Gales
The Gales are a collection of Northian hymns of various ritualistic uses, composed by the eponymous Galic sect to expound praise of the Galic deities and still employed centrally in modern Fonδaiš Wīštā̊. These poems date to between 1800 and 1200 BCE are the oldest body of extant Northian literature and are one of the oldest of any Erani-Eracuran language.
Most of the Gales are part of collection known as the Gala Recepta, a 132-hymn canon recited partly or entirely in Fonδaiš ceremonies and transmitted in situ of their liturgical functions. Some Gales are not part of this canon and instead are transmitted as quotations in other literature, particular in Epic poetry, which tend to insert quotations of Gales at key moments.
Corpora
The Gales come down to the modern age in two traditions, one being the continuous text and the other one the dissolved text. This dual tradition is comparable to the Vedic samhita and pada texts, and indeed they are often called the samhita and pada texts after their more well-known Vedic cousins. However, unlike the Vedas, the two Galic traditions are not merely two representations of the same text; the dissolved text is in a different dialect altogether and contains materials not transmitted in the continuous text.
Continuous text
The continuous text is the older of the two traditions although it is written down later. It is taken for granted that the continuous text is, in large part, the one that Galic poets composed originally and orally. This would then have been transmitted orally through liturgical demands from priest to training-priest by recitation and practice. Since the text is a collection of hymns, its correct recitation was valued above other considerations.
The continuous text is named for its format: each verse is chanted and recorded without breaks between words. Thus, phonetic developments not only occur between syllables of the same word but also across word boundaries as though they were in the same word. For example, if the following word presented a laryngeal that, in combination with the previous word, could cause compensatory lengthening, then usually the previous syllable became long in the continuous text; that is, in the underlying structure CV̆-HCVC, scansion results in CV̄-CVC = CVH-CVC. This attests to the antiquity of the continuous text, as such a process could only occur if laryngeals still existed in such a way as to permit participation in sound changes.
This methodology is not foolproof, since laryngeals were not noted as such in the later orthography, and their existence in the Galic language is inferred. Some long vowels at the ends of words are not due to laryngeal lengthening but to compensatory lengthening of other lost sounds, and others are simply long by nature. However, where such explanations are not available, the laryngeal theory has beautifully explained hitherto baffling quantity variations in what ought to be the same words. As of 2023, Shelly notes that there are still no conclusive counterexamples to the results of laryngeal lengthening as applied to Galic texts.
On the other hand, due to the same process of verbal fusion, the continuous text also exhibits other phonetic alterations comprehended under the title sandhi. Thus, the same phoneme in different positions could be spelled differently, and such differences are challenging to distinguish from genuine sound changes.
Dissolved text
The origins of the dissolved text is less clear than that of the continuous text. It appears mostly written for the Didaskalic dialect, which is to most authorities an artificial dialect employed to discuss the Gales. Some have suggested it is a paedagogic material used by priests, though this seems unnecessary since priests are taught the Gales by recitation.
The dissolved text is not merely a verbatim rendering of the continuous text with word boundaries restored, though this appears to have been the methodology employed in a majority of places. Up to 32% of Galic words are rewritten using different morphologies, but only very seldom did the editor of the dissolved text resort to using a completely different word. The Galic metre is mostly respected, though concessions are made in the process of changing the grammar. The dissolved text also contains around 800 verses of Galic material that have not been transmitted in the continuous text, suggesting that while the continuous text is not actively edited, it is tightly associated with liturgy; if liturgy becomes obsolete, then those Gales associated with it are also likely to be pruned.
By way of comparison to the continuous text and the Didaskalic Material, it appears that many emendations made by the editor of the dissolved text are glosses for words with morphologies absent in the Didaskalic dialect. For example, the irregular 3pl of the xəŋkat-aorist is regularly edited out of the dissolved text in favour of a root-aorist type construction.
The dissolved text is consulted to reconstruct the underlying phonological form of the Gales; that is, the text the Galic poets had in mind, but with word boudaries restored and phonetic alterations reversed. This is necessary from an academic perspective, since the continuous text as received contains too many ambiguities. In many cases the dissolved text is authoritative in restoring the Gales to their phonological forms, as it dates no more than a millennium at most from the time the Gales were composed; however, scholars debate certain points where the editor of the dissolved text appears to have used more judgement, caused by theological beliefs, ignorance of the language, or other well-intended mistakes.
Dating
It is generally held that the Gales as hymns of worship can be divided into three classes based on their linguistic characteristics and theological influence on each other:
- Group I, dating to 1800 – 1500 BCE, redacted around 1500 BCE. Most of the hymns of this group are hymns dedicated to Earth, with a sprinkling of Sky and Sun hymns. The pespective of Group I hymns is human-active.
- Group II, from about 1300 – 1200 BCE, redacted around 1200 BCE. This group contains many hymns that appear to be extensions or prefaces to Group I hymns and add references to the Moon and often portray the gods as giving blessings, that is deity-active.
- Group III, of about the same age as Group II but in a different dialect. This group shows influence from the tradition of Group 1 and thus cannot logically be older than it, but in contrast to the theology of Group II, it gives precedence to Fire and Water, in their stereotypes as the sacrificer and the libation-pourer. Additionally, there is a sub-group of hymns dedicated to "All the Holy Gods" that appears to be an effort to synthesize or harmonize the worship of the other gods.
Collectively, the lanugage of the groups I and II are called Early Galic, and the language of Group III is called Late Galic. They are similar and probably mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, regular correspondences between cognate words are noticeable, and the original text does not use cognate words interchangeably, suggesting that the dialects had diverged at a point in the past not too recent. Scholars often place the divergence date around 2000 or 1800 BCE, depending on their views whether the features of Later Galic can be connected to a variety of Group I oddities. It is clear however that the divergence of Early and Late Galic must predate the disappearance of laryngeals in *HC- position, since Early Galic sandhi behaviour notices this laryngeal while Late Galic sandhi does not.
Group I has unmetrical lines called "Old Material" that appear where metrical verse is expected. The majority view is that Old Material is older than majority Group I texts, but owing to the fact that they are unmetrical they cannot be easily dated based on sandhi behaviour. Interestingly, the Old Material lines fluctuate between the number of times they are repeated, hinting that they could have a distinct liturgical profile in the remote past when Group I hymns were composed, but such information has been lost to time. Some also hold that Old Material are not a kernel around which Group I hymns were composed but are hymns themselves, except that they were composed before the advent of meter in hymns and therefore appear more like prose creeds.
Some scholars also think that Group II can be subdivided into two subsets with subtle differences in language. There are a variety of views on the divisibility of Group II hymns and whether such distinctions are diachronic or dialectal difference. It has been pointed out that some views would require the Galic poets to jump between dialects in a rather strange manner if they could not be assigned to later redactors. On the other hand, Group III has been more resistant to further division and are seen by the mainstream as the composition of a core group of priests within a relatively short time span or adhering to a single vocabulary and grammar. Nevertheless, the ATHG hymns are recognized to be the latest amongst the Group III based merely on their theological content.
Language
Structure
The Gala Recepta is a text with strict internal structure. While the individual hymns appear to have little connection with preceding and following hymns, they are never recited out of order within the liturgy, and even in paedagogy, students learn the canon strictly in its order. This is astonishing because the order of most of the other psalter texts are intimately connected with some ritualistic action or invocation that have sequential logic, while there is no action to accompany the recitation of the Gales, which are the most sacred part of the psalter. The visible logic that dictated the order of the Galic canon has thus either never existed or has been lost to time.
When the text is divided into the three chronological periods (G1, G2, and G3), the remarkable observation ensues that the G1 hymns never directly follow or precede G3 hymns. This follows that at the remote time when G3 hymns were yet to be composed, there were already G2 hymns habitually recited before and after the G1 hymns, and when the G3 hymns were composed, they were not to be inserted into these accustomed sequences. Some of these fixed G1-G2 sequences were many hymns long, but others were only three hymns—the smallest possible block of one G1 hymn flanked on each side by one G2 hymn. At any rate, these observations point to that the G1, G2, and G3 hymns were not only chronologically distinct but also liturgically specific compositions.
Hymns
Opening and closing hymns
Opening and terminating the entire Galic canon are 22 hymns dedicated to "All the Holy Gods" or ATHG, 12 to open and 10 to close. Chronologically, they are the youngest parts of the Gala Recepta; however, they are also the longest, the most internally complex, and most artistically accomplished. At one time they were considered to function as prologue and epilogue to the Galic corpus and were therefore secondary to it. But their Galic dating is now deemed confirmed on the basis of linguistic evidence, being composed no later than around 1200 BCE.
While the ATHG hymns are rarely cited for linguistic study, they are often found to have the aim of summarizing the entire Galic corpus, particularly in generalizing or abstracting the praises afforded to individual gods in the hymns of earlier generations, to apply to "All the Holy Gods". Thus, while poor in archaicisms, the ATHG hymns evidence deep and lively theological development away from the primitive Galic religion. These works may thus represent a distinct liturgical function, sub-sect, or community, whose works were harnessed and harmonized with the earlier canon; hence, the ATHG hymns and others of a similar source are never found interrupting established sequences of hymns.
The ATHG hymns have often been found to have a particularly close connection to the thought of the Didaskaloi several centuries later.
Ahu hymns
There are six hymns in the Gala Recepta that are dedicated to only ahū "lord, lady". The discourse surrounding them usually discuss the identity of the deity addressed as ahū, though for the most part they remain mysterious. They may be one of the Galic deities, other deities, or even deified ancestors.