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22 III. RELIGION, WELTL. WISSENSCH. u. KUNST. i A. VEDIC MYTHOLOGY.
he is mentioned only three times quite alone, once being called the
3
father (1,715)^
once lofty (i, 54 an(* once the loft
), y abode 1^47 7 )-
TrT~tWoof the~~four occurrences in the accusative Dyaus is mentioned with
PrthivT, once alone and without any distinctive statement (i,
3
i;4 ), and once
(i, 3 1 4 ) Agni is said to have made him roar for man. Thus it appears
that Dyaus is seldom mentioned independently and in only one-sixth of over
ninety passages is his paternity not expressly stated or implied by association
with Prthivl. The only essential feature of the personification in the RV.
is in fact his paternity. In a few passages Dyaus is called a bull (i, 160^-
5,36 5 ) that bellows (5,58 6 ). Here we have a touch of theriomorphism inas
much as he is conceived as a roaring animal that fertilizes the earth. Dyaus
is once compared with a black steed decked with pearls (10, 68"), an
obvious allusion to the nocturnal sky. The statement that Dyaus is furnished
with a bolt (asanimat) looks like a touch of anthropomorphism. He is also
spoken of as smiling through the clouds (2, 4 6 ), the allusion being doubtless
to the lightening sky 2 . Such passages are, however, quite isolated, the con
ception of Dyaus being practically free from theriomorphism and anthropo
morphism, excepting the notion of paternity. As a father he is most usually
thought of in combination with Earth as a mother 3. This is indicated by
the fact that his name forms a dual compound with that of Prthivl oftener
than it is used alone in the singular ( 44), that in a large proportion of
its occurrences in the it singular is accompanied by the name of and that when regarded separately
Prthivl,
he is not sufficiently individualized to have
a hymn dedicated to his praise, though in conjunction with Prthivl he is
celebrated in six. Like nearly all the greater
4
gods Dyaus is sometimes
called asura^ (i, 122 x x
. 131 ; 8, 20* ) and he is once (6, 51$) invoked in
the vocative as Father Heaven (dyaus pitar) along with Mother Earth
(prthivi mdtar}. In about 20 passages the word dyaus is feminine, some
6
times even when . personified Dyaus, as has been pointed out ( 6) goes
back to the Indo-European period. There is no reason to assume that the
personification in that period was of a more advanced type and that the RV.
has in this case relapsed to a more primitive stage. On the contrary there
is every ground for supposing the reverse to be the case. Whatever higher
gods may have existed in that remote age must have been of a considerably
more rudimentary type and can hardly in any instance have been conceived
apart from deified natural 7 . objects As the Universal Father who with Mother
Earth embraced all other deified objects and phenomena, he would have
been the greatest among the deities of a chaotic polytheism. But to speak
of him as the supreme god of the Indo-European age is misleading, because
this suggests a ruler of the type of Zeus and an incipient monotheism for an
extremely remote period, though neither of these conceptions had been
arrived at in the earlier Rigvedic times.
The word is derived from the root div, to shine, thus meaning the
bright one and being allied to deva, god 8 .
i v. SCHRODER. \VZKM. 8, 1267. 2 PVS. i, ill; SEE. 46, 205. 3 HRL
171. 4 BDA. 11923. 5 BDA. 86. 6 BDA. 114; cf. GW. s. v. div\ OSTHOFF,
IF. 5, 286, n. 7 BDA. 111. 8 Cp. KZ. 27, 187; BB. 15, 17; IF. 3, 301.
OST.5,2i 3;OGR.2o9;LRV.3,3i2 3;BRV. 1,4 5;Sp.AP.i6o;JAOS. i6,cxLV.
the side of
S 12. Varun a. Varuna, as has been shown (p. 20), is by
Indra, the greatest of the gods of the RV. The number of hymns dedicated
to his praise is not a sufficient criterion of his exalted character. Hardly a
dozen hymns celebrate him exclusively. Judged by the statistical standard
he would rank only as a third class deity; and even if the two dozen hymns