ABSTRACT
Dumézil’s much-discussed theory of an Indo-European ideology is founded on the idea of three functions, which are manifested as a set in many different contexts in early Indo-European societies. Instances are the three ‘twice-born’ varṇas (estates) recognized in Hindu socio-structural thinking – priests, warriors, wealth-producers; the three goddesses in the Greek Judgement of Paris; and at Rome the three priests called flamines maiores. Comparing such contexts, Dumézil recognized a recurrent pattern: the first function (F1) related to sovereignty and the sacred, F2 to warrior force, F3 to fecundity/prosperity. The history of Indo-Europeia is one of the large-scale decline of the trifunctional ideology.
Comparable ‘segmentary’ ideologies were analyzed by Durkheim and Mauss in 1903, using ethnography from non–Indo-European tribal societies as well as from ancient literary ones. Such material suggests the possibility of an F4, relating to what is other, beyond, and outside. Tribal social structures seem more often quadripartite than tripartite; most ideologies recognize outsiders and the dysfunctional; and a plausible ideology grasps the world as a totality. The idea of F4 was proposed by the Reeses in 1961, and reasons are discussed for its neglect; it can fill out Dumézilian trifunctionalism.
