potters

[Dominique.Thillaud]

        We can't ignore than potters, like cooks and smithes are jobs using
fire and secret technics.
        Eliade says many things about smithes.
        One of my students, Beatrice Dunoyer (alas, she leaved studies for
a more remunerate job and never published) gave a study on the
warrior-cooks in Medieval and Indian texts (Rainouart, Lancelot, Bhima,
&c.) establishing a link with the early Greek 'mageiros' who is a
sacrificer, a butcher and a cook. Remember Bhima was not only a cook at
Viraata's palace but a warrior-butcher-sacrificer when he kills Duhzaasana.
I believe than in India there is link with the fact that the zamitr was a
kSatriya.
        Probably the potters too are not ordinary men. Intervention of a
potter-God in the cosmogony is a very common myth (I remember an Amerindian
racist one where the men, made with earth, were cooked by God: white people
not sufficiently, black people too much, red people perfectly).
        Hoping to help,
Dominique

Dominique THILLAUD
Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France