Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
But those of whom we are speaking worshipped other gods besides those of the household. The second great characteristic of Aryan religion is its adoration of gods who are neither local nor tribal, but universal. Dyaus, the sky, the heaven-god, can be worshipped anywhere; so can the earth, so can the heavenly twins, who were objects of early Aryan religion, so can the sun and moon.
Among the Aryans it combines actively with strong family feeling, causing them to cling with an extreme tenacity to their own gods and their own worship. Dyaus, god of the sky, see above. Sans. Sans. Agni, fire, god of fire; Lat. ignis; Lith. ugnis; O.-S. ogni. Sans. Sans. Schrader to doubt whether their religion is Aryan.
Whether the Aryans were in possession of other ideas and sounds for “shine,” etc., before the formation of div, Dyaus, and deva, must be left uncertain; at all events we see how naturally the first consciousness of God developed in them, how the idea conditioned the language, and the language the idea, and both originated and continued inseparable one from the other.
One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately developed, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation, Aryan root. One had not imagined that the Greeks borrowed divine names from Sanskrit and from India. But this, too, might happen! Mr. I do not say they were not. Why should not a Vedic or Sanskrit goddess of India supply the first germs of a Greek goddess?
Dyaus, the Sky God, is admittedly the same as Zeus and Jupiter. The Aśvins agree in character, though not in name, with the Dioscuri and other parallels are quoted from Lettish mythology. Bhaga, the bountiful giver, a somewhat obscure deity, is the same word as the Slavonic Bog, used in the general sense of God, and we find deva in Sanskrit, deus in Latin, and devas in Lithuanian.
In more elaborate mythologies various deities are credited with rain-making power. In India, for example, Dyaus, the Maruts, Parjanya, Brihaspati, Indra, Agni, all concerned with rain, have, all except Agni, evidently grown from local figures with general functions; this appears from the great variety of parts they play.
When the Aryans felt, thought, and named their god, their Dyaus, in the blue sky, they meant the blue sky within the limits of the horizon. We know, however, that while they called the sky Dyaus, they had in mind an infinite subject, a Deva, a God. But, as stated, these things were remote from the Horseherd, and he would scarcely have had anything to object.
To interpret Zeus or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy. Philology itself teaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was originally the bright sky and nothing more.
And when, out of the forces and forms of Nature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus became Dyaus pitar, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in Europe, the Dyaus pitar of the central Asian land became the Zeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and the first part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to God.
Those who like birds flew with strength in rows from the ridge of the mighty heaven to its ends, their horses shook the springs of the mountain cloud, so that people on both sides knew it. May Dyaus Aditi roar for our feast, may the dew-lighted Dawns come striving together; these, the Maruts, O poet, the sons of Rudra, have shaken the heavenly bucket cloud, when they had been praised.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking