Light From Distant Asterisks: Towards A Description of the Indo-European Religious Heritage

by Peter Jackson

An attempt is made to summarize and synthesize new and old evidence regarding the religious heritage among peoples speaking Indo-European languages in pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Eurasia. Initial stress is put on the methodological, theoretical and ideological problems of such an undertaking. The rest of the paper discusses how the transmission of heritage was conceptualized (with examples from Vedic and Greek literature), to what extent we are able to discern the outlines of an Indo-European pantheon, the possibility of tracing the realizations of hereditary, mythical motifs in the oldest Indo-European literatures, and the prospects for a comparative Indo-European ritualistics.

43 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

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Peter Robert Jackson, CNZM is a three-time Academy Award-winning New Zealand director, producer and writer, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy adapted from the novels by J. R. R. Tolkien. He is also known for his 2005 remake of King Kong.

He won international attention early in his career with his "splatstick" horror comedies, before coming to mainstream prominence with Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Academy Award best screenplay nomination with his partner Fran Walsh.