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 NOTE I, p. 227.

ON THE PITJ#S OB FATHEES.

In Mami the belief in the Pitrzs or Fathers and the rules for their worship have assumed a most complicated character, and there are many passages that might be quoted by those who hold that in India also a belief in the Fathers came first, and a belief in the Devas followed afterwards. There are other arguments too that might be used in support of such a theory, and I wonder they have not been used, though I do not think they can be upheld against the mass of evidence on the other side. The name of the oldest and greatest among the Devas, for instance, is not simply Dyaus, but Dyaush-pita, Heaven-Father, and there are several other names of the same character, not only in Sanskrit, but in Greek and Latin also. Does it not look as if Dyaus, the sky, had become personal and worshipful, only after he had been raised to the category of a Pitn, a father, and that this predicate of Father must have been elaborated first, before it could have been used to com- prehend Dyaus, the sky, Vanma, and other Devas ? This sounds plausible, nor do I deny that there may be some truth in it. But it is not the whole truth, and nothing, I believe, is so constant a source of error as this mistaking of some truth for the whole truth. The Vedic poets believed in Devas, gods, if we must so call them, literally, the bright ones ; Pitr^s, fathers; and Manushyas, men, mortals 1. Who came first and who came after is difficult to say, but as soon as the three were placed side by side, the Devas certainly 1 Atharva-veda X. 6, 32. U 2