The malediction in Indo-European tradition

A comprehensive survey of the maledictions to be found in the literatures of various Indo-European languages was undertaken in order to identify the major types and motifs of these maledictions. The major languages investigated were Sanskrit (including Vedic), Greek (including Homeric), Hittite and other Anatolian languages, Latin, Old Norse (including runes), and Old Irish. A few examples are included also from Medieval Welsh, Old Russian, Oscan, and Avestan and Old Persian.;Based on this investigation, my classificatory scheme includes such basic categories as curses concerning food, pursuit, ritual sacrificing, and sex, curses to childlessness, homelessness, and tomblessness, curses against the body, and metaphorical, comprehensive, and like-for-like curses. More distinctive are curses showing the importance of the pig; curses employing the motif of a pourable substance (water, earth, ashes), having a connection with a return to the elements out of which man was formed; the offense of lying resulting in a curse on the eyes; curses on bad thoughts; and curses summoning up the power of the sea.