Pitar who was also a war-god, and not Tiur, their much later very learned but peaceful scribe of the gods. Even the name of Varuna appears among them in the form of Vran (a cognate of ovραυós) and in the sense of “tent,” “covering.” It is not impossible that astwads, their other word for “God,” which in Christian times supplanted the heathen Di-kh, “Gods,” was originally an epithet of the father of the gods and men, just like the Istwo of Teutonic mythology, of which it may well be a cognate.[7]
The Perkunas of the Lithuanians and the Teutonic Fjörgynn, one as a god of heaven and of weather, and the other as a goddess of the earth, are still preserved in the Armenian words erkin, “heaven,” and erkir (erkinr?) “earth."[8] The word and goddess, iörd, erd, “earth,” seems to survive in the Armenian ard, “land,” “field.”
Another ancient Armenian word for Mother-earth is probably to be found in armat, which now means “root.” But in its adjectival form armti-kh, “cereals,” it betrays a more original meaning which may shed some light upon the much disputed Vedic aramati and Avestic armaiti. The word hoλm, “wind,” may have originally meant “sky,” as cognate of Himmel. The Vedic and Avestic vata (Teut. Votan?) is represented in Armenian by aud, “air,” “weather,” “wind,” while Vayu himself seems to be represented by more than one mythological name. Even the Vedic Aryaman and the Teutonic Irmin may probably be recognized in the name of Armenak, the better-known eponymous hero of the Armenians, who thus becomes identical with the ancient Dyaûs-Tiwaz. To these may be added others whom we shall meet later. And in the Vahagn myths we see how, as in India and Teutonic lands, a violent storm-god has supplanted the grander figure of the heaven-god.
The oak (which in Europe was sacred to the sky-god) and water played an important part in the Armenian rites of the
