Baring the right shoulder

[thillaud at unice.fr]

Franc,ois Voegeli wrote:
>On Thu, 3 Oct 1996 00:25:36 BST, Dominique Thillaud wrote:
>
>>Otherwise, to make the pradaksina is not specifically an indian ritual: we
>>have celtic and latin testimonies and, very recently in France, ritual
>      ^^^^^^
>
>As far as I know the so-called "Celts" never wrote anything about their
>culture and religious ideas. The only written testimonies we have of them
>are a few commercial contracts written mainly with the greek alphabet and a
>few "ogams" here and there, the decipherment of which could still be a
>matter of debate.
>So I would like to know where from these testimonies come.

Sorry! I wrote too fastly, using an hyperonymic 'celtic' for 'irish'!
        The fact I had in mind lies in various versions of the Boand's
story, well known after Dumezil's study (Mythe et Epopee III, pp.27-31 with
references to irish texts in the notes). This texts imply a moving around a
magic well where the direction of the rotation seems significant:
"qu'il fit mouvement vers la gauche ou vers la droite" (The Metrical
Dindshenchas) - "j'irai trois fois dans le sens contraire du soleil"
(Cinaed ua Hartacain's poem on Brugh na Boinne) and this counterclockwise
moving fails.
        I think that's clearly remains of a "circumambulatio" ritual
because you must keep in mind that this story is a mythical one about irish
gods: Dagda, Nechtan, Oengus, Boand with good sanskrit correspondances for
the names (Nechtan / [Apaam] Napaat ; Boand / Govinda).
        But, for a recent and larger glance on indo-european pradaksina,
you can refer to: Bernard SERGENT, Les Indo-Europe'ens, ed. Payot, Paris,
1995, § 318, pp. 366-367.

When Franc,ois Voegeli write:
>As far as I know the so-called "Celts" never wrote anything about their
                      ^^^^^^^^^
>culture and religious ideas. The only written testimonies we have of them
>are a few commercial contracts written mainly with the greek alphabet and a
>few "ogams" here and there, the decipherment of which could still be a
>matter of debate.

he lump together two branches of the celtic group, gaelic who used early
"ogams" and brittonic (specially gallic) who used greek (and latin!)
alphabet. Yet, we have many inscriptions (not commercial) and longer texts
(Larzac's leads) and we know much better the gallic language (cf
Pierre-Yves LAMBERT, La Langue gauloise, ed. Errance, Paris, 1994). About
culture and religious ideas, druids wrote nothing, greek and latin authors
say few and bias, but theology and epic of the gaels was well compiled and
preserved by irish monks in the early Middle Age. The irish and welsh
languages themselves are an other source of information and Vendryes have
found many correspondances in religious and legal vocabulary between
italo-celtic and indo-iranian (the most famous: irish ri, gallic -rix,
latin rex, sanskrit raaj-).


--------------------------------------------------------------
Dominique Thillaud - Universite de Nice - Sophia Antipolis
email : thillaud at unice.fr