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Now observe how Dyaus, as “shiner,” at the same time assumed the significance of an otherwise unknown agent or author of light, and developed into the ancient Dyaus, into Zeus and Jove; that is, into the oldest personal God of the still united Aryans. These are the true stages of the development of the human mind, which are susceptible of documentary proof in the archives of language.
From the first-mentioned form comes deva, with its numerous progeny of good and evil appellatives; from the latter is derived the name of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter.
So the sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but it was also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon wandered, the country of the Lotos-eaters, or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight; and finally it was personified and worshipped as Dyaus or Varuna, the Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos.
But, besides Dyaus pitar, or Varuna, the Aryans worshipped other gods, whom they made for themselves out of the elements, and the changes of night and day, and the succession of the seasons. They worshipped the sky, the earth, the sun, the dawn, fire, water, and wind.
Nevertheless, in accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, we must be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythology are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense.
Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical significance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father.
Their religious ideas were based on magic and superstitious terrors, the powers of nature had as yet assumed no anthropomorphic forms, the great name of Dyaus, which afterwards came to mean God, signified only the bright sky. They counted on their fingers, but they had not attained to the idea of any number higher than one hundred.
In his Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 468, he tells us that "Zeus, the most sacred name in Greek mythology, is the same word as Dyaus in Sanscrit, Jovis or Ju in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in Tiwsdæg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddic god Tyr; Zio in old High-German.
They are like well-grown manly youths, and the men have grown strong, with streams of rain they dim the eye of the sun. At their outbreak there is none among them who is the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle: they have grown by their own might, these sons of Prisni, noble by birth, the boys of Dyaus; come hither to us!
As an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra. I do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of any god. Even if his name mean 'sky, Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode of conceiving 'sky' is original.
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