Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/126

occupied by the Indo-Europeans prior to historic times.

All Indo-Europeans revered the shining sky of daytime as a mighty being. The Hindus, Greeks, and Romans call him respectively Dyaush pitar, Zeus pater, and Diespiter or Jupiter. The meaning of the name is quite transparent in the Veda, where dyaus is still both common and proper noun. It always means sky. The Latin expression sub Jove frigido, "under a cold sky," "in a cold climate," preserves the sense of the word as a fossil. The slender myth that is contained here is that of a marital relation between the visible two halves of the cosmos. The lady, or "correspondent" in the affair was "Mother Earth" (Vedic prithivī mātar, "terra mater").^[1] This union was blessed with children, known frequently in the Veda, and occasionally elsewhere, as the children of the Sky. In the Veda Agni, "Fire," Ushas, "Dawn," and especially the dual "Horsemen," the Açvins, are so named. The "Horsemen," as we shall see later, correspond to the Greek Dioscuri (Διόσκουροι), "Sons of Zeus, or Heaven," Castor and Pollux, and to the "Sons of God" in Lettish mythology. In this instance at

1. ↑ Herodotus iv. 59 testifies forthright that the Scythians, 1closely allied to the Persians, worshipped Earth as the wife of Zeus: Δία τε καὶ Γῆν, νομίζοντες τὴν Γῆν τοῦ Διὸς εἶναι γυναϊκα.