MR J. MUIR ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF THE RIGVEDA. 551 



part." From the union of these two powers sprang Oceanos, Kronos, the Cyclopes, 

 Rheia, &c. (132 &.) ; and from Kronos and Rheia again were produced Zeus, Here, 

 and other deities (453 ff.)- 



The Rigveda (which is, as I have already intimated, the earliest source of infor- 

 mation regarding the religion of India) contains no uniform or consistent system 

 of theogony or cosmogony. But in numerous passages Heaven and Earth (Dyaus 

 and Prithivi) are spoken of together as the parents of all things ; and several 

 separate hymns are dedicated to their honour. They are characterised by a pro- 

 fusion of epithets, not only of such a kind as are suggested by their various phy- 

 sical characteristics, vastness, breadth, profundity, productiveness, but also by 

 others of a moral or spiritual nature, as innocuous, or beneficent, promoters of 

 righteousness, and omniscient. In the Veda we are not told, as we are in the 

 system of Hesiod, which of the two, Heaven or Earth, was the older. On the 

 contrary, one of the ancient poets seems to have been perplexed by the difficulty 

 of this question, as at the beginning of one of the hymns (i. 185) he exclaims, 

 " which of these twain was the first, and which the last ? How were they pro- 

 duced ? Sages, who knows ? " Besides being described together in the dual as the 

 " parents," Heaven and Earth are separately spoken of in various passages, the 

 one as the father, the other as the mother, as in vi. 51, 5 — " father Heaven, 

 benignant mother Earth, brother Agni, and ye Vasus, be gracious to us." 



I must here remark, by the way, that the words which stand in the original of 

 this verse for father Heaven, or rather Heaven father, viz., Dt/ausJi pita?-, answer 

 exactly to the zsis crar^g of the Greeks, and the Diespiter of the Latins, though, as 

 is well known, Zeus is not in the Greek mythology, as he is in the Indian, iden- 

 tical with the primeval Heaven, the father of all things, but is his grandson ; 

 while again, the Indian god, who corresponds in name, and also in some points in 

 character, with the Greek 'ou^am, is Varuna, who, however, as we shall by and by 

 see, differs from 'ou^aws in various respects. 



The word Prithivi, on the other hand, which in most parts of the Rigveda is 

 used for Earth, has no connection with any Greek word of the same meaning. It 

 seems, however, originally to have been merely an epithet, meaning "broad;" 

 and may have supplanted the older word go, which stands at the head of the 

 earliest Indian vocabulary, as one of the synonymes of Prithivi (earth), and which 

 closely resembles the Greek vara, or r^. In this way Gau?' mdtar may have once 

 corresponded to the r^ fi-^r-n^ or ^n^rr,^ of the Greeks. 



This designation of the Earth — the prolific source of all vegetable products, 

 and the home of all living creatures — by the epithet of mother, is perfectly 

 natural, as is proved by comm^on usage. This is remarked by Lucretius in 

 various passages,* (referred to by Professor Sellar in his " Roman Poets of the 



* De Rerum Natur^, ii. 991 ff. ; 998 ff. ; v. 793 ff. ; 799 ff. ; 821 ff. 

 VOL. XXIII. PART II. 7 K 



