Predictably, this lead to a rant.

“Just that it’s not useful to use the Puranic canon for Indo-European reconstruction because they’re centuries separated from the original mythos.”

This is also significantly incorrect.

I suppose I should explain.

Consider the situation surrounding the famed progeny of Surya & Saranyu/Chhaya. Indeed, that whole myth all up.

It has literally a line and a half in the entire RV. I don’t think I’ve run across anything more directly upon it elsewhere in teh V corpus either (yet).

If you want detail upon it – literally anything more than a line so indistinct we barely even know how many children are involved etc. etc. … then you have to turn to the Puranic canon of texts.

Which is fortuitous – for there, one finds much to go upon.

And here is the intriguing thing – the detailing that one finds therein, includes materials concording strongly & usefully with that which we find in the Hellenic mythic canon as well

The details were evidently communicated / preserved down the ages til their commitment therein.

Consider another exemplar. The sitaution of Kali undertaking a ritual bathing in order to wash off the patina of darkness and resume Gauri Form.

Pauranika texts detail it. Not much to go upon prior to this (unless one looks quite … innovatively).

And yet … strong suite of direct correspondence-concordance, once again, with materials to be found in Hellenic (and, indeed, even folklore-era Celtic, oddly enough) materials.

More than that … the Nilamata Purana & Rajatarangini … which are very late texts … also do the same thing, containing features even more specifically resonant with that housed within, say, Pindar’s 1st Nemean Ode & Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheka, Ovid, etc.

One wilfully disregards the later source-material that we may have to draw upon at one’s innate peril.

The chauvinistic attitude toward it ought come to an end.

I mean, hell! Every single Nordic text that we have to hand well post-dates much of the Pauranik era mythology. And yet it would be a churlish specimine indeed who would seek to cavalierly cast them out when it comes to meaningfully understanding the Proto-Indo-Euro mythos!

Not just that – the majority of them Nordic texts are actively warped via various issues with their transmission. Some are fragmentary, others are interpolated, or we simply lack the material to make sense of swathes of stuff housed therein.

Let us have an exemplar: Thor contra Jormungandr.

It has been misunderstood as Thor being killed by Jormungandr at the Ragnarok. Even despite other texts attesting the combat already having occurred – and with an outcome in favour of the Indra-correlate.

And yet … the details but briefly attested in the Voluspa – even though misconstrued – we can see how they in truth resonate most strongly with that found within the RV : viz. RV I 32 14 and Indra’s sanction for the Brahmahatya of Vrtra.

Another example:

The mythology around Odin in relation to the famed Mead of Poetry [Kvasir – ‘that which is pressed’; ref. ‘Soma’], coming as an Eagle [ref. Shyena of Rudra/Agni] to bring the 3 vessels (+ a 4th dropped) .. does this sound familiar?

The major attestation for it is to be found within Sturluson’s own prose contributions at the front of the Skaldskaparmal !

A text compiled by a Christian, post-Christianization, and with all that that entails, a thousand years ago … and it closely concords with Vedic.

Who are we to suggest that our own [if I might be permitted the ‘possessive’ pronoun here for my zealous participation ‘on the inside’ of the H. religion] texts, written earlier than this and not by non-IE religious adherents … are less (P)IE resonant than that ?!