Achilles and the Caucasus - Université de Montréal

Achilles and the Caucasus (K. Tuite) — août 17, 2007 — pg. 52
the gestion of Batradz, but I hesitate to make much of the
similarity before further examination.
A link between Achilles and Batradz, this time within the context
of the study of specifically Indo-European mythology, has been
arrived at as well by two Francophone scholars, in books that did
not appear in print until after this manuscript was sent to the JIES.
Christophe Vielle [Le mytho-cycle héroïque dans l'aire indoeuropéenne,
Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1997] and, building upon
Vielle’s work, Bernard Sergent [Genèse de l'Inde, Paris: Payot,
1997] reconstruct two Proto-IE “heroic mytho-cycles”, each one
centered around a semi-divine warrior. Both heroes are associated
with Dumézil’s second function, but form a contrasting set to a
certain extent paralleling the Mitra-Varuna first-function pair. One
of the warriors, whose reflexes include Achilles, Batradz, the Indic
Arjuna, and the Irish Cúchulainn, is born of the “Melusinian”
union of a goddess and a mortal, and is represented fighting within
the context of a regular army, with the spear as his weapon of
choice. Sergent [op. cit., 345-348] points to several parallels
between the Trojan War and the great battle of the Mahâbhârata,
including a figure corresponding to Paris. The Achilles-like hero
has as his opposite a supernatural strong-man born of an adulterous
liaison between a god and a woman. His distinguishing features
include an animal-pelt garment, the club as favored weapon, and a
preference for solitary battles on the margins of society. The
counterparts to the above-mentioned heroes are thus Greek
Herakles, Ossetic Soslan, Indic Râma, and Irish Brian. As was the
case with Toporov, the results at least partially corroborate my
own, though for different reasons. It is however unclear to me
whether any correlate to the bifurcation reported by Vielle and
Sergent can be found in Georgian or Abkhazian mythology. I am at
present inclined to expect that there is none to be found, and that
Achilles and Herakles — and, it appears, their Indic, Irish and
Ossetic counterparts — represent a distinctly IE reworking of the
material present in the single figure I have named Proto-Achilles.
In this respect, at least, Amiran resembles his antecedent more
closely than does Achilles.