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DYAUS AND ZEUS.
149
CHAP. I.
and across which the sun made his daily journey to cheer the children of men. Thus Dyaus, the glistening ether,[1] became to the Hindu, as Zeus was to the Greek, a name for the supreme God; but although some mythical features entered gradually into the conception of this deity, the name retained its original significance too clearly to hold its ground in Hindu theology. Dyaus, like the Hellenic Ouranos, must be displaced by his child, who at the first had brought out more prominently the supremacy of his father; and thus Indra became to the Hindu what Zeus was to the Hellenic tribes, while the Vedic Varuṇa retained in the east a spiritual character which Ouranos never acquired in the west.[2]
- ↑ Dyaus, Zeus, Divus, Theos, Deus, Juno, Diana, Dianus or Janus, with many others, are outgrowths from the same root, dyu to shine. But in his Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology, Mr. Peile, while fully allowing that the Sanskrit name Dyaus is represented by the Greek Zeus and by the Latin divus and deus, yet denies that there is any relation between the Latin deus and the Greek θεός. By the laws of phonetic change, he insists, the Latin d must answer to a Greek δ, as in δόμος, domus: hence some other root must be sought for θεός, perhaps ΘΕΣ, a secondary form of ΘΕ, the root of τίθημι, though this is rejected by Professor Curtius, Gr. Et. pp. 230, 404, in favour of a distinct root thes or fes (meaning to pray), which he traces in festus and in θέσσασθαι. (Pind. N. v. 18.) I venture to think that too great a stress is here laid on laws which undoubtedly apply generally to the Aryan languages, but to which there are yet some instances of apparent and some even of real exception. The Greek δάκρυ is rightly represented by the English tear, while δάκος, the biting beast, reappears in its legitimate dress in the German Toggenburg; but in English we have not t as in tear, but dog, while in Latin it is seen in "tigris," tiger, which approaches nearly to the English "tyke" as a name for the dog. In the same way π in the Greek πάτος ought to be represented by f in English; but it appears as "path." The connection of the two words can scarcely be doubted, for if Professor Curtius may give the equation πάτος: πόντος=πάθος: πένθος=βάθος:βένθος, we may also add πάτος: πόντος= path: pond. Hence the fact that the Greek form of Dyaus is θεός, not δεός, scarcely warrants our severing the two words. If the Vedic adeva is the Greek ἄθεος, the relationship of θεός with the Latin "deus" is estabhshed. In this conclusion I am following Professor Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 425–455. Professor Max Müller has gone into this matter afresh (Selected Essays, vol. i. p. 215, note B), reaching the same conclusion. There are exceptions, he adds, to phonetic laws; and although the greatest caution is needed in dealing with them, it is of no use to shut our eyes to them or refuse to consider them. I pointed out one in my History of Greece, vol. i. p. 577, n. 1038. If to this we add Thrinakia, it seems scarcely to follow that we have before us any phonetic anomaly. It would be unsafe to say that kindred tribes, long passed away, had not said three for 3, and called a tree a tree, and not δρῦς. If we cannot venture to identify God and good in English or its kindred dialects, still less can we venture to deny their affinity—in other words, their growth from a common root.
- ↑ Heaven and earth, it would seem, are in the earliest hymns alike self-existent; but Dr. Muir ("Principal Deities of the Rig Veda," Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxiii. part iii.) remarks that we are not told, as in the Hesiodic Theogony, which of the two is the older. "On the contrary, one of the ancient poets seems to have been perplexed by the difficulty of this question, as at the beginning of one of the hymns (i. 185) he exclaims, 'Which of you twain was the first, and which the last? How were they produced? Sages, who knows?' His power and wisdom are shown most of all in the creation or evocation of his son Indra. Thus of Indra it is said, 'Thy father was the parent of a most
