"[100] Such expressions as
these were retained by the Greeks and Romans long after they
had forgotten that their supreme deity was once the sky. Yet
even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical significance of
the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of him as
Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men;
and in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact
equivalent of the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The
same root can be followed into Old German, where Zio is the
god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon, where Tiwsdaeg, or the day
of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.
[99] Zeus--Dia--Zhna--di on ............ Plato Kratylos, p.
396, A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm. ad
Timaeum, II. p. 226, Schneider; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle,
De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology. See also
Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147.
[100] Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf.
Petronius Arbiter, Sat. xliv.
Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from
the examination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the
supreme Aryan god, which without the help afforded by the
Vedas could never have been interpreted, are seen to have been
originally applied to the sun-illumined firmament. Countless
other examples, when similarly analyzed, show that the
earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power, nourishing man
and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light of the
mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the
originator of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the
ancients delighted to believe the source, not only of "the
golden light,"[101] but of everything that is bright,
joy-giving, and pure.
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