Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/228

196 BOOK II. His triple functions.

Vishnu, the walking or striding god, who moves amidst the Hghtnings like Hephaistos in his workshop of subterraneous fires. But in his power of penetrating and piercing the heavens or the earth, and in his ceaseless and irresistible energ}', he is simply Wuotan in another form, and the conception of the deity has varied but little among the Aryan nations. The name itself is found in the name of the Gallic thunder-god Taranis, preserved to us by Lucan, and more nearly in its other form Tanarus, while the idea is expressed in the Jupiter Tonans of the Latins, and the Zeus Kerauneios of the Greeks. He is, in short, the great lord of heaven in his most awful manifestation, but he is, nevertheless, the maker and the father of mankind. Hence, like Odin, he is the Allfather, a title which Procopius tells us that the Slavonic nations gave only to the creator of the lightnings.^ The deity thus worshipped was named Perkunas or Pehrkons by the Lithuanian tribes, and by the Slaves Perun, Piorun, and Peraun, a form which Grimm is inclined to connect with the Greek Kepawo<;," and more confidently with the Sanskrit Parjanya, a name of Indra as the bringer of the fertilising rain.' If, again, Sophokles speaks of Ge or Gaia as the mother of Zeus,* so is the earth the parent of Donar; and as Zeus and Wuotan are severally enthroned on Olympos and Wuotansberg, so has Thor or Donar his Donersperch, Thunres- berg or Donnersberg, and Donnerskaute, while the oak, the special tree of the Thundering Jupiter of the Latins, is not less sacred to the Teutonic deity. Like Dyaus or Jupiter, Thor is bearded, but his beard is fiery red, like the lightnings which flash across the heaven.^

But his appearance varied with his functions, which were con- cerned with three things — the lightning flash, the thunderclap, and the thunderbolt As using the first, he always walks or strides ; as producing the thunderpeal, he is borne along in his chariot ; as wielding the bolts, he is, like Wuotan, the armed god who hurls his irresistible weapons. These are sometimes called his spears and arrows; but more especially the thunderbolt is his hammer, the

' Grimm, D. M. 156. which makes the Latin sequor and equus answer to the Greek eiro/iai and 'llTTTOS.
 * By a change analogous to that

' The connexion of the Slavonic Perkunas, the thunder-god, with the Greek <p6pKvs, <p6pKvvos, seems scarcely less obvious, and the Hellenic deity has as much to do with water as the Vedic Parjanya. The name of the god Pikollos, who is associated with Per- kunas, has assumed a strange form in English folk-lore. In the Platt-Deutsch of Prussia it appears as Pakkels= Puckle and Pickle : and thus he appears as a demon in the phrase "pretty Pickle." Russians still say, when the thunder rolls, Perkttnagromcna. — Ralston, Sotigs of the Russian People, 86, &c. ; Russian Folk Tales, 337.


 * Philokt. 3S9.

Lufte-scheinung des Blitzes bezogen werden muss."— Grimm, D, M. 161.
 * " Rothhiirtig, was auf die feurige