The king and the god () is the title of a short dialogue composed in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. It is loosely based on the "King Harishchandra" episode of Aitareya Brahmana (7.14). S. K. Sen asked a number of Indo-Europeanists (Y. E. Arbeitman, Eric P. Hamp, Manfred Mayrhofer, Jaan Puhvel, Werner Winter, Winfred P. Lehmann) to reconstruct the PIE "parent" of the text.
Dialogue Hamp's/Sen's version from the EIEC (1997:503), which differs from Hamp's original version in replacing Hamp's Lughus with Sen's Werunos:
+ EIEC 1997's The king and the god 1997 text Translation text
Once there was a king. He childless was. This king a son desired. He his priest (pourer) asked. "(Let) son to me be born!" The priest the king said: "pray to the god Varuṇa". The king to the god Varuṇa approached now to the god to pray: "Hear me father Varuṇa!" The god Varuṇa down from heaven came. "What do you wish?" "I want a son." "(Let) this be (so)," said the bright god Varuṇa. The king's lady a son bore.
Winfred P. Lehmann's version
The EIEC spelling largely corresponds to that used in the Proto-Indo-European language article, with for and for unspecified laryngeals . Lehmann attempts to give a more phonetical rendering, with (voiceless velar fricative) for and (glottal stop) for . Further differences include Lehmann's avoidance of the augment, and of the palato-alveolars as distinctive phonemes.
Andrew Byrd's version
Linguist Andrew Byrd has produced and recorded his own translation to reconstructed PIE.Balter, Michael (2015?-02). The sound of Proto-Indo-European. Science, February 2015?. Retrieved from https://www.science.org/content/article/sound-proto-indo-european (link redirects to https://www.science.org/content/article/sound-proto-indo-european). (Note that article does not contain soundfile.)
English translation:
Once there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest: "May a son be born to me!" The priest said to the king: "Pray to the god Werunos." The king approached the god Werunos to pray now to the god. "Hear me, father Werunos!" The god Werunos came down from heaven. "What do you want?" "I want a son." "Let this be so," said the bright god Werunos. The king's lady bore a son.
See also Schleicher's fable
References
Bibliography . . , reprinted in 1980. Online version edited by University of Michigan, 2008 , on books.google: .
External links What was the earliest ancestor of English like? by Geoffrey Sampson, with a simplified spelling of the EIEC version.