A READER IN COMPARATIVE INDO-EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY

2. ELEMENTS OF PIE MYTHOLOGY
SKY GOD
There are reasons to believe that PIE *dyēws „sky, Sky-god“ was the supreme deity of the
PIE pantheon. He was certeainly most often preserved in the individual pantheons, cf. Ved.
dyaús, Lat. Dius Fidius, Gr. Zeús, Hitt. šiuš, ON Týr. He is commonly addressed as „father“,
PIE *dyēws ph2tēr „Sky Father“ > Lat. Iuppiter, Umbr. Iupater, Gr. Zeùs patēr, Skr. Dyauš
pitā, Luv. tātis tiwaz, Latv. Dievs debess tēvs; cf. also ON Óđinn Álföđr „Odin, father of all“
and OIr. (Echu) Ollathir „(Echu) father of all“.
The sky god often bears the standard epithet „All-knowing“, or „All-seeing“: Gr. eurýopa
Zeús, RV 6.70.6 viśvávedas Dyaús.
DAWN GODDESS
The Vedas praise the Dawn as a young maiden, and Ved. Ušās is clearly the same etymon as
Gr. Hom. ēṓ s; this deity plays almost no role in Greek mythology, so it seems that several of
her attributes were taken by other deities, chiefly Aphrodítē and Helénē < *welenā, from PIE
*welh1- „wish, desire, choose“ (Lat. velle, OCS volja „will“). Similarly in Lat. aurora is just
an appelative, but the cult of the Dawn was preserved in the rites devoted to Mater Matuta. In
Lith. dainas Aušrinė „dawn“ is a young maiden often represented as marrying Mėnuo „the
moon“. Lasicius (a Polish writer of the 16th century, on Lith. Aušra): Ausca dea est radiorum
solis vel occumbentis vel supra horizontem ascendentis.
The Dawn was originally the „daughter of the Sky“, PIE *d h ugh2tēr diwos > Ved. duhitā́
divás, Gr. thygátēr Diós (especially of Aphrodite, Helen, and the Muses); Lith. Dievo dukrytė
(of Saule). The common epithet of the PIE dawn was „Shiny Dawn“, PIE *b h eh2- (RV 3. 6. 7:
Ušó vibhātī́, Gr. Hom. phaeinḗ); she was the one who regularly opened the „doors of heaven“
RV 1. 48. 15: dvā́ rau divás, Latv. dieva durvis, cf. RV 7.79.4 ví drl.hśya dúro ádrer aurṇoš
„you (Ušas) have opened the gates of the closed rock“. Vedic Ušas was a patron of the rishis,
the Vedic poets, and the Old Irish goddess Brigit (dea poetarum according to Cormac, who
wrote in the tenth century) was born at dawn. Her name comes from PCelt. *brigantī < PIE
*b h rg'ntih2 and the same proto-form is derived as one of the epithets of Ušas, brhatī „the
exalted one“.
MOTHER EARTH
Although it appears that the Earth was represented as „mother“ in most IE traditions, it is not
generally represented as the spouse of „father sky“; the Earth is a deity in Ved., where she is
called Prthivī́ (Gr. plateîa, Gaul. Litavi, OE folde) < *pltHwih2 „The broad one“. Gr. Gaîa,
also called Khthṓ n (Aesch. Eum. 6, fr. 44. 1 ), Gr. Dāmā́ tēr is sometimes believed to be a
personification of the same earth-goddess, but there is little evidence that dā- actually meant