552 MR J. MUIR ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES IN THE RIGVEDA. 



Republic," pp. 236, 247, 276), in which the poet says, that the Earth " has de- 

 servedly received and retains the name of mother." The Greek poets also, as 

 Hesiod, ^Eschylus, and Euripides, speak in like manner of the Earth as the uni- 

 versal mother and nurse.* In like manner Tacitus (Germania, 40) tells us that 

 certain of the German tribes " worshipped, in common, Ertha,| that is, mother 

 earth, and imagined her to interfere in the affairs of men, and to move about 

 among them in a covered car." And the conception of the Heaven as the father 

 of all things is also, though in a less degree, a natural one, and is noticed by 

 Lucretius where he says (ii. 992), that "We have all the same father, the Heaven, 

 from whom the bounteous Earth receives that moisture by which she is rendered 

 fruitful." The same idea may be obscurely implied by Diodorus Siculus (i. 7), where 

 he says, that, in the opinion of some speculators, " heaven and earth had, accord- 

 ing to the original constitution of things, but one form, the natural properties of 

 the two being blended ; but that afterwards, when the body of the one had become 

 separated from that of the other, the world assumed that regular order which we 

 now Avitness." And further on he adds : " And in regard to the nature of the 

 universe, Euripides, who was a disciple of Anaxagoras, the physical philosopher, 

 does not appear to have differed from the views which have been stated. For 

 in his Melanippe he lays it down that ' The heaven and the earth were of one 

 form ; but when they became separated from each other, they produced all things 

 and introduced them into the light, — trees, birds, beasts, the offspring of the 

 deep, and the race of mortals.'" 



But the Rigveda regards Heaven and Earth as the parents not only of men, 

 but also of the gods, as appears from the epithet deva-putre, viz. " the twain who 

 have gods for their children," which is applied to them in various passages. 



On the other hand, however, these two divinities, Heaven and Earth (as I 

 have above intimated), exemplify the general remark already made, that the Vedic 

 deities are constantly appearing in opposite characters, — sometimes as supreme 

 and as creators, at other times as subordinate and created. In many places 

 Heaven and Earth are said to owe their existence and support to the gods, some- 

 times to one, and sometimes to another.! In one passage (i. 160, 4) it is said 



* Hesiod 0pp., 561, yrj -iravruv fiyjrng. jEschylus, Prom. 90 TU/i/j^i^roo ri yrj; Sept. cont. Thebas, 

 16, y^ Ti /MTiT^i, ftXroLTri T^ofSj. Euripides, Hippol., 601, w youa firrri^ riXiov t ui/a-rv^ui . Compare also 

 the name of the goddess Demeter, an old form of Ge meter. (See " Liddell and Scott'^s Lexicon," s. v.) 

 Diodorus, i. 12, says that the Egyptians, " conceiving the earth as a sort of receptahle of things in 

 course of production, had designated her as mother; and that the Greeks had, in like manner, 

 called her Demeter, the form of the word being slightly changed through time ; since she tvas in 

 ancient times named Ge Meter (Earth Mother), as Orpheus testifies when he says : ' Earth (Ge) is 

 the mother of all, Demeter, the wealth-bestowing.'" 



f Ertham. is Ritter's emendation, the common reading being Nerthun. (Compare Ritter's note 

 on section 9 of the Germania.) 



J In Rigveda, x. 54. 3, Indra is said to have created the father and the mother (Heaven and 

 Earth) from his own body. 



