Angels-INDO-EUROPEANS

Although there have been innumerable subsidiary sources, the angels
and demons of Western religions are derived ultimately from the gods
of the Indo-Europeans. Indo-European was originally a linguistic term
referring to the Indo-European family of languages. This category of
classification was created when it was discovered that almost all of the
languages from Europe to India were related, indicating a common root
language. This family resemblance is evident in similarities of vocabulary.
For example, the Sanskrit/Hindi word deva, which refers to a certain
class of gods and goddess, comes from the same root as the English
words deity and divine. To explain this phenomenon, scholars have postulated
that these similarities are the result of a group of people who at
one time spoke the original (now lost) Indo-European language.
Efforts to reconstruct Indo-European religion and mythology, represented
especially in the work of George Dumezil, have focused on
finding common elements in the myths and religious practices of
Indo-European peoples that are not found in other cultural complexes.
It has been established, for example, that the Indo-Europeans divided
their society into three groups of people, and that this tripartite division
was reflected in their myth system. According to one line of
thought, in at least some branches of the Indo-European family two
distinct groups of divinities were worshipped by two different social
groups. In the Persian/Indian wing of the Indo-Europeans, these two
groups were termed ahuras (Persian)/asuras (Indian) and daevas (Persian)/
devas (Indian). Perhaps because of ongoing conflict between the
two social divisions, the ahuras became the angels and the devas the
demons in Zoroastrianism, and the devas became demigods and the
asuras became demons in Hinduism. This confusion is reflected in
modern English, in which the term divinity and the term devil derive
from the same root word, deva or daeva.