著者

沖田 瑞穂

雑誌

学習院大学人文科学論集 (ISSN:09190791)

巻号頁・発行日

no.12, pp.181-206, 2003-10-31

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Th is pa pe r d ea ls Wi t h t hr ee fe rt il it y g od d es se s; Sダri, Aphrodite, Freya who belong to the pantheons of India, Greece, and Scandinavia, and tries to compare them. This comparison makes it clear that following three characteristics are common to these three goddesses. N l)They spring from the ocean, and are regarded as“the daughter of the ocean”. 2)They have a lewd character, and have love affairs with a dwarf smith or a divine manufacturer. 3)They cause a great war among the human beings. The third is the most important point in this analysis. In India, Greece, Scandinavia, there are legends of a great war in which so many gods and human beings are involved. In my opinion, these legends have a common structure, First, the supreme god decides to bring about the war. Second, the fertility goddess becomes the origin of the war. Third, the abduction of a human heroine or the insult to her turns out to be the direct cause of the war. This heroine is regarded as an earthly i.ncarnation of the fertility goddess. It is likely that Proto-lndo-European society had a fertil.ity goddess having all these characteristics, and myths related to this goddess. And each Indo-European community inherited the concept of this fertility goddess from the Proto-Indo- European mythol.ogy.