Continuing on with the exploration of similarities between mythologies and especially in the commonalities between the nature gods of the various mythologies led me to the Wikipedia article on Proto-Indo-European religion (PIE). The underlying root of many Indo-European religions / mythologies seem so similar though they have evolved into everything from the Vedic Gods to Greek/Roman, Norse/Germanic, Celtic, Iranian, etc. The article helpfully tells us that there is a reasonable distillation of what may have been the PIE names for some of the common gods.

Some stand out: Deva, Dieu, Zeus as god names, although Zoroastrianism regards devas as demonic. Varuna and Ouranus clearly can be seen to be linked. The whole page is worth a read for anyone interested in the history of religion and mythology.

Can the spread of this proto-religion be linked to the migration of early humans across the same geographic areas? It fits well with the commonality of language across the same regions. The separation of each individual from the root must have occurred over long periods of time as languages evolved and tribes became scattered and distant from each other. There must have been some historic war between the Iranian and Indian branches at one time which led to the Asuras being worshipped and Devas demonized in Zoroastrianism.

What was the interaction between this “nature-based” religion and other religions and philosophies of the lands they spread to? How did the Vedic religion interact with the Dravidian proto-religion? In South India, there are many old temples dedicated to gods that find no home in the Vedic pantheon. These gods must have their roots in the old Dravidian gods.

The spread of PIE from Western Europe to India presaged the later expansion of another religion in the same region: the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Indeed, the neck of land between Egypt and Asia probably can tell us a lot about human history as it possibly witnessed the origin of the PIE and the Abrahamic religions.

In the second wave, why did the expansion stop at the sub-continent? Why did Dharmic religions survive the onslaught when so little of the rest of the world did? Did the sub-continent act as the buffer that protected the expansion of Buddhism across Asia and the preservation of Taoism in China? Why did pretty much every other descendant religion just vanish?

It is possible that the evolution of religious / philosophic thought in India is responsible for this. After all, India grew out of the old Vedic religion into Buddhism, Vedanta and other Dharmic religions over two thousand years ago.