the Aryans, which later at the theological stage took the rank of a supreme god, was the brilliant sunny heaven, Dyu (Dyaus, nom.), Θεός, Zeus, on whom the powerful sympathy of the Aryan was concentrated, and to whom he turned with admiring devotion as soon as he began to pray and compose hymns. On the other hand, it could not escape the notice of the inquirer on the domain of Aryan mythology and history of religion, that the very oldest and most genuine representative of the Aryan mind seems itself to form a sort of exception to this universal idea. The Indians, namely, among whom Dyu certainly was elevated to theological importance,[1] do not make him their supreme god, but Indra, who, as his very name shows, (indu = 'a drop') is identical with the rainy sky (Jupiter pluvius),[2] and Varuṇa, who, in contrast to the shining Mitra, was the gloomy night-sky (from var = 'to cover').[3] Max Müller, whose merit it mainly is to have raised the Aryan Dyu to the high throne which he now occupies in the history of Aryan religion, explains this strange fact by supposing that Indra drove Dyu, the oldest of the gods, from the place which he had formerly held even among the Indians. 'If in India,' he thinks 'Dyu did not grow to the same proportions as Zeus in Greece, the reason is simply that dyu retained throughout too much of its appellative power,[4] and that Indra, the new name and the new god, absorbed all the channels that could have supported the life of Dyu,'[5] so that he died away.
From what has been explained above, it is evident that the subject might present itself in a different light. It is well known that the people of India represents, both
- ↑ See on this J. Muir, Contributions to a Knowledge of the Vedic Theogon and Mythology (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., 1864, I. pp. 54–58).
- ↑ Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, p. 430.
- ↑ Max Müller, Chips, &c., II. p. 65. Muir, l. c. p. 77 et seq.
- ↑ This is connected with Müller's view that 'language must die before it can enter into a new stage of mythological life (Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, p. 426).
- ↑ Letures, &c., Second Series, p. 432.
