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Dumezil

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Du·mé·zil  (d-m-zl, dü-), Georges 1898-1986.
French philologist and cultural historian known for his influential claim that the basic organization of ancient Indo-European society was tripartite and centered around divine, martial, and economic functions.

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Dumezil suggests that among polytheists deities who be arranged in three levels: wise deities who rule (First Function), warrior deities (Second Function), and fertility deities (Third Function), which correspond to the three classes of human society--teachers (rulers), warriors, and peasants.
The categories, borrowed from the anthropologist Georges Dumezil, are wisdom, war, and (in all imaginable forms) wealth.
Dumezil sees the winter and end-of-winter maskers of modern Europe as, in part, a bastardization of this tradition.
 
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