to ascribe to the Aryans before their separation, or during what is sometimes called their pro-ethnic period, any approach to a habit of striving after the infinite or even of consciously contemplating it; nor would anybody probably be prepared to maintain such an opinion.
It is, however, not to be denied that they have not unfrequently been credited with a theology far too advanced for them, and this error was a very natural one: the discovery that certain languages spoken by nations dwelling in different lands between the Ganges and the Loire formed one family of speech, to which the name Aryan is given, was followed by the identification of a considerable vocabulary which they possessed in common, and among the most interesting words in that common vocabulary were the prototypes of the following: Sanskrit Dyaus, 'Heaven or Sky,' and Dyaushpitar, 'Sky or Heaven as Father;' Greek Ζεύς, Ζεὺς πατήρ, vocative Ζεῦ πάτερ; Latin Diespiter or Jupiter, gen. Jovis; Norse Týr; O. H. German Ziu; A.-Saxon Tiu, whence the modern English Tuesday. It was inferred from these words and kindred ones that the pro-ethnic Aryans were familiar with the idea of a Father Heaven or Sky, which was probably right; but there was a strong temptation to look at that early Father Sky more or less through the colouring medium of the most elevated representations of him in later times, namely, as the Zeus and Jove of the best aspects of Greek and Latin religion. It would be tedious to enumerate one by one the mythologists and other writers who gave way to that temptation. Suffice it to mention the most insignificant of the latter: in a little book[1] published by
- ↑ Lectures on Welsh Philology, p. 10.
