The origin of Man
I recently re-read Puhvel's "Aspects of Equine Functionality" in Myth and Law Among the Indo-Europeans, and was struck by something from a bit of Indian mythology. There's a god, Vivasvant, whose wife is the goddess Saranyu. They have a son, Yama, after which Saranyu creates a double of herself, Savarna, and runs away in the form of a mare. Believing the double to be his wife, Vivasvant fathers Manu on her. He then perceives his mistake, and takes the form of a stallion in order to pursue Saranyu; when he catches up to her, they're both still in horse-form, and he fathers the twin Asvins on her, which is why they are sometimes in the form of horses themselves.

So, we know that Yama is the first to die, and it is probable that the giant who was sacrificed and dismembered to make the world - Prajapati or Purusha - is the same as Yama; Yama is cognate to Norse Ymir, both seeming to mean "twin," also the meaning of Tuisto in Tacitus' account. I don't know if this is directly attested in India, but he was likely sacrificed by his brother Manu, whose name means "man," and is cognate with "Mannus" in Tacitus. Yama, as the first to die, becomes the king of the world of the dead. Manu, the first man, becomes the first king.

Anyhow, this all suggests that mankind, as descended from Manu, is closely related to the original sacrificial macranthrope and king of the dead, as well as being closely related to the hippomorphic third-functional twins, which may be why Indra wanted to bar them from receiving soma-sacrifice in India's version of our War of the AEsir and Vanir. I think there's a reflection of this theme of barring from receiving sacrifice in Germanic religion: in Vsp. 24, the gods go to their seats and discuss: "eða skyldo goðin öll gildi eiga" or should all gods own tribute. (I should mention that Cleasy-Vigfusson translates "gildi eiga" as "mean[ing] to hold a feast, with the notion of making a league or peaceful agreement", but that interpretation is based solely on this selfsame passage, and may therefore be reading more into the words than is there.)

The really interesting part, to me, about the birth of the first Man, though, is that his father was a god, and his mother an illusion. This suggests to me an interesting perspective on the relative kinds of being that gods and men have, at least in India (although the notion may have gone back to Proto-Indo-European times, as well). In other words, man is related to the gods, his origin goes back to them, in part; but the reason that man fades, withers, and dies, the reason that he is not as "real," as gods are, that his being is not as powerful as theirs, is that his origin goes back also to an illusion. Man's being partakes of the illusory as well as of the divine, and *that* is the reason that man is how he is.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm currently translating Skírnismál. There's a word in stanza 33 that's frustrating me: "fyrinilla," in the phrase "in fyrinilla mær", 'the [something] maiden". If the second element in the word is "illa," then we have "the [something]-evil maiden". Anyone know what the hell "fyrinilla" means? Cleasby-Vigfusson is no help.