Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, and a member of the Académie Française. Dumézil is well known for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis on Proto-Indo-European mythology and society. His research has had a major influence on the fields of comparative mythology and Indo-European studies. In the 1930s he was a supporter of the far-right group Action Française, leading to criticism from left-wing scholars in the 1980s and afterwards.
Early life and education
Georges Dumézil was born in Paris, France, on 4 March 1898, the son of Jean Dumézil and Marguerite Dutier. His father was a highly educated general in the French Army.Dumézil received an elite education in Paris at the Collège de Neufchâteau, Lycée de Troyes, Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Lycée de Tarbes. He came to master Ancient Greek and Latin at an early age. Through the influence of Michel Bréal, who was a student of Franz Bopp and the grandfather of one of Dumézil's friends, Dumézil came to master Sanskrit, and developed a strong interest in Indo-European mythology and religion. He began studying at École normale supérieure in 1916. During World War I, Dumézil served as an artillery officer in the French Army, for which he received the Croix de Guerre. His father was inspector-general of the French artillery corps during the war.
Dumézil returned to his studies at ENS in 1919. His most important teacher there was Antoine Meillet, who gave him a rigorous introduction in Iranian and Indo-European linguistics. Meillet was to have a great influence on Dumézil. Unlike other students of Meillet, Dumézil was more interested in mythology than linguistics. In the 19th century, philologists such as Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn, Max Müller and Elard Hugo Meyer had conducted notable work on comparative mythology, but their theories had since been found to be mostly untenable. Dumézil became determined to restore the field of comparative mythology from its contemporary discredit.
Dumézil lectured at Lycée de Beauvais in 1920, and taught French at the University of Warsaw in 1920–1921. While lecturing at Warsaw, Dumézil was struck by striking similarities between Sanskrit literature and the works of Ovid, which suggested to him that these pieces of literature contained traces of a common Indo-European heritage.
Dumézil gained his PhD in comparative religion in 1924 with the thesis Le festin d'immortalité. Inspired by the "works of Ernst Kuhn, the thesis examined ritual drinks in Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic and Italic religion. Dumézil's early writings were also inspired by the research of James George Frazer, whose views were however becoming discredited due to advances in the field of anthropology. At ENS, Dumézil became a close friend of Pierre Gaxotte. Gaxotte was a follower of Charles Maurras, leader of the nationalist Action Française movement. Though some later accused Dumézil of being in sympathy with Action Française, Dumézil denied this, and was never a member of the organization.
Dumézil's PhD thesis was highly praised by Meillet, who requested Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert, both followers of Émile Durkheim, to assist Dumézil with further studies. For reasons unknown, the request was turned down. Mauss and Hubert were both socialists in the spirit of Jean Jaurès, who actively used their academic influence to advance their own political ideology. Hubert in particular was a fervent Dreyfusard known for his philosemitism, republicanism, anti-racism and Germanophobia. Dumézil had deliberately avoided attending Hubert's lectures, and had to be convinced by Meillet to provide Hubert with a copy of his PhD thesis, which Hubert subsequently bitterly criticized. The refusal of Mauss and Hubert to provide Dumézil with a position may have been motivated by suspicions that Dumézil did not agree with them politically. The rejection by Hubert led to Dumézil losing support from Meillet as well. Meilett informed Dumézil that it would be impossible for him to acquire a position in France, and encouraged him to move abroad.
Early career
From 1925 to 1931, Dumézil was Professor of the History of Religions at Istanbul University. During his years in Istanbul, Dumézil acquired proficiency in Armenian and Ossetian, and many non-Indo-European languages of the Caucasus. This enabled him to study the Nart saga, on which he published a number of influential monographs. Dumézil developed a strong interest in the Ossetians and their mythology, which was to prove indispensable for his future research. For the rest of his life, Dumézil would make yearly visits to Istanbul to conduct field research among Ossetians in Turkey. During this time he also published his Le problème des centaures, which examined similarities in Greek and Indo-Iranian. It was inspired by Elard Hugo Meyer. Together with Le festin d'immortalité and Le crime des Lemniennes, Le problème des centaures would form part of the works Dumézil referred to as his "Ambrosia cycle".Dumézil's work in Istanbul would be of enormous importance to his future research, and he would later consider his years in Istanbul as the happiest of his life. In 1930, Dumézil published his important La préhistoire indo-iranienne des castes. Drawing upon evidence from Avestan, Persian, Greek, Ossetian and Arabic sources, Dumézil suggested that ancient Indo-Iranians, including the Scythians, maintained a caste system which had been established before the Indo-Iranian migrations into South Asia. This article eventually caught the attention of French linguist Émile Benveniste, with whom Dumézil entered a fruitful correspondence.
From 1931 to 1933, Dumézil taught French at Uppsala University. Here he became acquainted with the influential professor Henrik Samuel Nyberg and the latter's favourite students, Stig Wikander and Geo Widengren. Through Wikander and Widengren, Dumézil further became acquainted with Otto Höfler. Wikander, Widengren and Höfler would remain lifelong friends and intellectual collaborators of Dumézil. Throughout their careers, these scholars would have a strong influence on each other's research. Most notably, Höfler's research on the Germanic comitatus, and Wikander's subsequent research on related warrior fraternities among early Indo-Iranians, would have enormous influence on Dumézil's later research.
Return to France
Dumézil returned to France in 1933, where he through the assistance of Sylvain Lévi, a friend of Meillet, was able to gain a position at the École pratique des hautes études. From 1935 to 1968, Dumézil was Director of Studies at the Department of Comparative Religion at EPHE. In this capacity he was responsible for teaching and research on Indo-European religions. Students of Dumézil during this time include Roger Caillois. At EPHE, through the recommendation of Lévi, Dumézil also attended lectures by sinologist Marcel Granet, whose methodology for the study of religions was to have a strong influence on Dumézil. Seeking to acquire knowledge of non-Indo-European cultures, Dumézil became proficient in Chinese and gained a deep understanding of Chinese mythology.File:Kiviksgraven slab 1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Depiction of ancient rituals on a Nordic Bronze Age stone slab from The King's Grave in southern Sweden. In his trifunctional hypothesis, Dumézil suggested that Proto-Indo-European society was characterized by an ideology in which the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their deities were hierarchically divided into classes of priests, warriors and producers.
In his research on the social structure of ancient Indo-Iranians, Dumézil was greatly aided by Benveniste, who had earlier been critical of Dumézil's theories. During his early years at EPHE, Dumézil modified many of his theories. Most importantly, he increasingly shifted his focus from linguistic evidence to evidence from ancient social structures. Iranologists who influenced Dumézil in this approach included Arthur Christensen, James Darmesteter, Hermann Güntert and Herman Lommel. Notable works of Dumézil from this period include Ouranos-Varuna and Flamen-Brahman. Ouranos-Varuna examined similarities in Greek and Vedic mythology, while Flamen-Brahman examined the existence of a distinct priestly class among the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
In the early 1930s, under the pseudonym "Georges Marcenay", he wrote some articles for the right-wing newspapers Candide and Le Jour, where he advocated an alliance between France and Italy against Nazi Germany. Dumézil's opposition to Nazism figures prominently in several of his later works on Germanic religion. At this time, Dumézil joined the Grande Loge de France, a pro-Jewish Masonic lodge, for which he would later be persecuted by the Nazis.
Formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis
In the late 1930s, Dumézil broadened his research to include the study of Germanic religion. His research on Germanic religion was greatly influenced by the renowned Dutch philologist Jan de Vries, and also by Höfler. It was while lecturing on the Indo-European component in Germanic religion at Uppsala University in the spring of 1938 that Dumézil made a major discovery which was to revolutionize his future research. In his subsequent Mythes et dieux des Germains, Dumézil found that early Germanic society was characterized by the same social divisions as those among the early Indo-Iranians. On this basis, Dumézil formulated his trifunctional hypothesis, which argued that ancient Indo-European societies were characterized by a trifunctional hierarchy composed of priests, warriors and producers.In Dumézil's trifunctional model, the priests were responsible for the "maintenance of cosmic and juridical sovereignty", while warriors were tasked with the "exercise of physical prowess", and the commoners were responsible for "the promotion of physical well-being, fertility, wealth, and so on". In Norse mythology, these functions were according to Dumézil represented by Týr and Odin, Thor, and Njörðr and Freyr, while in Vedic mythology, they were represented by Varuna and Mitra, Indra, and the Aśvins. Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis would come to revolutionize modern research on ancient civilizations.