DACIANS, THE WOLF PEOPLE
The following information was gathered from
'Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God' by Mircea
Eliade. The book was originally published in 1970 as 'De Zalmoxis a
Gengis-Khan: Etudes comparatives sur le religions et
le folklore de la Dacie et de l'Europe Orientel'. The purpose is to
present the essential from the religion of Geto-Dacians.
RELIGIOUS MEANINGS OF
ETHNIC NAMES
According to Strabo, the original name of the Dacians was daoi. A
tradition preserved by Hesychius informs us that daos was the Phrygian word for
'wolf.' P. Kretschmer had explained daos by the root *dhu, 'to
press, to squeeze, to strangle.'' Among the words derived from this root
we may note the Lydian Kandaules, the name of the Thracian war god, Kandaon, the
Illyrian dhaunos (wolf), the god Daunus, and so on. The city of Daous-dava, in Lower Moesia, between the Danube and Mount Haemus,
literally meant 'village of wolves. Formerly, then, the Dacians called
themselves 'wolves' or 'those who are like wolves,' who
resemble wolves. Still according to Strabo, certain nomadic Scythians to the
east of the Caspian Sea were also called daoi.
The Latin authors called them Daliae, and some Greek historians daai. In all
probability their ethnic name was derived from Iranian (Saka) dahae,
'wolf.' But similar names were not unusual among the IndoEuropeans.
South of the Caspian Sea lay Hyrcania, that is, in Eastern Iranian
'Vehrkana,' in Western Iranian 'Varkana,' literally the
'country of wolves' (from the Iranian root vehrka, 'wolf'). The
nomadic tribes that inhabited it were called Hyrkanoi, 'the wolves,'
by Greco-Latin authors. In Phrygia there was
the tribe of the Orka (Orkoi). We may further cite the Lycaones of Arcadia, and
Lycaonia or Lucaonia in Asia Minor, and especially
the Arcadian Zeus Lykaios' and Apollo Lykagenes; the latter surname has
been explained as 'he of the she-wolf,' 'he born of the
she-wolf,' that is, born of Leto in the shape of a she-wolf. According to Heraclides Ponticus (Fragm. Hist. Gr. 218), the
name of the Samnite tribe of the Lucani came from Lykos, 'wolf.'
Their neighbors, the Hirpini, took their name from hirpus, the Samnite word for
'wolf.' At the foot of Mount
Soracte lived the Hirpi
Sorani, the 'wolves of Sora' (the Volscian city). According to the
tradition transmitted by Servius, an oracle had advised the Hirpi Sorani to
live 'like wolves,' that is, by rapine. And in fact they were exempt
from taxes and from military service, for their biennial rite-which consisted
in walking barefoot over burning coals-was believed to
ensure the fertility of the country. Both this shamanic rite and their living
'like wolves' reflect religious concepts of considerable antiquity.
There is no need to cite other examples. We will note only that tribes with wolf
names are documented in places as distant as Spain
(Loukentioi and Lucenses in Celtiberian Calaecia), Ireland,
and England.
Nor, indeed, is the phenomenon confined to the IndoEuropeans. The fact that a people takes its ethnic name from the name of an animal
always has a religious meaning. More precisely, the fact cannot be understood
except as the expression of an archaic religious concept. In the case with
which we are concerned, several hypotheses can be considered. First, we may
suppose that the people derives its name from a god or
mythical ancestor in the shape of a wolf or who manifested himself
lycomorphically. The myth of a supernatural wolf coupling with a princess, who
gives birth either to a people or a dynasty, occurs in various forms in Central Asia. But we have no testimony to its existence
among the Dacians. A second hypothesis comes to mind: the Dacians may have
taken their name from a band of fugitives - either immigrants from other
regions, or young men at odds with the law, haunting the outskirts of villages
like wolves or bandits and living by rapine. The phenomenon is amply documented
from earliest antiquity, and it survived in the Middle
Ages. It is necessary to distinguish among: a) adolescents who, during their
initiatory probation, had to hide far from their villages and live by rapine;
b) immigrants seeking a new territory to settle in; c) outlaws
or fugitives seeking a place of refuge. But all these young men behaved
'like wolves', were called 'wolves', or enjoyed the
protection of a wolf-god.During his probation the Lacedaemonian kouros led the
life of a wolf for an entire year: hidden in the mountains, he lived on what he
could steal, taking care that no one saw him. Among a number of lndo-European
peoples, emigrants, exiles, and fugitives were called 'wolves.' The
Hittite laws already said of a proscribed man that he had 'become a
wolf.'' And in the laws of Edward the Confessor (ca. AD. 1000), the proscribed
man had to wear a wolf headed mask (wolfhede). The wolf was the symbol of the
fugitive, and many gods who protected exiles and outlaws had wolf deities or
attributes. Examples are Zeus Lykoreius or Apollo Lykeios, Romulus and Remus, sons of the wolf-god Mars
and suckled by the she-wolf of the Capitol, had been 'fugitives.'
According to the legend, Romulus
established a place of refuge for exiles and outlaws on the Capitol. Servius
informs us that this asylum was under the protection of the god Lucoris. And
Lucoris was identified with Lykoreus of Delphi, himself a wolfgod. Finally, a
third hypothesis that may explain the name of the Dacians centers on the
ability to change into a wolf by the power of certain rituals. Such a
transformation may be connected with lycanthropy properly speaking-an extremely
widespread phenomenon, but more especially documented in the BalkanoCarpathian
region-or with a ritual imitation of the behavior and outward appearance of the
wolf. Ritual imitation of the wolf is a specific characteristic of military
initiations and hence of the Mnnerbnde, the secret brotherhoods of warriors.
There are reasons to think that such rites and beliefs, bound up with a martial
ideology, are what made it possible to assimilate fugitives, exiles, and
proscribed men to wolves. To subsist, all these outlaws behaved like bands of
young warriors, that is, like real 'wolves.'
MILITARY INITIATIONS:
RITUAL TRANSFORMATION INTO A PREDATORY ANIMAL
The studies made by Lily Weiser, Otto Hfler, Stig Wikander, C.
Widengren, H. Jeanmaire, and Georges Dumzil have markedly advanced our
knowledge of the Indo-European military brotherhoods, and especially of their
religious ideology and initiatory rituals. In the Germanic world these
brotherhoods still existed at the end of the Volkerwandernng. Among the
Iranians they are documented in the period of Zarathustra, but since a tart of
the vocabulary typical of the Mnnerbflnde is also found in Vedic texts, there
is no doubt that associations of young warriors already existed in the
Indo-Iranian period. G. Dumnzil has demonstrated the survival of certain
military initiations among the Celts and the Romans, and H. Jeanmaire has
discovered vestiges of initiatory rituals among the Lacedaemonians. So it
appears that the Indo-Europeans shared a common system of beliefs and rituals
pertaining to young warriors. Now the essential part of the military initiation
consisted in ritually transforming the young warrior into some species of
predatory wild animal. It was not solely a matter of courage, physical
strength, or endurance, but 'of a magico-religious experience that
radically changed the young warriors mode of being. He
had to transmute his humanity by an access of aggressive and terrifying fury
that made him like a raging carnivore.'' Among the ancient Germans the
predator-warriors were called berserkir, literally 'warriors in the
body-covering [serkrj] of a bear.' They were also known as itqkedhnar,
'wolf-skin men.' The bronze plaque from Torslunda shows a warrior
disguised as a wolf. From all this, two facts emerge: 1. A young man became a
redoubtable warrior by magically assimilating the behavior of a carnivore,
especially a wolf; 2. He ritually donned the wolf-skin, either to share in the
mode of being of a carnivore or to indicate that he had become a
'wolf.'What is important for our investigation is the fact that the
young warrior accomplished his transformation into a wolf by the ritual donning
of a wolf-skin, an operation preceded or followed by a radical change in
behavior. As long as he was wrapped in the animal's skin, he ceased to be a
man, he was the carnivore itself: not only was he a ferocious and invincible
warrior, possessed by the furor heroicus, he had cast off all humanity; in
short, he no longer felt bound by the laws and customs of men. And in fact
young warriors, not satisfied with claiming the right to commit rapine and
terrorize the community during their ritual meetings, were able to behave like
carnivores in eating, for example, human flesh. Beliefs in ritual or ecstatic
lycanthropy are documented both among the members of North American and African
secret societies and among the Germans, the Greeks, the Iranians, and the
Indians. That there were actual instances of anthropophagic lycanthropy there
is no reason whatever to doubt. The so-called leopard societies of Africa furnish the best example. But such sporadic cases
of 'lycanthropy' cannot account for the dissemination and persistence
of beliefs in 'wolf-men.' On the contrary, it is the existence of
brotherhoods of young warriors, or of magicians, who, whether or not they wear
wolf-skins, behave like carnivores, that explains the
dissemination of beliefs in lycanthropy. The Iranian texts several times
mention 'two-pawed wolves,' that is, members of the Mnnerbnde. The
Dnkart even states that 'two-pawed wolves' are 'more deadly
than wolves with fbur paws.' Other texts term them keresa, 'brigands,
prowlers,' who move about at night. The texts dwell on the fact that these
'wolves live on corpses; however, without excluding the possibility of
actual cannibalism, this would seem to be more in the nature of a stereotype
used by Zarathustran polemicists against the members of the Mnnerbnde, who,
in practicing their ceremonies, terrorized the villages and whose way of life
was so different from that of the Iranian peasants and herders. In any case,
mention is also made of their ecstatic orgies, that is, of the intoxicating
drink that helped them to change into wild beasts. Among the ancestors of the
Achaemenides there was also a family named saka haumavarka. Bartholomae and Wikander
interpret the name: 'those who change themselves into wolves (varka) in
the ecstasy brought on by soma (hauma).' Now we know that down to the
nineteenth century assemblies of young men included a banquet of food and drink
stolen or obtained by force, especially alcoholic beverages.
THE CLUB AND THE
STANDARD
The insignia peculiar to the Iranian Mnnerbnde (mairiya) were
the 'blood-stained club' and the standard (drafla).' As Wikander
writes, the blood-stained club was used in the distinctive ritual of the
Iranian Mnnerbiinde as the instrument for the ceremonial slaughter of an ox.
The club became the symbol of the Iranian 'carnivore-warriors.' It is
the typical weapon of the archaic warrior. As is the case with implements of
great antiquity, the club retains its value as a cult instrument when its
military use has been supplanted by more modern weapons. In addition, the club
continued to be the typical weapon of peasants and herders. In this way it
remained the weapon of the Romanian peasantry all through the Middle Ages and down to modern times, and is still the
distinctive weapon in 'young men's games,' in which some memory of
the initiatory brotherhoods always survives.
