I believe I have already noted here somewhere that the most basic Celtic word for “beloved,” in the romantic sense, literally translates to “cattle.” Oh, my darling, my cattle. But I had no idea how deep this equation goes into the mythic past.
I was, for no particular reason, perusing a 1975 article by Bruce Lincoln on the ancient Indo-European myth of the original cattle theft. This concerns a hero whose most ancient name seems to be “Third” – Trita, Thraetaona – who battles a monster that is usually some kind of serpent and often has three heads. Lincoln:
One element is completely lacking in the Armenian version, and in my opinion it is a crucial one: the booty won in the encounter. Moreover, our Indian and Iranian sources leave some ambiguity on this point, for while the Indian story of Trita’s victory states that cattle were the plunder, the Iranian version tells how two women previously taken from Yima by Azi Dahaka were won back by Thraetaona. Given this set of facts, some scholars have been led to see both “cattle” and “women” as symbolic forms referring back to natural phenomena, specifically the storm or the seasonal freeing of the waters. The myth is taken as allegory, *Vrtaghna and *Trita being identified with the storm, *Aghi with the clouds, and the cows or women with the rain. While the myth may have taken on this allegorical coloring in some variants under the impact of later Indian speculative thought, it is doubtful that this is the original meaning. Rather, the alternation between cows and women can be explained in quite another fashion.
In order to appreciate this, it is instructive to look at the specific term used to describe the women won by Thraetaona, Avestan vanta. Bartholomae, following Darmesteter’s line of investigation, glosses this word as “die Geliebte, Frau.” [the beloved, the woman] But when one analyzes the word, it is clear that it is nothing more than the feminine form of a past passive participle of the verb *van-, “to wish for, desire,” as Bartholomae himself noted. Thus, in reality it means no more than “the female who is desired.” Such a term could surely apply to bovines as well as to humans under certain circumstances.
A similar term is Indo-Iranian *dhainu, one of the most frequent terms for “cow.” Yet, as Benveniste has show, the word means nothing more than “one who lactates, gives milk,” being derived from the verb “to give milk, nourish” (Skt. *dhai). As such, it may be used for the female of any species, Homo sapiens included, and in a very important verse from the Rg Veda (5.30.9) the parallel term dhena, usually rendered “cows,” is used to describe two women who have been captured by Dasa enemies.
As I commented recently, among grain farmers the beloved might be compared to a shock of barley, but among herders cows and women were equally plausible meanings for a word that might be best translated as “heart's desire.” The hero slew the dragon and attained his heart's desire, and we leave it up to you to imagine whether that was in the human or bovine form.
2 comments:
Two notions:
1) It is perhaps worth noting that in some (perhaps many?) traditional societies, bride-price is calculated in cows. This is definitely true in South Sudan (the Nuer most famously, but among other peoples as well). I have a vague memory that this may be true in some Indo-European sources too. This may amount to the idea that, in contracting a marriage, honor requires the exchange of things of like desirability.
2) Interesting that Mediterranean cultures, at least, are famous for tauromachy. The bull is a respected opponent, but always fought and killed, not desired (unless in some sort of indirect, French-theory-style sense where to desire is to kill, etc., etc.). Contrast oxen, which are sacrificed. In any case, male cattle seem to be thought of differently from female.
@David
"In any case, male cattle seem to be thought of differently from female."
This is literally linguistically true. Before the Renaissance, English simply did not have a collective term for adult cattle of both sexes.
You had a cow and cows / a kye and kine for adult female bovines; and you a heifer and heifers for juvenile female bovines; and you had a bull and bulls for uncastrated adult males; and you had a steer and steers / a bullock and bullocks for uncastrated juvenile males; and you had ox and oxen for castrated males of both kinds; and you even had a calf and calves for infants of either gender... but no single term equivalent to our modern usages of "cows" for adults of both sexes.
They did have "cattle", as we do, but it wasn't limited to bovines as it is now - it was a variant of "chattel", used as we still us it today, meaning property of any kind; then it was narrowed to refer to only moveable property (so no land or houses, etc, but still livestock along with things like gold, etc); and then ultimately in the 1500s it at last was limited to cows and bulls alone.
In English before the 16th century, you literally ALWAYS conceived of and referred to male and female bovines separately, along with juvenile and adult bovines separately.
Eventually in the 1500s they introduced "a neat" and "neat" to refer to bovines of all sorts, but the term is now archaic. At some point, potentially even later (I struggle to find dates for it), "a beef" and "beef" appear, although somewhat uncommonly, and often only in particular constructions (e.g., "a head of beef", etc). And eventually, we get the modern sense of "a cow" and "cows".
"Bovine" is from 1817.
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Curiously, there's a small but notable difference with pigs. You had male adults (boar / boars) and female adults (sow / sows), and juveniles of both sexes (pigs)... but then you also had "swine", which sometimes meant only male adults, and other times meant adults of both sexes, but usually referred to domesticated animals
"Hog" is odd, in that originally it could apply to males of at least a year in age, but also was used to refer to a sheep of the same age, or a horse of the same age - usually castrated in all cases.
Speaking of which, you see much the same dimorphism in language with horse and mare, ram and ewe, dog and bitch, etc.
Curiously, you do NOT see such a distinction in sex when it comes to cats, even back in the days of Old English. I can only speculate as to why, but I MUST assume it's because while cats have long been "domesticated" animals, they weren't actually -bred- until the 19th century.
You didn't so much keep cats as livestock, as you allowed them to live amongst humans the same way you would allow swallows to build nests in your eaves, or at best the way you'd let a hive of bees live in a skep you constructed to encourage them to pollinate your plants.
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