Dyaus

Summary

Dyaus is the sky in the Rigveda, and his name is the word for sky itself. The hymns call him "Father Dyaus" and pair him with Pṛthivī, Mother Earth, so that the two are invoked together under one dual name, dyāvāpṛthivī, "Heaven and Earth". For the Vedic poets the sky is a father, the earth a mother, and the dawn their daughter.

The hymns tell of no war or kingship of his. They address him and the Earth as one pair, as parents. Hymn 1.160 says that Heaven and Earth bring good to all and sustain the world, that they are two noble bowls between which the sun travels by a fixed law, that "the Father and the Mother keep all creatures safe", and that a skilled maker measured out the two world-halves and set them on pillars that never decay. Hymn 1.185 asks: which of these two is older, which later? How were they born? Who knows? It goes on: they support all that exists, as a chariot runs on through day and night; motionless and footless, they carry a wide offspring that has feet and moves; and the singer asks them to guard him from danger "as a son on his parents' lap". The singer of hymn 1.164 says: "Dyaus is my father, my begetter; here is my kinship; this great Earth is my mother." In hymn 6.51 he calls: "Father Heaven, Mother Earth without guile, brother Agni." Rigveda 1.160.1–4, 1.185.1–2, 1.164.33, 6.51.5.

What Dyaus does in the hymns is beget; the deeds after that belong to his children. Uṣas, the dawn, "daughter of Heaven", wakes people to their work. The Aśvins, the twin horsemen, "sons of Heaven", rescue the drowning and the blind. Indra is his son too; hymn 4.17 tells him: "Your father Dyaus thought himself a hero; most noble was the work of Indra's maker, who begot the roaring lord of the bolt", and it is Indra who kills Vṛtra and frees the water.

The idea his hymns turn on is that the sky is a father who covers and begets, the earth a mother who carries and feeds, and that everything that walks on the earth is born between them and kept on their lap. The father himself is old and still; the only question the singer asks about him is the question of the beginning, which of the two came first; then the action passes to his children. The first pair returns in every married couple: in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, in the rite for begetting a son, the man says to his wife, "I am heaven, you are earth; come, let us join and place the seed together", a witness of the sacred marriage. And because the two lay close together, the world needed someone to push them apart: hymn 7.86 praises Varuṇa, who "propped apart the two wide worlds", the separation of heaven and earth. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.4.20.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It appears as dyauḥ in the nominative, as dyauṣ before the word for father, and as divaḥ in the genitive, so the final sound is a case ending, as the s at the end of Ζεύς / Zeus is a Greek case ending. Monier-Williams sets the Indian name beside Greek Ζεύς and Διϝός and Latin Ju-piter: it is one name. The Zeus page reads this stem as Arabic dhū, "possessor, owner of", and the Jupiter page reads the old Latin Diespiter as dhū and ab, "father". Father Dyaus has the same build, dyauṣ pitar, dhū and ab: the father who is master. That is what the hymns make him: a father above everything and owning it, who hardly acts with his own hand. The Indian essay reads the word deva, "god", which comes from the same root div, "to shine", as both ḍiyāʾ, "light", and dhū, so that the name holds the sky's light and its lordship together.

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Monier-Williams says the Indian grammarians give the word two stems, div and dyo, that it means sky, day and brightness, and that "in the Veda" the sky is "generally regarded as the father, while the earth is the mother, and Uṣas the daughter".

Dhū and ab

Monier-Williams makes the Indian name the same as Greek Ζεύς and Διϝός, Latin Jovis and Ju-piter, and Old Norse Týr. The three pages, Zeus, Jupiter and Týr, read this stem as Arabic dhū: Arabic dh answers the d of Greek Dios and of old Latin Diovis, which is the same d as in Indian div. In Lane dhū is the possessor, owner or lord of a thing, always joined to what he holds.

Pitar is Latin pater, "father". The project's sound-law file lists Arabic ab and pater as a possible shared origin of Semitic and Indo-European. This is how the Jupiter page settled the link between his name and Zeus's: the letters are dhū and ab. Father Dyaus carries the same build in its Indian form, so what holds for Jupiter holds for him. The t and r of pitar remain without a counterpart in ab, as the t of pater does.

Ḍiyāʾ

The Indian essay derives deva from div, "to shine", and sets it against Arabic ḍiyāʾ, "light", saying that deva, Latin deus and Arabic ḍiyāʾ form "one network of light". Elsewhere it gives the same word both ḍaww and dhaww. Monier-Williams gives the stem the senses day, light and brightness. So the sense the root carries is the light of day, while the letters read dhū. Matching Arabic ḍ with d, as the Zeus page says, still needs a sound history that has not been written.

Pṛthivī and barth

Sanskrit pṛthivī is the feminine of pṛthu, "broad, wide", and Monier-Williams glosses it "the broad and extended One". On the method we read it as Arabic barth: Lisān al-ʿArab says the barth is soft, easy ground, the easiest and best of land, a soft level land that grows barley, and the Tāj al-ʿArūs adds white, fine land quick to put out plants. The sounds: Arabic has no p, so b answers it; vocalic ṛ answers r; th answers Sanskrit th, a t spoken with breath; and -ivī drops as the feminine ending. The barth is level land that grows things, and Pṛthivī the broad, extended earth; the two meet in the open, level ground, though the Sanskrit word is built on breadth rather than softness.

Key Mythic Narratives

Dyu in the Mahābhārata

In the Mahābhārata the same name appears in one of the Vasus, a group of gods: Dyu. The Vasus came with their wives to the forest of the sage Vasiṣṭha, and Dyu's wife saw the sage's cow Nandinī, the cow of plenty whose milk keeps the drinker free of disease and old age, and asked for her for a human friend. Dyu stole the cow with his brothers' help. The sage cursed them all to be born among men, then softened the curse so that the brothers would be freed within a year of their birth, but kept it on Dyu alone, because he had done the deed: he would live on earth a long time, have no children and keep away from women. The Vasus asked Gaṅgā to throw them into the water as soon as they were born; she bore them to King Śantanu and drowned seven, and the eighth, Dyu, survived as Devavrata, later known as Bhīṣma. In the epic the sky is a cow-thief, punished with a long life without a child.

The house born between the two parents

Hymn 1.159 calls Heaven and Earth "prolific parents" who made the world of the living, and says their skilful sons first brought "the two great mothers" to life. Hymn 1.164 says the place of birth is between the two outspread bowls, "and there the father laid the germ of the daughter".

Symbolic Reading

The Indian essay reads the word for sky and the word for god as coming from one root meaning light, and makes Indian deva, Latin deus and Arabic ḍiyāʾ one network of light older than the separation of the languages. On this reading the sky was named for the light of day, and every god was named from it.

The hymns themselves give the picture of a household: a still father above, a still mother below, a moving, working offspring between them, and a singer who speaks to them as a son to his parents, asks them to keep him from danger and apologises for wrongs done against "the chief of the house". The hymn says the two are motionless and footless, and it is their offspring that walks: people and cattle. In the rite for begetting a son, husband and wife take up this first pair by name.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Dyaus is Zeus by name, but Hesiod's Zeus is a king who fights his father and shares out the offices, while Dyaus is a father without a throne, and the fighting belongs to his son Indra. Father Dyaus is Jupiter letter for letter: dyauṣ pitar in India, Diespiter among the Romans, "Father Day". Monier-Williams sets beside them the Norse Týr, in whom the name lives on alone, without the word for father.

In Greece the sky Ouranos lies stretched over the earth Gaia and keeps his children shut inside her until his son Kronos cuts him; in India Varuṇa and Indra push sky and earth apart by propping, without a wound. In Egypt it is the other way round: the sky is a mother, Nut, and the earth a father, Geb. In Sumer An takes heaven and Enlil takes earth after heaven is moved away from earth, and the Ki page reads the earth as qiyy and qāʿ, level open ground, as we read Pṛthivī as barth.