replacement . . . (pp. 152-154)

stify">Lexical equations typically lead to reconstructions . . . It is in some sense the SAME Indo-European formula which surfaces in Old Hittite as iyata dameta, in Homeric Greek as "?''??'? ^? ???????? ^?, and in English goods and chattels . . . Here the study of formula leads to the reconstruction of a total semiotic model for a prehistoric culture . . . they are . . . indications of diachronic contiguity relations, relations which point to an inherited theme or interaction of themes which can be realized as a formula at any one point . . .  (pp. 154-157)

In a sense, this is a reconstruction of how memory literally “always already” works within us at this moment.

In the Avestan hymn to Mithra (Yt. 10.28), the divinized Contract is worshipped,

YM stun
v+?
raiieiti

b?r?zi.mitahe nm
nahe

TIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0in 0in 12pt 1in; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">who holds apart the posts

of the high-built house.

Elsewhere the house has a thousand posts, in the formulaic epithet (Y. 57.21, Yt. 5.101)

nm
n?m . . . hazaKrM.stun?m

the thousand-posted house,

which recurs in sahásra-sthkna-, of the seat (sádas-) of Mitra and Varuna, Rig Veda 2.41.5.

Rig Vedaht: bold"> 10.18 is ‘a collection of verses for the dead’ . . . , an assemblage of obviously traditional material. Verses 12b and 13cd read

Sahásram míta úpa hí [ráyant
m

Et
m sthún
m pitáro dh
rayantu te

Átr
yamáh s
dan
te minotu

Let a thousand houseposts be set up . . .

Let the Fathers hold firm this housepost for you;

Let Yama build you a dwelling there.

Times New Roman">(Yama, as the first mortal, brought death into the world and reigned over the ‘underworld.’)

Avestan in two passages and Vedic in contiguous verses of a single hymn collocate no less than four common Indo-Iranian roots (boldface) as part of the formulaic system describing the HOUSE.

In India this system is preserved in a metaphor of the TOMB as house. The metaphor may be millennia old, and to some extent it belongs to the realm of universals, in a culture which practices inhumation. But the particulars are by no means universal.

It is instructive to compare the Avestan and Vedic passages with an archeologist’s description (Gimbutas 1974:293-4):

Burial practices are not loaned to other cultures; nor are they abruptly abandoned even though they are subject to gradual change. Because the graves of Kurgan tradition constitute the overwhelming majority of cultural remains, they are a primary source of information. The characteristic features of grave structure and burial custom . . . 1) the presence of a mortuary house built of either stone slabs or timber inside the shaft, roofed with timber or stones or by a tent supported by three or four wooden poles or stakes . . . 2) the grave was covered by a round earthen or stone mound frequently surrounded by a cromlech, i.e., a ring of stones or timber uprights . . .   The belief in an afterlife replete with the same earthly social structure is one of the most conservative features of Indo-European culture.

(This is an excellent example of cross disciplinary illumination of abstract conclusions.)

. . . the formulaic system could not make possible the long-term conservation of such verbal collocations when combined with the real conservatism of a cultural nexus. The comparison of formulaic sequences is another and very special window onto pre-historic material and non-material culture. (pp. 152-158) . . .