name and nature which he bore in Rome long before they arrayed him in the borrowed garments of Greek myth, and adapted him to the ideas of classic philosophy.[1] Thus, in nation after nation, took place the great religious development by which the Father-Heaven became the Father in Heaven.
The Rain-god is most often the Heaven-god exercising a special function, though sometimes taking a more distinctly individual form, or blending in characteristics with a general Water-god. In East Central Africa, the spirit of an old chief dwelling on a cloudy mountain-top may receive the worship of his votaries and send down the refreshing showers in answer to their prayers; among the Damaras the highest deity is Omakuru the Rain-giver, who dwells in the far North; while to the negro of West Africa the Heaven-god is the rain-giver, and may pass in name into the rain itself.[2] Pachacamac, the Peruvian world-creator, has set the Rain-goddess to pour waters over the land, and send down hail and snow.[3] The Aztec Tlaloc was no doubt originally a Heaven-god, for he holds the thunder and lightning, but he has taken especially the attributes of Water-god and Rain-god and so in Nicaragua the Rain-god Quiateot (Aztec quiahuitl = rain, teotl = god) to whom children were sacrificed to bring rain, shows his larger celestial nature by being also sender of thunder and lightning.[4] The Rain-god of the Khonds is Pidzu Pennu, whom the priests and elders propitiate with eggs and arrack and rice and a sheep, and invoke with quaintly pathetic prayers. They tell him how, if he will not give water, the
- ↑ Max Müller, 'Lectures,' 2nd Series, p. 425; Grimm, 'D. M.' ch. ix.; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, iii. 4. Connexion of the Sanskrit Dyu with the Scandinavian Tyr and the Anglo Saxon Tiw is perhaps rather of etymology than definition.
- ↑ Duff Macdonald, 'Africana,' vol. i. p. 60 (E. Centr. Air.). Waitz, 'Anthropologie,' vol. ii. p. 169 (W. Afr.) p. 416 (Damaras).
- ↑ Markham, 'Quichua Gr. and Dic.' p. 9; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 318, 368.
- ↑ Ibid. pp. 496-9; Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' pp. 40, 72.
