In the heyday of comparative mythology studies in the second half of the previous century, when programs at UCLA and Harvard pointedly titled themselves “Folklore and Mythology” (Harvard’s program, for undergraduates, still does), Georges Dumézil’s name was definitely one to conjure with, among those of us engaged in the project to define “myth” in a way that would allow us fruitfully to compare the “mythologies” (whatever those were) from different cultures and eras. This is not to say that Dumézil ever presented a new, improved definition of myth to replace the “usual suspects” such as those famously listed in Maria Leach’s Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend—at least not one that I know of. He was, however, keenly aware of and did valuable work on how protean myth can be. In exemplary fashion he followed the transpositions that can occur (noticed by scholars before him as well) shifting “myth” (in the sense of stories about divinities and semi-divine heroes) into “epic” (as in the Indic Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana) or into “legend” or history, such as what seemingly happened in Roman civilization, as reflected in Livy’s and other historians’ accounts of the beginnings of what was to become Rome and its people. Even more importantly, Dumézil provided an inspiring example for finding in the minutiae of mythology the subtle, complex propositions set forth in narrativized form about the nature of society and its cultural institutions, such as law, economic structure, war, and religious ritual (the means of negotiation between divine and human). Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna. Essai sur deux representations indo-européennesde la souveraineté in its 1940 version and even more so in the revised edition of 1948 (of which the book under review is an eminently readable translation), generously displays this analytic talent, foreshadowing the scholar’s three-volume masterpiece, Mythe et épopée (1968-1973), in its own way as ambitious and provocative a project as Dumézil’s friend and supporter Claude Lévi-Strauss’s even more voluminous Mythologiques (1964-1971).
Even an owner of the second edition of Mitra-Varuna in French, or of the 1988 Zone Books edition of the translation by Derek Coltman, which forms the basis of the present book, would find much of additional value in the publication under review. (Stuart Elden, responsible for this slightly revised version of Coltman’s translation, points out that the Zone Books publication, like virtually all of the English translations of Dumézil’s work published over the past several decades, is out of print [p. xxiv].) As the cover of this book, brought out by Hau Books of Chicago, vividly shows, much of Dumézil’s revision of Mitra-Varuna evolved in the tiny notes he entered by hand into the margins of the printed first edition. Elden’s editorial work makes it possible for the reader to find the major changes between the two French editions, and to consult the more important original passages, mostly presented in both French and English translation, that have undergone substantial change. Helpfully, Elden has also clarified or corrected Dumézil’s sometimes telegraphic bibliographical references.
Adding substantially to the value of this publication is Elden’s introductory essay, not just a preparation of the reader for Mitra-Varuna but more generally, as he titles it, a “Re-Introduction to Georges Dumézil”: a much-needed reminder to the modern scholarly world of the numerous contributions that Dumézil made to the fields of comparative mythology, particularly in regard to the Indo-European world, and to the study of the languages and the oral traditions of the peoples of the Caucasus. (It is in the last of these fields, perhaps the closest to Dumézil’s heart, that his folkloristic instincts were most evident.) Elden’s outline of Dumézil’s life, scholarly career, and achievements includes an account of the major influences on his work, emanating from other great scholars of the last century, such as the historian Granet and the sociologist Mauss. There is also a very judicious account of the controversial accusation that Nazi or fascist sympathies underlay Dumézil’s scholarship published in the period leading up to the Second World War, in particular his Mythes et dieux des Germains (1939). Dumézil’s reputation and posterity were damaged by this controversy in his later years and after his death in 1986. But was this an instance of guilt by association, which had less to do with anything Dumézil said or did, and more with the affiliations of some predecessors and colleagues whose work Dumézil utilized, or with epigones gone astray, who in later times took the very concept of “Indo-European” (a fundamentally linguistic and definitely not an ethnic or racial category) and even some of Dumézil’s own ideas, in nefarious directions? Elden grapples with this question fairly and insightfully.
Dumézil’s best-known scholarly contribution in his time, still remembered to the extent his work is read and used today, was his argument that the speakers of ancient Indo-European languages, and to some extent their descendants, developed an ideological model, one that in some cases was actually put into social and political practice. According to this model, society operates as a hierarchy consisting of three levels, each level having to do with a separate task or fonction assigned by social destiny to the actors on that particular level. The first “function” (on top of the hierarchy and putatively the most powerful) has to do with the closely linked domains of sovereignty, knowledge (especially jurisprudence), and religion/magic; the second is the domain of warfare and warriors; and the third embraces the production of food, valuables, and babies. In Dumézil’s wide-ranging investigations in search of traces of this tripartite ideology, he found an Indo-European heritage that he claimed was recoverable from civilizations ancient, medieval, and perhaps even modern. (What Mitra-Varuna in particular can tell us about contemporary phenomena, specifically those of India, is the subject of the book’s afterword by Veena Das, “Mitra-Varuna: The Ongoing Life of a Concept.”) Perhaps even more compelling than Dumézil’s eloquent articulations of the sweeping scheme itself is the lovingly and patiently close attention that he so fruitfully lavished on the details in his interpretations of the cultural records of Indo-European language speakers—whether the data was linguistic, narrative (including “mythological”), religious, or otherwise institutional in nature.
Dumézil’s close readings of cultures definitely paid off in a wealth of insights into the “ideal” and the “real” of a wide variety of cultures spanning Asia and Europe—insights into what the evidence can tell us about how these peoples designed their world in theory and in practice. Mitra-Varuna is a good example of a Dumézilian deep-dive, showing how various Indo-European traditions in diverse ways illustrate what a delicate balance needs to be maintained among the (not exactly harmonious) elements of the first function, and how difficult it is for the latter’s overlords to exert control over the exponents of the other functions—particularly over the second (the martial). To be effective, that control needs to combine measured and judicious thought with spontaneous, magical, and even terrifying action—or, to put it in terms of ancient Indian religion and mythology, the Mithraic with the Varunaic. In an exegetical move reminiscent of Lévi-Strauss’s demonstrations of how myth, detecting inherent contradictions in how a society views itself, attempts to defuse the tension by transforming these oppositions into more manageable ones, Dumézil, for his part, shows how Indo-European myth and ritual run this “Mitra vs Varuna” dynamic through a whole series of paired opposites. In this book, a tour de force of subtle analysis, he not only lays out the agonistic tension as it operates in the dossiers of prominent mythological and ritual figures in ancient Roman, Indic, and Greek traditions, but also extends the relevance of this dialectic into modern times:
“The Luperci, the Gandharva and the centaurs are all ‘swift.’ All of them, ritually or mythically, are runners in important or famous races. . .in conformity with a more general mystique. Speed (extreme rapidity, sudden appearances and disappearances, lightning raids, etc.) is that behavior, that ‘rhythm’, most suited to the activity of violent, improvisational, creative societies. In contrast, the ordered public religion that holds sway throughout the year, except for that brief period when the masked monsters are unleashed, demands a majestic gait and solemn rhythm. . . .This opposition between the mystique of celeritas and the morality of gravitas is fundamental, and it takes on its full meaning when one recalls that the dizzying intoxication of speed—among shamans of Siberia and on our own Grand Prix circuits—is just as much a stimulant, an intoxicant, a means of achieving an illusory transcendence over human limitations, as is alcoholic intoxication, erotic passion or the frenzy stirred by oratory” (pp. 18-19).
Mitra-Varuna’s reappearance in translation is to be welcomed as, one can hope, a harbinger of renewed interest in the always-provocative legacy of mythology studies left by Georges Dumézil, one of the most significant contributors to the modern understanding of traditional narrative as a collective laboratory for articulating the triumphs as well as the failures of social order.
--------
[Review length: 1489 words * Review posted on October 17, 2025]