Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/124

 The Religion of the Veda lines along which move the mythologies of the Indo- European peoples of historical times. The main sub- stance, though by no means the entire substance, of the mythologies and religions of these peoples-this is as true to-day as it was in the days of Benfey, Kuhn and Müller-is the nature myth. If we count Brah- manical theosophy and Buddhism as the two great yields of the study of Hinduism, we may safely add Comparative Mythology as the third great field of re- ligious history that has been opened out by the study of India. Had we but fuller records of ancient Indo- European history and literature, these fuller records would reveal more common myths and religious ideas. The added facts would fill in the necessarily sketchy picture, but it would still be the same picture. We are by the limits of our plan restricted here to those religious ideas which concern the early religion of India, and even of these we shall select only the more important. We begin with the remoter of the two periods, the Indo-European period. The universal Indo-European word for "god" was deivos, gone over into archaic Latin as deivos (deus), Celtic devos in the Gallic proper name Devognata, Old Scandinavian tivar, "gods," Lithuanian divas, and Sanskrit devas. The irreproachable etymology which connects this word with the verb div, dyu, 108