Table Of ContentHOW TO KILL A DRAGON
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HOW TO KILL A DRAGON
ASPECTS OF INDO-EUROPEAN POETICS
Calvert Watkins
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
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Copyright (c) 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watkins, Calvert.
How to kill a dragon : aspects of Indo-European poetics / Calvert Watkins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508595-7
1. Indo-European philology. 2. Poetics. 3. Comparative linguistics. I. Title.
P569.W38 1995
809—dc20 95-20945
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Stephanie
sociai karai
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PREFACE
This book is conceived as both an introduction to, and an original contribution to,
comparative Indo-European poetics. Comparative Indo-European poetics may be
defined as a linguistic approach—both historical and theoretical, both genetic and
typological, both diachronic and synchronic—to the form, nature, and function of
poetic language and archaic literature among a variety of ancient Indo-European
peoples. These societies spoke related languages, derived from a common ancestral
tongue, and occupied then and now most of the territory from the western isles of
Europe to the northern half of the Indian subcontinent.
"Philology is the art of reading slowly." My methodology throughout has been
a combination of extremely close reading of text passages in the original—all text
passages are translated as well—with the traditional Comparative Method. It is my
claim that what may be legitimately if tendentiously termed the "genetic intertextuality"
of all the versions of certain particular formulas and themes, varying in time, place and
language, constitutes a background without which one cannot fully apprehend,
understand and appreciate the traditional elements in a given poetic text in an early
Indo-European language. In this sense we may speak of a genetic Indo-European
comparative literature.
The work consists of seven parts and 59 chapters. These develop first the subtitle
(Aspects of Indo-European Poetics) and then the title (How to kill a dragon) of the
whole work. Chapters 1-4 of part I set the stage and background for the approach, the
comparative method, explore the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and
locate the various Indo-European traditions in time and space as well as genre.
Chapters 5-6 develop the reconstructible ideology of the spoken word in Indo-
European society, its perceived ability to produce an effect on the real world (the "truth
formulation"), its perseveration across time, and its extraordinary specificity.
Chapters 7-11 of part II present case studies and selected text analyses from
Greek, Indie, Celtic, Italic, and Anatolian: their form of verbal art. Chapters 12-16then
present analyses of inherited phrasal formulas (in the sense of contemporary theory of
oral literature), whole noun and verb phrases which are preserved in more than one
tradition, inherited stylistic figures, and common traditions of obscurantism and
hidden meaning in Vedic and other languages.
Part III (chapters 17-26) explores and argues for the Indo-European antiquity of
a liturgical style intermediate between prose and the quantitative Indo-European
metrical verse of the Greek and Indie type. I examine this strophic style in some of our
oldest monuments of verbal art in liturgy and prayer from Ireland to India, including
the central Indo-European royal consecration rite which is the As'vamedha or Horse-
sacrifice.
viii Preface
Parts IV-VII, the remainder of the book, set forth the evidence for a C mon
Indo-European formula expressing the central act of an inherited theme, the serpent or
dragon-slaying myth. The 'signature' formula for the myth of the divine hero who
slays the serpent recurs in the same linguistic form (derivatives of the IE root
*g"hen-, from Greek to English bane) in texts from the Rig Veda (ahann ahim
'he slew the serpent') through Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Hittite myth, Greek
epic and lyric, Celtic and Germanic epic and saga down to Armenian oral folk epic of
the last century. This formula shapes the narration of 'heroic' killing or overcoming
of adversaries over the Indo-European world for millennia. The formula is the vehicle
for the central theme of a proto-text, a central part of the symbolic culture of the
speakers of Proto-Indo-European itself. The variations rung on this formula constitute
a virtually limitless repository of literary expression in archaic and preliterate Indo-
European societies, and their careful study can cast light in unexpected places, and
bring together under a single explanation a variety of seemingly unrelated, uncon-
nected text passages in a number of different but related languages. The formula is a
precious and precise tool for genetic as well as typological investigation in the study
of literature and literary theory. The fact is perhaps well-known to Indo-Europeanists;
it is clearly less so to philologists, historians of literature, and literary critics.
Part IV treats the Basic Formula (as I term it, after Renou) and its variants in the
narration of the serpent slaying myth, in Indie, Iranian and Hittite (chapters 27-35),
Greek (36-42), and Germanic (43-44). Part V (44-48) explores some dragons and
dragon-slayers of probable Indo-European antiquity, involving comparison of Old
Irish, Hittite, Greek, Indie, and Iranian. Some similarities of Greek and other monsters
are genetic in nature, while others are due to contact and diffusion.
Part VI (49-55) is entitled From Myth to Epic, and is concerned primarily with
the interpretation of Greek text passages from Homer to Lysias in which the hero's
adversary is not a mythical monster but another hero. The final part VII (56-59),
entitled From Myth to Charm, deals with the application of the Basic Formula to the
medicine of incantation in a variety of Indo-European traditions (including Hittite),
and by adducing new data and different methodology is able to vindicate the
controversial claims asserted already in the mid-19th century by Adalbert Kuhn, the
"founder" of Indo-European poetics.
Poetics is the study of what makes a verbal message a work of art, in Jakobson' s
phrase, and Indo-European poetics, both diachronic and synchronic, is a window onto
ancient verbal art. My goal has been to shed some new and different light on just what
it is that makes the reading of these ancient texts worthwhile.
It is a pleasant duty to acknowledge my debt and express my profound thanks to the
many individuals and corporate bodies which have given me intellectual, material, and
spiritual support during the long preparation of this book.
First, to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for fellowships during two sabbatical years, and
to the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Department of the Classics and the Clark
Preface ix
Fund of Harvard University for grants toward the preparation of the manuscript;
Then to the many students or former students who typed the successive versions:
Mark Hale, Brian Krostenko, Elizabeth Baer; to Bert Vaux for font composition; to
John O' Neil for expert technical advice and support; and primarily to Steve Peter, who
did the lion's share of typing, font composition and word processing, and who carried
to completion the daunting task of preparation of the entire final camera-ready copy;
To the outside reader for Oxford University Press for his keen eye, and to Joshua
Katz and Ben Fortson, who copy-edited the entire manuscript, and whose stylistic
sense and philological acumen saved me from many blunders; to Ben Fortson for
indispensable aid in typing indexes and bibliography; and to Nancy Hoagland of
Oxford University Press for her gracious and sympathetic professionalism;
To several colleagues at Harvard and elsewhere who read the manuscript for
their particular areas of competence: Joseph Harris for Germanic, Kim McCone for
Irish, James Russell for Armenian, Richard Thomas for Latin and Italic, Gregory Nagy
and Emily Vermeule for Greek. To four scholars, all sometime associate professors at
Harvard, I am particularly indebted for their contributions: Hayden Pelliccia and Ian
Rutherford in Greek, John Carey in Celtic, and Mark Hale in Linguistics. They will
know what I mean. Finally, I am most grateful to P. Oktor Skjaerv0, and not only for
his Iranian expertise, from which I of course profited greatly; for he read and copy-
edited the entire manuscript, and whatever clarity the reader finds will often have to be
attributed to him.
One name still remains to be mentioned, that of my wife Stephanie Jamison. The
book would simply not exist without her inspiration, her knowledge, and her judgment,
over these many years. I dedicate this book to her in the hope that she will ceive it
as & Bone-house, with Seamus Heaney, and Come back past I philology andkennings,
I re-enter memory I where the bone's lair I is a love-nest I in the grass.
