The Plight of a Sorcerer

by Georges Dumézil

English, French (translation)

Genres: Mythology, Nonfiction

130 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 1986

About the author

Georges Dumézil was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Proto-Indo-European religion and society. He is considered one of the major contributors to mythography, in particular for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis of social class in ancient societies.

Reviews

[Kiarash · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I remember from what I read in the introduction, this is the translation of the second section of his famous French work, "Mythe et epopee".
The book is about the comparison of two figures, Kavya Usanas in Indian mythology and Kavus in Iranian mythology. Apart from the similarity in their names, the book points out various similar characteristics of these two figures based on Rig vedas, Avesta, Shahnameh, Islamic historians and other sources and reflects his thoughts about the Kayanids.
Just like his other work that I read, Mitra Varuna, this was a very pleasant and mind opening experience for me, one which encourages the reader to read several more books on related subjects.

[CivilWar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second third of the second volume of his monumental Mythe et Épopée, this is an excellent and most accomplished study where Dumézil, by means of the most nuanced type of comparative analysis, teases out a comparison between the Indian sorcerer Kavi Ushanas, a special type of brahman of Indo-Iranian origin designated in the Vedas as a kavi, and Kay Kāvus, the famous Kayanid shah from the Shahnameh as well as Avestan sources, which clearly shows that the two derive from a common Indo-Iranian prototype regarding a story about a type of sorcerer, independent and thus between god and demons, with powers over life and death as well as aging (which is much of the same, ultimately). With this, he conclusively proves that Kay Kāvus was not an "embellished" historical character but is in fact wholly legendary and in fact belongs to an extremely ancient mythical past, which found two counterparts in later epic.

Very eye-opening, illuminating read, as all of Mythe et Épopée is, and it has made me realize how unthinking and unfair I was to the Shahnameh as a source of myth when I was a mere reader of epic and not a student of myth. Highly recommended, alongside the other two thirds of the French volume in English, The Destiny of a King and The Stakes of the Warrior.