Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/182

BOOK II.

Dyaus and Prithivî.Dyu, then, in the land of the five streams was at once a name for the sky and a name for God, Dyaus pitâr, Dyaus the Father, answering to the Zeus Patêr of the Greeks and the Jupiter and Janus Pater of the Latins. As such, he was Visvakarman, the great architect of the universe, who knows all spheres and worlds,^[1] janita (γενετήρ), the parent of all things, Prithivî, the broad earth, being the mother of his children.^[2] As, again, with the Greeks Zeus is both the god of rain and the being to whom all who are in pain and sorrow address their prayer, so the Maruts or storms go about in dyu, the sky, while their worshippers on earth invoke the mercy of Dyaus, Prithivî, and Agni. But the Indian land under its scorching sun depends wholly on the bounty of the benignant rain god; and hence Indra, who is the child of Dyu, and who from Dyu receives his might, becomes more immediately the fertiliser of the earth and is regarded as more powerful than his father. But Dyu, although his greatness is obscured by that of his son, still wields the thunderbolt; and the original meaning of the name reappears in the myth which represents him as the father of the dawn who is invincible by all but Indra.

Ideas denoted by the name Dyu.Thus Dyaus is to Prithivî what Ouranos is to Gaia^[3] in the Hesiodic theogony, the Greek myth differing from the former only in deciding that Gaia herself produced Ouranos to be coextensive with herself. The Hindu had not so far solved the difficulty; and the doubt expressed on this subject shows the peculiar attitude of the Indian mind to the problems of the sensible universe. The Greek was at once contented with answers suggested by the old mythical phrases, or by the phenomena which he might be describing. The Hindu, ever dwelling on the thought of an unseen world, strove to gain some insight into the nature of things, and to unlock secrets for which the material world could never furnish a key. Hence Dyu was for him sometimes the supreme God, sometimes the heaven which with the earth had been fashioned by the gods and strengthened

heroic son: the maker of Indra, he who produced the celestial and invincible thunderer, was a most skilful workman.'"—R. V. iv. 17, 4. But it was obvious that the abstract conception of Dyu as the father of Indra could not stand against the overwhelming weight of the myths which were continually springing up from phrases not originally antagonistic with the monotheistic belief or conviction.

1. Muir, Principal Deities of R. V., 553.
2. This name is not found in any Greek myth as the designation of a person; but it is represented by πλατεῖα, the feminine of πλατύς, broad.
3. This name clearly contains the root of a vast number of words denoting the power of production, this root being perhaps ge or gen; nor can we doubt that the reference to this family of words explains the Latin phrase in the form of marriage known as Coemptio, in which the wife says to her husband, Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia.