the Wheel and Dating PIE

[John Frauzel]

At 09:17 AM 3/1/00 -0600, Carol Justus wrote:

>The earliest attested IE prayers don't usually ask for forgiveness but are
>more like Menelaos's prayer to Zeus for guiding his spear so that he will
>kill Paris or Chryses' to Apollo to make Agamemnon's army pay for
>Agamemnon's insults. Has anyone found when the concept of sin, hence
>forgiveness, enters the IE prayer record?

It's certainly common in Indic tradition. The "house of clay" hymn, RV
7:89, ends "If we humans have committed some offence against the race of
the gods, O Varun.a, or through carelessness have violated your laws, do
not injure us, O god, for that sin." (O'Flaherty's translation). Sin might
be an unfortunate translation for 'enas', although Grassmann does give as
meanings Frevel, Suende, Bedraengnis, Unglueck (originally Gewalttat). But
the concept is not that far removed. And there are dozens of RV hymns with
formulaic verses, to various gods, "If we have offended you in a or b or c,
please don't x or y or z."

This does seem to be much more common in the Indo-Iranian tradition that in
the Greek. In fact I can't think of anything comparable in Greek.

John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
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