The Destiny of the Warrior

by Georges Dumézil

English, French (translation)

Genres: Mythology, History, Ancient History, Nonfiction

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Georges Dumézil was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Proto-Indo-European religion and society. He is considered one of the major contributors to mythography, in particular for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis of social class in ancient societies.

Reviews

[Peat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents Dumezil's thoughts on some of the beliefs likely held by the Indo-Europeans about its warriors, as found by comparing the various myths found in the Indo-European language groups with each other.

The first two sections are the strongest. The first focuses mainly on a comparison between Indra and the historicised legendary Kings of Rome Tullus Hostilius to show what was expected from the Indo-European warrior and their relationship to the gods of the functions of Sovereignty and Fertility. The second draws again on Indra, as well as Heracles and Starkad, to demonstrate how the warriors' sins led to their deaths. The third section, Promotions, by contrast feels like a hodge-podge of the left over thrown together with little thematic emphasis.

The strength of Dumezil's theories here, from the perspective of a non-academic, lie in nailing the ambiguous regard in which these great warrior figures were held. Their strength and cunning makes them both protectors and predators without peer. The episodes in which Indra and Tullus Hostilius legalese their way around agreements with treacherous allies is perhaps the best example of this, particularly as we also see rather divergent views on how reprehensible the act was.

All in all, a highly interesting book for anyone interested in myth and literary views on violence, if rather difficult to get hold of.

[CivilWar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely eye-opening read, essential to anyone, casual mythology reader (for the writing of Dumézil is not just clear, it is beautiful at times) but specially the student who wishes to understand the myths relating to warriors in the general Indo-European ideology: it is hard to over-emphasize how this book, which, if I remember correctly, is where Dumézil first sets down his thesis of the "three trifunctional sins of the warrior", an absolutely essential tool to understanding the myths of Herakles, Starkadr and the general view that Indo-Europeans had of those people who dedicated themselves exclusively to war, outside of society in a sense, not unlike the modern soldier holed up in his barrack, bombarded with propaganda designed to make him forget what class he belongs to...

Dumézil first compares the myths of Indra's slaying of the Tricephalic enemy and the exploits of the entirely fictional Roman king Tullus Hostilius, showing that the latter is nothing but extremely ancient, well-preserved myths which have transposed from divine myth into heroic saga, in an effort to write the "birth of the nation" (much like the Indian Mahabharata and like me and a few other mythographers see, the Kojiki of Japan). He shows the total equivalence between extremely specific mythemes, and notes how Indra, as Tullus Hostilius, is a sinner, despite being a god.

This brings him into an explanation that Indra commits three sins, each in descending order of the Indo-European three functions: He kills a close cousin (sacred blood ties) and a brahman, the worst sin in Hinduism, then he substitutes a duel for cowardly tricks after swearing friendship with an enemy and finally he makes an honest woman cheat on her husband by taking the form of her partner (much like Zeus did with Alkmene, a myth I suspect may have common origins). Violation of blood ties, cowardly deception in place of a duel and sexual sin: these are three characteristic sins, which is to say, faults of character of the warrior, meaning that these sins, observed then in a number of mythological warriors, strictly "second function" figures, namely Herakles and Starkadr/Starcatherus, were seen as emblematic of the things which people outside of this bellicose function typical to Indo-European society saw as making warriors dubious figures.

It is hard to overemphasize how much this changes how most of us see heroic myth: we have a notion to think that the ancient were very barbarous for calling men like Herakles "heroes" but the thing is, a hero was nothing but a champion-warrior, and these things that seem abhorrent to us were no less abhorrent to the Indo-European people of the past, both those above the warrior castes/classes/what have you but specially for normal people, laborers. In short, these myth reflect the ambivalence that people felt about warriors: on the one hand, they are stronger than anyone, they have animal forms that can be used in battle, they have a full set of armor, they cannot be defeated etc, but on the other hand, it is exactly this strength which makes them odious in peacetime, for everything that makes him essential to defend the community is what makes him the potential sacker of it, the potential murderer, sinner.

Out of these conclusions Dumézil explains further, by analyzing the forms of animals that the warriors took, initiation rituals of warrior youths present in myth (a true Myth and Ritual moment, complete with Frazer citations in the footnotes), even warrior homosexuality among the Germanics which, Dumézil suspects, later Celtic and Germanic accounts only do not talk about due to Christian modesty towards such things. He ultimately arrives at a nuanced view of the warrior as an ambivalent figure within mythology and thus within general Indo-European society.

Perhaps the peak of the book writing-wise is the description of why it was that the warriors are seen as sinners, in their freedom and apartness from society:

Indra and his warriors have been given a very different cosmic and social position. They cannot ignore order, since their function is to guard it against the thousand and one demonic or hostile endeavors that oppose it. But in order to assure this office they must first possess and entertain qualities of their own which bear a strong resemblance to the blemishes of their adversaries. In battle itself they must respond to boldness, surprise, pretense, and treachery with operations of the same style, only more effective, or else face sure defeat. Drunk or exalted, they must put themselves into a state of nervous tension, of muscular and mental preparedness, multiplying and amplifying their powers. And so they are transfigured, made strangers in the society they protect. And above all, dedicated to Force, they are the triumphant victims of the internal logic of Force, which proves itself only by surpassing boundaries — even its own boundaries and those of its raison d'être. The warrior is the one who finds comfort only in being strong, not only in the face of this or that adversary, in this or that situation, but strong absolutely, the strongest of all — a dangerous superlative for a being who occupies the second rank. The revolts of generals and the military coups d'etat, the massacres and pillages by the undisciplined soldiery and by its leaders, all these are older than history. And that is why Indra, as Sten Rodhe puts it so well, is "the sinner among the gods."

I find the comparison with modern "warriors" specially chilling. Followed immediately after by an equally beautiful and insightful passage on why it is that, despite being violently dangerous, rapist killers, the warrior were and are nonetheless considered heroic:

There is still, however, the point, a significant one, at which the fatalities of the warrior again take on a positive aspect: when by itself the ṛta is inflexible, inhuman, or when its strict application turns into the summum ius of the occidental maxim, to take opposition to it, to reform it, or to violate it, while surely a sin from the perspective of Varuṇa, is in the language of men a movement of progress. In a chapter of my Mitra-Varuṇa (6, "Nexum et mutuum") in which certain Roman juridical facts (§3) are treated somewhat too freely, but in which the rest, and the general direction, are valid, a study was made of this beneficent opposition of Indra to Varuṇa (§4), of the hero's ethic to that of the sovereign (§5), especially in the Indian traditions which attribute to Indra the service of saving human victims in extremis, or even of substituting the ritual in which only a horse perished for the old Varuṇian royal consecration ritual tainted by the practice or the memory of human sacrifices. “It will occasion no astonishment,” I wrote thirty years ago, “that the god of men's societies, often frightful in so many respects, should appear in Indian fable, in opposition to the magical binder, as a merciful god, the god who delivers the regular victims, the human victims, of Varuṇa. The warrior and the sorcerer, or, on another level, the soldier and the policeman, work equally, when occasion demands, for the liberty and the life of their fellows; but each operates according to procedures which the other finds distasteful… Above all, it is the warrior, in placing himself on the margin of the code, or even beyond it, who appropriates the right to pardon, to break through the mechanisms of hard justice, in short, the right to introduce some flexibility into the strictly determined course of human relations: to pave the way for humanity.”

Dumézil would expand the thesis of this book in his Mythe et Épopée, vol. 2, available in English as the book The Stakes of the Warrior, where he corrects certain parts of his argument and further fleshes it out with another example from India, that of Shishupala, but it is written with the assumption that one is familiar with what is written in this book: this remains the essential reading on the Indo-European warrior, how he was seen and how he was mythologically represented.