Indo European Weapon Cults
Scholars have reconstructed a Proto-Indo-European cult of the weapons, especially the dagger, which holds a central position in various customs and myths.[1][2] In the Ossetic Nart saga, the sword of Batradz is dragged into the sea after his death, and the British King Arthur throws his legendary sword Excalibur back into the lake from which it initially came. The Indic Arjuna is also instructed to throw his bow Gandiva into the sea at the end of his career, and weapons were frequently thrown into lakes, rivers or bogs as a form of prestige offering in Bronze and Iron Age Europe.[1] Reflexes of an ancestral cult of the magical sword have been proposed in the legends of Excalibur and Durandal (the weapon of Roland, said to have been forged by the mythical Wayland the Smith). Among North Iranians, Herodotus described the Scythian practice of worshiping swords as manifestations of "Ares" in the 5th century BC, and Ammianus Marcellinus depicted the Alanic custom of thrusting swords into the earth and worshiping them as "Mars" in the 4th century AD.[2]
Bibliography[edit]
West, Martin Litchfield (2007). Indo-European Poetry and Myth (PDF). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 281–283. ISBN 978-0-19-928075-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 April 2018. Retrieved 23 April 2017. Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help) Search this book on 
- Littleton, C. Scott (1982). "From swords in the earth to the sword in the stone: A possible reflection of an Alano-Sarmatian rite of passage in the Arthurian tradition". In Polomé, Edgar C. Homage to Georges Dumézil. pp. 53–68. ISBN 9780941694285. Search this book on
References[edit]
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