Müller, Friedrich. Lectures on the Science of Language. Second Series – T10

Lecture X.
Jupiter, the Supreme Aryan God.

There are few mistakes so widely spread and so
firmly established as that which makes us confound
the religion and the mythology of the ancient nations
of the world. How mythology arises, necessarily and
naturally, I tried to explain in my former Lectures,
and we saw that, as an affection or disorder of language,
mythology may infect every part of the intellectual
life of man. True it is that no ideas are more
liable to mythological disease than religious ideas,
because they transcend those regions of our experience
within which language has its natural origin, and must
therefore, according to their very nature, be satisfied
with metaphorical expressions. Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of
man. *1 Yet even the religions of the ancient nations
are by no means inevitably and altogether mythological.
On the contrary, as a diseased frame presupposes
a healthy frame, so a mythological religion
presupposes, I believe, a healthy religion. Before the
Greeks could call the sky, or the sun, or the moon
gods, it was absolutely necessary that they should have
framed to themselves some idea of the godhead. We
cannot speak of King Solomon unless we first know
what, in a general way, is meant by King, nor could
413a Greek speak of gods in the plural before he had
realized, in some way or other, the general predicate
of the godhead. Idolatry arises naturally when people
say ‘The sun is god,’ i. e. when they apply the predicate
god to that which has no claim to it. But the
more interesting point is to find out what the ancients
meant to predicate when they called the sun or the
moon gods; and until we have a clear conception of
this, we shall never enter into the true spirit of their
religion.

It is strange, however, that while we have endless
books on the mythology of the Greeks and Romans,
we have hardly any on their religion, and most people
have brought themselves to imagine that what we
call religion — our trust in an all-wise, all-powerful,
eternal Being, the Ruler of the world, whom we approach
in prayer and meditation, to whom we commit
all our cares, and whose presence we feel not only in
the outward world, but also in the warning voice within
our hearts — that all this was unknown to the heathen
world, and that their religion consisted simply in the
fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo and Minerva, of
Venus and Bacchus. Yet this is not so. Mythology
has encroached on ancient religion, it has at some
times wellnigh choked its very life; yet through the
rank and poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology
we may always catch a glimpse of that original stem
round which it creeps and winds itself, and without
which it could not enjoy even that parasitical existence
which has been mistaken for independent
vitality.

A few quotations will explain what I mean by ancient
religion, as independent of ancient mythology.
Homer who, together with Hesiod, made the theogony
414or the history of the gods for the Greeks — a saying of
Herodotus which contains more truth than is commonly
supposed — Homer, whose every page teems
with mythology, nevertheless allows us many an insight
into the inner religious life of his age. What
did the swineherd Eumaios know of the intricate
Olympian theogony? Had he ever heard the name
of the Charítes or of the Harpyias? Could he have
told who was the father of Aphrodite, who were her
husbands and her children? I doubt it: and when
Homer introduces him to us, speaking of this life
and the higher powers that rule it, Eumaios knows
only of just gods, ‘who hate cruel deeds, but honour
justice and the righteous works of man,’ *2

His whole view of life is built up on a complete
trust in the Divine government of the world, without
any such artificial supports as the Erinys, the
Nemesis, or Moira.

‘Eat,’ says the swineherd to Ulysses, ‘and enjoy
what is here, †3 for God will grant one thing, but another
he will refuse, whatever he will in his mind, for he can
do all things.’ (Od. xiv. 444; x. 306.)

This surely is religion, and it is religion untainted
by mythology. Again, the prayer of the female slave,
grinding corn in the house of Ulysses, is religion in
the truest sense. ‘Father Zeus,’ she says, ‘thou who
rulest over gods and men, surely thou hast just thundered
from the starry heaven, and there is no cloud
anywhere. Thou showest this as a sign to some one.
Fulfil now, even to me, miserable wretch! the prayer
415which I may utter.’ When Telemachos is afraid to
approach Nestor, and declares to Mentor that he does
not know what to say, *4 does not Mentor or Athene
encourage him in words that might easily be translated
into the language of our own religion? ‘Telemachos,’
she says, ‘some things them wilt thyself
perceive in thy mind, and others a divine spirit will
prompt; for I do not believe that thou wast born and
brought up without the will of the gods.’

These are truly Christian words, this is the truly
Christian spirit in which we ought to study, the
ancient religions of the world: not as independent of
God, not as the work of an evil spirit, as mere idolatry
and devil-worship, not even as mere human fancy,
but as a preparation, as a necessary part in the education
of the human race — as a ‘seeking the Lord, if
haply they might feel after him.’ There was a fulness
of time, both for Jews and for Gentiles, and we
must learn to look upon the ages that preceded it as
necessary, under a divine purpose, for filling that appointed
measure, for good and for evil, which would
make the two great national streams in the history
of mankind, the Jewish and the Gentile, the Semitic
and the Aryan, reach their appointed measure, and
overflow, so that they might mingle together and both
be carried on by a new current, ‘the well of water
springing up into everlasting life.’

And if in this spirit we search through the sacred
ruins of the ancient world, we shall be surprised to
find how much more of true religion there is in what
is called Heathen Mythology than we expected. Only,
as St. Augustine said, we must not mind the names,
strange and uncouth as they may sound on our ears.
We are no longer swayed by the just fears which filled
the hearts of early Christian writers; we can afford to
be generous to Jupiter and to his worshippers. Nay,
we ought to learn to treat the ancient religions with
some of the same reverence and awe with which we
423approach the study of the Jewish and of our own.
‘The religious instinct,’ as Schelling says, ‘should
be honoured even in dark and confused mysteries,’
We must only guard against a temptation to which
an eminent writer and statesman of this country
has sometimes yielded in his work on Homer, we
must not attempt to find Christian ideas — ideas peculiar
to Christianity — in the primitive faith of mankind.
But, on the other hand1 we may boldly look for those
fundamental religious conceptions on which Christianity
itself is built up, and without which, as its natural and
historical support, Christianity itself could never have
been what it is. The more we go back, the more we
examine the earliest germs of every religion, the purer,
I believe, we shall find the conceptions of the Deity, the
nobler the, purposes of each founder of a new worship.
But the more we go back, the more helpless also shall
we find human language in its endeavours to express
what of all things was most difficult to express. The
history of religion is in one sense a history of language.
Many of the ideas embodied in the language of the
Gospel would have been incomprehensible and inexpressible
alike, if we imagine that by some miraculous
agency they had been communicated to the primitive
inhabitants of the earth. Even at the present moment
missionaries find that they have first to educate their
savage pupils, that is to say, to raise them to that level
of language and thought which had been reached by
Greeks, Romans, and Jews at the beginning of our
era, before the words and ideas of Christianity assume
any reality to their minds, and before their own native
language becomes strong enough for the purposes of
translation. Words and thoughts here, as elsewhere,
go together; and from one point of view the true
424history of religion would, as I said, be neither more
nor less than an account of the various attempts at
expressing the Inexpressible.

I shall endeavour to make this clear by at least
one instance, and I shall select for it the most important
name in the religion and mythology of the
Aryan nations, the name of Zeus, the god of gods
(theòs theôn), as Plato calls him.

Let us consider, first of all, the fact, which cannot
be doubted, and which, if fully appreciated, will be felt
to be pregnant with the most startling and the most
instructive lessons of antiquity — the fact, I mean, that
Zeus, the most sacred name in Greek mythology, is
the same word as Dyaus *20 in Sanskrit, Jovis †21 or Ju
in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in
Tiwsdæg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddic god Tŷr; Zio
in Old High-German.

This word was framed once, and once only: it was
not borrowed by the Greeks from the Hindus, nor by
the Romans and Germans from the Greeks. It must
have existed before the ancestors of those primeval
races became separate in language and religion; before
they left their common pastures, to migrate to the
right hand and to the left, till the hurdles of their
sheepfolds grew into the Avails of the great cities of
the world.425

Here, then, in this venerable word, we may look for
some of the earliest religious thoughts of our race,
expressed and enshrined within the imperishable walls
of a few simple letters. What did Dyu mean in
Sanskrit? How is it used there? What was the
root which could be forced to reach to the highest
aspirations of the human mind? We should find it
difficult to discover the radical or predicative meaning
of Zeus in Greek; but dyaus in Sanskrit tells its own
tale. It is derived from the same root which yields
the verb dyut, and this verb means to beam. A root of
this rich and expansive meaning would be applicable
to many conceptions: the dawn, the sun, the sky, the
day, the stars, the eyes, the ocean, and the meadow,
might all be spoken of as bright, gleaming, smiling,
blooming, sparkling. But in the actual and settled
language of India, dyu, as a noun, means principally
shy and day. Before the ancient hymns of the Veda
had disclosed to us the earliest forms of Indian thought
and language, the Sanskrit noun dyu was hardly
known as the name of an Indian deity, but only as a
feminine, and as the recognised term for sky. The fact
that dyu remained in common use as a name for sky
was sufficient to explain why dyu, in Sanskrit, should
never have assumed that firm mythological character
which belongs to Zeus in Greek; for as long as a word
retains the distinct signs of its original import and is
applied as an appellative to visible objects, it does not
easily lend itself to the metamorphic processes of early
mythology. As dyu in Sanskrit continued to mean
shy, though as a feminine only, it was difficult for the
same word, even as a masculine, to become the germ
of any very important mythological formations. Language
must die before it can enter into a new stage
of mythological life.426

Even in the Veda, where dyu occurs as a masculine,
as an active noun, and discloses the same germs of
thought which in Greece and Rome grew into the name
of the supreme god of the firmament, Dyu, the deity,
the lord of heaven, the ancient god of light, never assumes
any powerful mythological vitality, never rises
to the rank of a supreme deity. In the early lists of
Vedic deities, Dyu is not included, and the real representative
of Jupiter in the Veda is not Dyu, but Indra,
a name of Indian growth, and unknown in any other
independent branch of Aryan language. Indra was
another conception of the bright sunny sky, but partly
because its etymological meaning was obscured, partly
through the more active poetry and worship of certain
Rishis, this name gained a complete ascendancy over
that of Dyu, and nearly extinguished the memory
in India of one of the earliest, if not the earliest, name
by which the Aryans endeavoured to express their
first conception of the Deity. Originally, however —
and this is one of the most important discoveries which
we owe to the study of the Veda — originally Dyu
was the bright heavenly deity in India as well as in
Greece.

Let us examine, first, some passages of the Veda
in which dyu is used as an appellative in the sense
of sky. We read (Rv. i. 161, 14): ‘The Maruts
(storms) go about in the sky, Agni (fire) on earth, the
wind goes in the air; Varuṇa goes about in the waters
of the sea,’ &c. Here dyu means the sky, as much
as pṛithivî means the earth, and antariksha the air.
The sky is frequently spoken of together with the earth,
and the air is placed between the two (antariksha).
We find expressions such as ‘heaven and earth;’ *22 air
427and heaven; *23 and heaven, air, and earth, †24 The sky,
dyu, is called the third, as compared with the earth,
and we meet in the Atharva-Veda with expressions
such as ‘in the third heaven from hence.’ ‡25 This, again,
gave rise to the idea of three heavens. ‘The heavens,’
we read, ‘the air, and the earth (all in the plural)
cannot contain the majesty of Indra;’ and in one
passage the poet prays that his glory may be ‘exalted
as if heaven were piled on heaven.’ §26

Another meaning which belongs to dyu in the
Veda is day. ‖27 So many suns are so many days,
and even in English yestersun was used instead of
yesterday as late as the time of Dry den. Dívâ, an
instrumental case with the accent on the first syllable,
means by day, and is used together with náktam, ¶28
by night. . Other expressions, such as dive dive, dyavi
dyavi, or ánu dyûn, are of frequent occurrence to
signify day by day. **29

Here Sky, Earth, and Fire are classed together as
divine powers, but Dyaus, it should be remarked, occupies
the first place. This is the same in other passages
where a long list of gods is given, and where Dyaus,
if his name is mentioned at all, holds always a prominent
place. †31

It should further be remarked that Dyaus is most
frequently called pitar or father, so much so that
Dyaushpitar in the Veda becomes almost as much
one word as Jupiter in Latin. In one passage
(i. 191, 6), we read, ‘Dyaus is father, Pṛithivi, the
earth, your mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your
sister.’ In another passage (iv. 1, 10), ‡32 he is called
Dyaus the father, the creator.

We now have to consider some still more important
passages in which Dyu and Indra are mentioned
together as father and son, like Kronos and Zeus, only
that in India Dyu is the father, Indra the son; and
Dyu has at last to surrender his supremacy which
Zeus in Greek retains to the end. In a hymn addressed
to Indra, and to Indra as the most powerful god,
429we read (Rv. iv. 17, 4): ‘Dyu, thy parent, was reputed
strong, the maker of Indra was mighty in his
works; he (who) begat the heavenly Indra, armed
with the thunderbolt, who is immoveable, as the
earth, from his seat.’

Here, then, Dyu would seem to be above Indra,
just as Zeus is above Apollo. But there are other
passages in this very hymn which clearly place Indra
above Dyu, and thus throw an important light on the
mental process which made the Hindus look on the
son, on Indra, *33 the Jupiter pluvius, the conquering
light of heaven, as more powerful, more exalted, than
the bright sky from whence he arose. The hymn
begins with asserting the greatness of Indra, which
even heaven and earth had to acknowledge; and at
Indra's birth, both heaven and earth are said to have
trembled. Now heaven and earth, it must be remembered,
are, mythologically speaking, the father
and mother of Indra, and if we read in the same
hymn that Indra ‘somewhat excels his mother and
his father who begat him,’ †34 this can only be meant to
express the same idea, namely, that the active god
who resides in the sky, who rides on the clouds, and
hurls his bolt at the demons of darkness, impresses
the mind of man at a later time more powerfully than
the serene expanse of heaven and the wide earth
beneath. Yet Dyu also must formerly have been
430conceived as a more active, I might say, a more
dramatic god, for the poet actually compares Indra,
when destroying his enemies, with Dyu as wielding
the thunderbolt. *35

If with this hymn we compare passages of other
hymns, we see even more clearly how the idea of
Indra, the conquering hero of the thunderstorm, led
with the greatest ease to the admission of a father
who, though reputed strong before Indra, was excelled
in prowess by his son. If the dawn is called divijâḥ,
born in the sky, the very adjective would become
the title-deed to prove her the daughter of Dyu; and
so she is called. The same with Indra. He rose
from the sky; hence the sky was his father. He
rose from the horizon where the sky seems to embrace
the earth; hence the earth must be his mother. As
sky and earth had been invoked before as beneficent
powers, they would the more easily assume the paternity
of Indra; though even if they had not before
been worshipped as gods, Indra himself, as born of
heaven and earth, would have raised these parents to
the rank of deities. Thus Kronos in the later Greek
mythology, the father of Zeus, owes his very existence
to his son, namely, to Zeus Kronion, Kronion meaning
originally the son of time, or the ancient of days. †36
Uranos, on the contrary, though suggested by Uranion,
the heavenly, had evidently, like Heaven and
Earth, enjoyed an independent existence before he was
made the father of Kronos, and the grandfather of
Zeus; for we find his prototype in the Vedic god
Varuṇa. But while in India Dyu was raised to be
431the father of a new god, Indra, and by being thus
raised became really degraded, or, if we may say so,
shelved, Zeus in Greece always remained the supreme
god, till the dawn of Christianity put an end to the
mythological phraseology of the ancient world.

Again, i. 61, 9: †38 ‘The greatness of Indra indeed
exceeded the heavens (i. e. dyaus), the earth and the
air.’

i. 54, 4: ‡39 ‘Thou hast caused the top of heaven
(of dyaus) to shake.’

Expressions like these, though no doubt meant to
realize a conception of natural phenomena, were sure
to produce mythological phraseology, and if in Tndia
Dyu did not grow to the same proportions as Zeus in
Greece, the reason is simply that dyu retained throughout
too much ofits appellative power, and that Indra,
the new name and the new god, absorbed all the
channels that could have supported the life of Dyu. §40

The original meaning of Zeús might equally have
been guessed from such words as Diosēmía, portents
in the sky, i. e. thunder, lightning, rain; Diipétēs,
swollen by rain, lit. fallen from heaven; éndīos, in the
open air, or at midday; eúdĭos, calm, lit. well-skyed,
and others. In Latin, too, sub Jove frigido, under the
cold sky, sub diu, sub dio, and sub divo, under the
open sky, are palpable enough. *41 But then.it was always
open to say that the ancient names of the gods
were frequently used to signify either their abodes
or their special gifts — that Neptunus, for instance,
was used for the sea, Pluto for the lower regions,
Jupiter for the sky, and that this would in no way
prove that these names originally meant sea, lower
world, sky. Thus Nævius said, Cocus edit Neptunum,
433Venerem, Cererem, meaning, as Festus tells us, by Neptune
fishes, by Venus vegetables, by Ceres bread. *42
Minerva is used both for mind in pingui Minerva and
for threads of wool. †43 When some ancient philosophers,
as quoted by Aristotle, said that Zeus rains
not in order to increase the corn, but from necessity, ‡44
this no doubt shows that these early positive philosophers
looked upon Zeus as the sky, and not as a
free personal divine being; but again it would leave
it open to suppose that they transferred the old
divine name of Zeus to the sky, just as Ennius,
with the full consciousness of the philosopher, exclaimed,
‘Aspice hoc sublime candens quod invocant
omnes Jovem.’ An expression like this is the result
of later reflection, and it would in no way prove
that either Zeus or Jupiter meant originally sky.

A Greek at the time of Homer would have scouted
the suggestion that he, in saying Zeús, meant no more
than sky. By Zeus the Greeks meant more than the
visible sky, more even than the sky personified. With
them the name Zeus was, and remained, in spite of all
mythological obscurations, the name of the Supreme
Deity; and even if they remembered that originally it
meant sky, this would have troubled them as little
as if they remembered that thymos, mind, originally
meant blast. Sky was the nearest approach to that
conception which in sublimity, brightness, and infinity
transcended all others as much as the bright
blue sky transcended all other things visible on earth.
This is of great importance. Let us bear in mind
that the perception of God is one of those which, like
434the perceptions of the senses, is realized even without
language. We cannot realize general conceptions, or,
as they are called by philosophers, nominal essences,
such as animal, tree, man, without names; we cannot
reason, therefore, without names or without language.
But we can see the sun, we can greet it in the
morning and mourn for it in the evening, without
necessarily naming it, that is to say, comprehending
it under some general notion. It is the same with
the perception of the Divine. It may have been perceived,
men may have welcomed it or yearned after
it, long before they knew how to name it. Yet very
soon man would long for a name, and what we know
as the prayer of Jacob, ‘Tell me, I pray thee, thy
name,’ *45 and as the question of Moses, ‘What shall I
say unto them if they shall say to me, What is his
name?’ †46 must at an early time have been the question
and the prayer of every nation on earth.

It may be that the statement of Herodotus (ii. 52)
rests on theory rather than fact, yet even as a theory
the tradition that the Pelasgians for a long time
offered prayer and sacrifice to the gods without having
names for any one of them, is curious. Lord Bacon
states the very opposite of the West Indians, namely,
that they had names for each of their gods, but no
word for god.

As soon as man becomes conscious of himself, as
soon as he perceives himself as distinct from all other
things and persons, he at the same moment becomes
conscious of a Higher Self, a higher power without
which he feels that neither he nor anything else would
435have any life or reality. We are so fashioned — and it
is no merit of ours — that as soon as we awake, we feel
on all sides our dependence on something else, and all
nations join in some way or other in the words of the
Psalmist, ‘It is He that hath made us, and not we
ourselves.’ This is the first sense of the Godhead,
the sensus numinis as it has been well called; for it
is a sensus — an immediate perception, not the result
of reasoning or generalizing, but an intuition as
irresistible as the impressions of our senses. In
receiving it we are passive, at least as passive as in
receiving from above the image of the sun, or any
other impressions of the senses, whereas in all our
reasoning processes we are active rather than passive.
This sensus numinis, or, as we may call it in more
homely language, faith, is the source of all religion;
it is that without which no religion, whether true or
false, is possible.

Tacitus *47 tells us that the Germans applied the
names of gods to that hidden thing which they perceived
by reverence alone. The same in Greece. In
giving to the object of the sensus numinis the name
of Zeus, the fathers of Greek religion were fully
aware that they meant more than sky. The high and
brilliant sky has in many languages and many religions †48
been regarded as the abode of God, and the
name of the abode might easily be transferred to him
who abides in Heaven. Aristotle (‘De Coelo,’ i. 1, 3)
remarks that ‘all men have a suspicion of gods, and
all assign to them the highest place.’ And again
436(l. c. i. 2, 1) he says, ‘The ancients assigned to the
gods heaven and the space above, because it was
alone eternal.’ The Slaves, as Procopius states, *49 worshipped
at one time one god only, and he was the maker
of the lightning. Perkunas, in Lithuanian, the god of
the thunderstorm, is used synonymously with deivaitis,
deity. In Chinese Tien means sky and day, and the
same word, like the Aryan Dyu, is recognised in
Chinese as the name of God. Even though, by an
edict of the Pope in 1715, Roman Catholic missionaries
were prohibited from using Tien as the name for
God, and ordered to use Tien chu, Lord of heaven,
instead, language has proved more powerful than the
Pope. In the Tataric and Mongolic dialects, Tengri,
possibly derived from the same source as Tien, signifies
1, heaven, 2, the God of heaven, 3, God in
general, or good and evil spirits. †50 The same meanings
are ascribed by Castrèn to the Finnish word
Jumala, thunderer. ‡51 Nay, even in our own language,
‘heaven’ may still be used almost synonymously
with God. The prodigal son, when he returns
to his father, says, ‘I will arise and go to my father,
and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before thee.’ §52 Whenever we thus find
the name of heaven used for God, we must bear in
mind that those who originally adopted such a name
437were transferring that name from one object, visible
to their bodily eyes, to another object grasped by another
organ of knowledge, by the vision of the soul.
Those who at first called God Heaven, had something
within them that they wished to call — the growing
image of God; those who at a later time called
Heaven God, had forgotten that they were predicating
of Heaven something that was higher than Heaven.

That Zeus was originally to the Greeks the Supreme
God, the true God — nay, at some times their only God —
can be perceived in spite of the haze which mythology
has raised around his name. *53 But this is very different
from saying that Homer believed in one supreme,
omnipotent, and omniscient being, the creator and
ruler of the world. Such an assertion would require
considerable qualification. The Homeric Zeus is full
of contradictions. He is the subject of mythological
tales, and the object of religious adoration. He is
omniscient, yet he is cheated; he is omnipotent, and
yet defied; he is eternal, yet he has a father; he is ju.st,
yet he is guilty of crime. Now these very contradictions
ought to teach us a lesson. If all the conceptions
of Zeus had sprung from one and the same source, these
contradictions could not have existed. If Zeus had
simply meant God, the Supreme God, he could not have
been the son of Kronos or the father of Minos. If, on
the other hand, Zeus had been a merely mythological
personage, such as Eos, the dawn, or Helios, the sun,
he could never have been addressed as he is addressed
in the famous prayer of Achilles. In looking through
Homer and other Greek writers, we have no difficulty
in collecting a number of passages in which the Zeus
that is mentioned is clearly conceived as. their supreme
438God. For instance, the song of the Pleiades
at Dodona, *54 the oldest sanctuary of Zeus, was: ‘Zeus
was, Zeus is, Zeus will be, a great Zeus,’ There is
no trace of mythology in this. In Homer, †55 Zeus is
called ‘the’ father, the most glorious, the greatest,
who rules over all, mortals and immortals. He is the
counsellor, whose counsels the other gods cannot
fathom (II. i. 545). His power is the greatest (II.
ix. 25), ‡56 and it is he who gives strength, wisdom,
and honour to man. The mere expression, ‘father of
gods and men,’ so frequently applied to Zeus and to
Zeus alone, would be sufficient to show that the religious
conception of Zeus was never quite forgotten,
and that in spite of the various Greek legends as to
the creation of the human race, the idea of Zeus as the
father and creator of all things, but more particularly
as the father and creator of man, was never quite extinct
in the Greek mind. It breaks forth in the unguarded
language of Philoetios in the Odyssey, who charges
Zeus §57 that he does not pity men though it was he who
created them,; and in the philosophical view of the
universe put forth by Kleanthes or by Aratus it
assumes that very form under which it is known to
all of us, from the quotation of St. Paul, ‘For we are
also his offspring.’ Likeness with God (homoiótēs theô)
was the goal of Pythagorean ethics, ‖58 and according
439to Aristotle, it was an old saying that everything
exists from God and through God. *59 All the greatest
poets after Homer know of Zeus as the highest god, as
the true god. ‘Zeus,’ says Pindar, †60 ‘obtained something
more than what the gods possessed.’ He calls
him the eternal father, and he claims for man a divine
descent.

‘One is the race of men, ‡61 one that of the gods.
We both breathe from one mother; but our powers,
all sundered, keep us apart, so that the one is nothing,
while the brazen heaven, the immoveable seat, endureth
for ever. Yet even thus we are still, whether by
greatness of mind or by form, like unto the immortals,
though we know not to what goal, either by day or by
night, destiny has destined us to haste on.’

‘For the children of the day, what are we, and what
not? Man is the dream of a shadow. But if there
comes a ray sent from Zeus, then there is for men
bright splendour and a cheerful life.’ §62440

But while in passages like these the original conception
of Zeus as the true god, the god of gods,
preponderates, there are innumerable passages in
which Zeus is clearly the sky personified, and hardly
differs from other deities, such as the sun-god or the
goddess of the moon. The Greek was not aware that
there were different tributaries which entered from
different points into the central idea of Zeus. To
him the name Zeus conveyed but one idea, and the
contradictions between the divine and the natural
elements in his character were slurred over by all
except the few who thought for themselves, and who
knew, with Socrates, that no legend, no sacred myth,
could be true that reflects discredit on a divine being.
But to us it is clear that the story of Zeus descending
as golden rain into the prison of Danaë was meant
for the bright sky delivering the earth from the bonds
of winter, and awakening in her a new life by the
golden showers of spring. Many of the stories that
are told about the love of Zeus for human or half-human
442heroines have a similar origin. The idea
which we express by the phrase, ‘King by the grace
of God,’ was expressed in ancient language by calling
kings the descendants of Zeus. *68 This simple and
natural conception gave rise to innumerable local
legends. Great families and whole tribes claimed
Zeus for their ancestor; and as it was necessary in
each case to supply him with a wife, the name of the
country was naturally chosen to supply the wanting
link in these sacred genealogies. Thus Æacus, the
famous king of Ægina, was fabled to be the offspring
of Zeus. This need not have meant more than that
he was a powerful, wise, and just king. But it soon
came to mean more. Æacus was fabled to have been
really the son of Zeus, and Zeus is represented as carrying
off Ægina and making her the mother of Æacus.

The Arcadians (Ursini) derived their origin from
Arkas; their national deity was Kallisto, another
name for Artemis. †69 What happens? Arkas is made
the son of Zeus and Kallisto; though, in order to save
the good name of Artemis, the chaste goddess, Kallisto
is here represented as one of her companions only. Soon
the myth is spun out still further. Kallisto is changed
into a bear by the jealousy of Here. She is then,
after having been killed by Artemis, identified with
Arktos, the Great Bear, for no better reasons than
the Virgin in later times with the zodiacal sign of
Virgo. ‡70 And if it be asked why the constellation of
443the Bear never sets, an answer was readily given — the
wife of Zeus had asked Okeanos and Thetis not to allow
her rival to contaminate the pure waters of the sea.

It is said that Zeus, in the form of a bull, carried
off Europa. This means no more, if we translate it
back into Sanskrit, than that the strong rising sun
(vrishan) carries off the wide-shining dawn. This
story is alluded to again and again in the Veda. Now
Minos, the ancient king of Crete, required parents; so
Zeus and Europa were assigned to him.

There was nothing that could be told of the sky
that was not in some form or other ascribed to Zeus.
It was Zeus who rained, who thundered, who snowed,
who hailed, who sent the lightning, who gathered the
clouds, who let loose the winds, who held the rainbow.
It is Zeus who orders the days and nights, the
months, seasons, and years. It is he who watches
over the fields, who sends rich harvests, and who tends
the flocks. *71 Like the sky, Zeus dwells on the highest
mountains; like the sky, Zeus embraces the earth;
like the sky, Zeus is eternal, unchanging, the highest
god. †72 For good and for evil, Zeus the sky and Zeus the
god are wedded together in the Greek mind, language
triumphing over thought, tradition over religion.

And strange as this mixture may appear, incredible
as it may seem that two ideas like god and
sky should have run into one, and that the atmospheric
changes of the air should have been mistaken
for the acts of Him who rules the world, let us not
444forget that not in Greece only, but everywhere, where
we can watch the growth of early language and early
religion, the same, or nearly the same, phenomena
may be observed. The Psalmist says (xviii. 6), ‘In
my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto
my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and
my cry came before him, even into his ears.

7. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations
also of the hills moved and were shaken, because
he was wroth.

8. There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and
fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled
by it.

9. He bowed the heavens also, and came down:
and darkness was under his feet.

10. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea,
he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

13. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and
the Highest gave his voice; hailstones and coals of
fire.

14. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered
them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited
them.

15. Then the channels of waters were seen, and
the foundations of the world were discovered at thy
rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy
nostrils.’

Even the Psalmist in his inspired utterances must
use our helpless human language, and condescend to
the level of human thought. Well is it for us if we
always remember the difference between what is said
and what is meant, and if, while we pity the heathen
for worshipping stocks and stones, we are not ourselves
445kneeling down before the frail images of human
fancy. *73

And now, before we leave the history of Dyu, we
must ask one more question, though one which it is
difficult to answer. Was it by the process of radical
or poetical metaphor that the ancient Aryans, before
they separated, spoke of dyu, the sky, and dyu, the
god? i. e., was the object of the sensus luminis, the
sky, called dyu, light, and the object of the sensus numinis,
God, called dyu, light, by two independent acts;
or was the name of the sky, dyu, transferred ready-made
to express the growing idea of God, living in the
highest heaven? †74 Either is possible. The latter view
could be supported by several analogies, which we
have examined before, and where we found that names
expressive of sky had clearly been transferred to the
idea of the Godhead, or, as others would put it, had
gradually been purified and sublimed to express that
idea. There is no reason why this should not be
admitted. Each name is in the beginning imperfect,
it necessarily expresses but one side of its object, and
in the case of the names of God the very fact of the
insufficiency of one single name would lead to the
creation or adoption of new names, each expressive of
a new quality that was felt to be essential and useful for
recalling new phenomena in which the presence of the
Deity had been discovered. The unseen and incomprehensible
446Being that had to be named was perceived
in the wind, in the earthquake, and in the fire, long
before it was recognised in the still small voice within.
From every one of these manifestations the divine
secretum illud quod solâ reverentiâ vident might receive
a name, and as long as each of these names was
felt to be but a name no harm was done. But names
have a tendency to become things, nomina grew into
numina, ideas into idols, and if this happened with
the name Dyu, no wonder that many things which
were intended for Him who is above the sky were
mixed up with sayings relating to the sky.

Much, however, may be said-in favour of the other
view. We may likewise explain the synonymousness
of sky and God in the Aryan languages by the process
of radical metaphor. Those who believe that all our
ideas had their first roots in the impressions of the
senses, and that nothing original came from any other
source, would naturally adopt the former view, though
they would on reflection find it difficult to explain how
the sensuous impressions left by the blue sky, or the
clouds, or the thunder and lightning, should ever have
yielded an essence distinct from all these fleeting
phenomena — how the senses by themselves should,
like Juno in her anger, have given birth to a being
such as had never been seen before. It may sound
like mysticism, but it is nevertheless perfectly rational
to suppose that there was in the beginning the perception
of what Tacitus calls secretum illud, and that
this secret and sacred thing was at the first burst of
utterance called Dyu, the light, without any special
reference to the bright sky. Afterwards, the bright
sky being called for another reason Dyu, the light,
the mythological process would be equally intelligible
447that led to all the contradictions in the fables of Zeus.
The two words dyu, the inward light, and dyu, the
sky, became, like a double star, one in the eyes of
the world, defying the vision even of the most
powerful lenses. When the word was pronounced, all
its meanings, light, god, sky, and day, vibrated together,
and the bright Dyu, the god of light, was
lost in the Dyu of the sky. If Dyu meant originally
the bright Being, the light, the god of light, and was
intended, like asura, as a name for the Divine, unlocalized
as yet in any part of nature, we shall appreciate
all the more easily its applicability to express, in spite
of ever-shifting circumstances, the highest and the
universal God. Thus, in Greek, Zeus is not only the
lord of heaven, but likewise the ruler of the lower
world, and the master of the sea. *75 But though recognising
in the name of Zeus the original conception of
light, we ought not to deceive ourselves and try to find
in the primitive vocabulary of the Aryans those sublime
meanings which after many thousands of years
their words have assumed in our languages. The light
which flashed up for the first time before the inmost
vision of their souls was not the pure light of which St.
John speaks. We must not mix the words and thoughts
of different ages. Though the message which St. John
sent to his little children, ‘God is light, and in him
is no darkness at all,’ †76 may remind us of something
similar in the primitive annals of human language;
though we may highly value the coincidence, such as
it is, between the first stammerings of religious life
448and the matured language of the world's manhood; yet
it behoves us, while we compare, to discriminate likewise,
and to remember always that words and phrases,
though outwardly the same, reflect the intentions of
the speaker in ever-vary ing angles.

It was not my intention to enter at full length
into the story of Zeus as told by the Greeks, or the
story of Jupiter as told by the Romans. This has
been done, and well done, in books on Greek and
Roman Mythology. All I wished to do was to lay
bare before your eyes the first germs of Zeus and
Jupiter which lie below the surface of classical mythology,
and to show how those germs cling with their
fibres to roots that stretch in an uninterrupted line to
India — nay, to some more distant centre from which all
the Aryan languages proceeded in their world-wide
expansion.

It may be useful, however, to dwell a little longer
on the curious conglomeration of words which have
all been derived from the same root as Zeus. That
root in its simplest form is dyu.

dyu, raised by Guṇa to dyo (before vowels
dyav);
raised by Vṛiddhi to dyâu (before vowels
dyav).

dyu, by a change of vowels into semi-vowels, and
of semi-vowels into vowels, assumes the form of
div, and this is raised by Guṇa to dev,
by Vṛiddhi to dâiv.

I shall now examine these roots and their derivatives
more in detail, and, in doing so, I shall put
together those words, whether verbal or nominal,
which agree most closely in their form, without reference
449to the usual arrangements of declension and
conjugation adopted by practical grammarians.

The root dyu in its simplest form appears as the
Sanskrit verb dyu, to spring or pounce on something. *77
In some passages of the Rig-Veda, the commentator
takes dyu in the sense of shining, but he likewise admits
that the verbal root may be dyut, not dyu. Thus,
Rv. i. 113, 14: ‘The Dawn with her jewels shone
forth (adyaut) in all the corners of the sky; she the
bright (devî) opened the dark cloth (the night). She
who awakens us comes near, Ushas with her red
horses, on her swift car,’

If dyu is to be used for nominal, instead of verbal
purposes, we have only to add the terminations of
declension. Thus we get with bhis, the termination of
the instrumental plural, corresponding to Latin bus,
dyu-bhis, meaning on all days, toujours; or the acc.
plural dyûn, in anu dyûn, day after day.

If dyu is to be used as an adverb, we have
only to add the adverbial termination s, and we get
the Sanskrit dyu-s in pûrvedyus, i. e. on a former
day, yesterday, which has been compared with prōizá,
the day before yesterday. The last element, za,
certainly seems to contain the root dyu; but za
would correspond to Sanskrit dya (as in adya,
to-day), rather than to dyus. This dyus, however,
standing for an original dyut, appears again in Latin
diû, by day, as in noctû diûque, by night and by
day. Afterwards diû †78 came to mean a lifelong day,
450a long while, and then in diuscule, a little while, the s
reappears. This s stands for an older t, and this t, too,
reappears in diutule, a little while, and in the comparative
diut-ius, longer (interdius and interdiû, by day).

In Greek and Latin, words beginning with dy are
impossible. Where Sanskrit shows an initial dy, we
find in Greek that either dy is changed to z, or the y
is dropped altogether, leaving simply d *79 Even in
Greek we find that dialects vary between dia and za;
we find Æolic †80 zabállō, instead of diabállō, and the
later Byzantine corruption of diábolos appears in Latin
as zabulus, instead of diabolus. Where, in Greek,
initial z varies dialectically with initial d, we shall find
generally that the original initial consonants were dy.
If, therefore, we meet in Greek with two such forms as
Zeús and Bœotian Deús, we may be certain that both
correspond to the Sanskrit Dyu, raised by Guṇa to
Dyo. This form, dyo, exists in Sanskrit, not in the
nominative singular, which by Vṛiddhi is raised to
Dyâus, nom. plur. Dyâvaḥ, but in such forms as the
locative dyávi ‡81 (for dyo-i); &c.

In Latin, initial dy is represented by j; so that Jû in
451Jûpiter corresponds exactly with Sanskrit Dyo. Jŏvis,
on the contrary, is a secondary form, and would in the
nominative singular represent a Sanskrit form Dyăviḥ.
Traces of the former existence of an initial dj in Latin
have been discovered in Diovis, according to Varro
(L. L. v. 10, 20), an old Italian name for Jupiter,
that has been met with under the same form in Oscan
inscriptions. Vêjŏvis, too, an old Italian divinity, is
sometimes found spelt Vêdjŏvis.

That the Greek Zēn, Zênos, belongs to the same
family of words, has never been doubted; but there
has been great diversity of opinion as to the etymological
structure of the word. I explain Zēn, as well
as Latin Jan, the older form of Janus, as representing
a Sanskrit dyav-an, formed like râjan, but with Guṇa.
Now as yuvan, jŭvenis, is contracted to jūn in jūnior,
so dyavan would in Latin become Jan, following
the third declension, *82 or, under a secondary form,
Jān-us. Janus-pater, in Latin, was used as one word,
like Jupiter. He was likewise called Junonius and
Quirinus, †83 and was, as far as we can judge, another
personification of Dyu, the sky, with special reference,
however, to the year. The month of January owes
its name to him. Now as Ju: Zeu = Jān: Zēn, only
that in Greek Zēn remained in the third or consonantal
declension, instead of migrating, as it might have done,
under the form Zēnos, ou, into the second. The Latin
Jûnô, Junon-is, would correspond to a Greek Zēnōn,
as a feminine.

The second form, div, appears in Sanskrit in the
452oblique cases, gen. divas, dat. dive, inst. divâ, acc.
divam, &c. For instance (Rv. i. 50, 11), ‘O Sun,
that risest now, and mountest up to the higher sky
(uttarâm dívam, fem.), destroy the pain of my heart
and my paleness!’

Rv. i. 54, 3: ‘Sing to the mighty Dyu (divé bṛihaté,
masc.) a mighty song.’

Rv. i. 7, 3: ‘Indra made the sun rise to the sky
(diví), that he might see far and wide; he burst open
the rock for the cows.’

These forms are most accurately represented in the
Greek oblique case, DiƑós, DiƑí, DíƑa.

In Latin the labial semi-vowel, the so-called digamma,
is not necessarily dropped, as we saw in
Jovis, Jovem, &c. It is dropped, however, in Diespiter,
and likewise in dîum for dîvum, sky, from which
Diâna, instead of Divâna, the heavenly (originally
Deiana), while in dîv-înus the final v of the root div
is preserved.

In Sanskrit there are several derivatives of div, such
as diva (neuter), sky, or day; divasa (m. n.), sky and
day; divya, heavenly; dina (m. n.), day, is probably
a contraction of divana. In Lithuanian we find diena.
The Latin diês would correspond to a Sanskrit divas,
nom. sing, divâs, masc.

If, lastly, we raise div by Guṇa, we get the Sanskrit
deva, originally bright, afterwards god. It is curious
that this, the etymological meaning of deva, is passed
over in the Dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth. It is
clearly passed over intentionally, and in order to show
that in all the passages where deva occurs in the Veda
it may be translated by god or divine. That it may
be so translated would be difficult to disprove; but
that there are many passages where the original
453meaning of bright is more appropriate, can easily be
established. Rv. i. 50, 8: ‘The seven Harits (horses)
carry thee on thy chariot, brilliant (deva) Sun, thee
with flaming hair, O far-seeing!’ No doubt we might
translate the divine Sun; but the explanation of the
commentator in this and similar passages seems more
natural and more appropriate. What is most interesting
in the Veda is exactly this uncertainty of meaning,
the half-physical and half-spiritual intention of words
such as deva. In Latin deus no longer means brilliant,
but simply god. The same applies to theós in Greek,
to diewas in Lithuanian.

A last step brings us in Sanskrit to Daiva, derived
from deva, and this is used in the later Sanskrit to
express fate, destiny.

There is but little to be said about the corresponding
words in the Teutonic branch, fragments of which
have been collected by that thoughtful scholar, Jacob
455Grimm. *85 In name the Eddic god Tŷr (gen. Tys,
acc. Ty) answers to the Vedic Dyu, and the Old
Norse name for dies Martis is Tysdagr. Although
in the system of the Edda Odhin is the supreme god,
and Tyr his son, traces remain to show that in former
days Tyr, the god of war, was worshipped as the principal
deity by the Germans. †86 In Anglo-Saxon the
name of the god does no longer occur independently,
but traces of it have been discovered in Tiwesdæg,
Tuesday. The same applies to Old High-German,
where we find Ziestac for the modern Dienstag.
Kemble points out names of places in England, such
as Tewesley, Tewing, Tiwes mére, and Tewes þorn, and
names of flowers, ‡87 such as the Old Norse Tŷsfiola,
Tŷrhjalm, Tŷsviđr, as containing the name of the god.

Besides this proper name, Grimm has likewise
pointed out the Eddic tîvar, nom. plur., the gods.

Lastly, whatever may have been said against
it, I think that Zeuss and Grimm were right in connecting
the Tuisco mentioned by Tacitus with the
Anglo-Saxon Tiw, which, in Gothic, would have
sounded Tiu. The Germans were considered by
Tacitus, and probably considered themselves, as the
aboriginal inhabitants of their country. In their
poems, which Tacitus calls their only kind of tradition
and annals, they celebrated as the divine ancestors of
their race, Tuisco, sprung from the Earth, and his son
Mannus. They looked, therefore, like the Greeks, on
the gods as the ancestors of the human family, and
they believed that in the beginning life sprang from
456that inexhaustible soil which gives support and nourishment
to man, and for which in their simple language
they could find no truer name than Mother
Earth. It is easy to see that the Mannus here spoken
of by Tacitus as the son of Tuisco, meant originally
man, and was derived from the same root man, to
measure, to think, which in Sanskrit yielded Manu. *88
Man, or, in Sanskrit, Manu, or Manus, was the proudest
name which man could give to himself, the Measurer,
the Thinker, and from it was derived the Old High-German
mennisc, the Modern German Mensch. This
mennisc, like the Sanskrit manushya, was originally an
adjective, a patronymic, if you like: it meant the
son of man. As soon as mennisc and manushya became
in common parlance the recognised words for
man, language itself supplied the myth, that Manus
was the ancestor of the Manushyas. Now Tuisco
seems but a secondary form of Tiu, followed by the
same suffix which we saw in mennisc, and without any
change of meaning. Then why was Tuisco called the
father of Mannu? Simply because it was one of the
first articles in the primitive faith of mankind, that in
one sense or other they had a father in heaven. Hence
Mannu was called the son of Tuisco, and this Tuisco, as
we know, was, originally, the Aryan god of light. These
things formed the burden of German songs to which
Tacitus listened. These songs they sang before they
went to battle, to stimulate their courage, and to prepare
to die. To an Italian ear it must have been a wild
sound, reverberated from their shields, and hence called
barditus (shield-song, Old Norse bardhi, shield). Many
457a Roman would have sneered at such poetry and such
music. Not so Tacitus. The emperor Julian, when
he heard the Germans singing their popular songs on
the borders of the Rhine, could compare them to
nothing but the cries of birds of prey. Tacitus calls
them a shout of valour (concentus virtutis). He likewise
mentions (Ann. ii. 88) that the Germans still
kept up the memory of Arminius in their songs, and
he describes (Ann. ii. 65) their night revellings, where
they sang and shouted till the morning called them
to fresh battles.

The names which Tacitus mentions, such as Mannus,
Tuisco, &c., he could of course repeat by ear only, and
if one considers the difficulties of such a task, it is extraordinary
that these names, as written down by him,
should lend themselves so easily to etymological explanation.
Thus Tacitus states not only that Mannus
was the ancestor of the German race, but he likewise
mentions the names of his three sons, or rather the
names of the three great tribes, the Ingœvones, Iscœvones,
and Herminones, who derived their origin from
the three sons of Mannus. It has been shown that the
Ingœvones derive their name from Yng, Yngo, or Ynguio,
who, in the Edda and in the Beowulf, is mentioned
as living first with the Eastern Danes and then proceeding
on his car eastward over the sea. There is a
northern race, the Ynglings, and their pedigree begins
with Yngvi, Niörđr, Frayr, Fiöolnir (Odin), Svegdir,
all names of divine beings. Another genealogy, given
in the Ynglinga-saga, begins with Niörđr, identifies
Frayr with Yngvi, and derives from him the name of
the race.

The second son of Mannus, Isco, has been identified
by Grimm with Askr, another name of the first-born
458man. Askr means likewise ash-tree, and it has been
supposed that the name ash thus given to the first man
came from the same conception which led the Greeks
to imagine that one of the races of man sprang from
ash-trees (ἐκ μελιᾶν). Alcuin still uses the expression,
son of the ash-tree, as synonymous with man. *89 Grimm
supposes that the Iscœvones lived near the Rhine, and
that a trace of their name comes out in Asciburgium
or Asciburg, on the Rhine, where, as Tacitus had been
wildly informed, an altar had been discovered dedicated
to Ulysses, and with the name of his father Laërtes. †90

The third son of Mannus, Irmino, has a name decidedly
German. Irmin was an old Saxon god, from
whom probably both Arminius and the Herminones
derived their names.