Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/33

I.] forces and forms of Nature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus became Dyaus pitár, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in Europe, the Dyaus pitár of the central Asian land became the Zeupāter of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and the first part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to. So, as Professor Max Müller tells us, the descendants of the ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can do but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as near as near can be; they can but combine the self-same words and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father, which art in Heaven.' "

The feeling which the Aryans had towards the Heaven-Father is very finely shown in one of the oldest hymns in the Rig Veda, or the Book of Praise—a hymn written 4,000 years ago, and