Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/127

 The Prehistoric Gods III least the concept "children of Father Sky" is prehistoric, and genuinely mythic. The sky has another irrepressible quality: it thunders. In this aspect also it became a personal god with a definite name in prehistoric times, who tends at times, as one might naturally suppose, to encroach on the domain of Father Sky, or to blend with him. The chief heathen god of the Lithuanians was Perkunas, "Thunderer," from which is derived the word perkunyja, "thunder-storm." The identity of this name with the parents of the Norse "Thun- derer," the god Thor (Donar), namely, the male Fjorgynn and the female Fjorgyn, has never been questioned. Here also belongs Parjanya, that most transparent divinity of the rain-storm in the Vedic hymns, who "roars like a lion and thunderous strikes the evil-doers." There is some slight phonetic diffi- culty here. I would suggest that the word has been modulated euphemistically, so as to suggest the idea of "guarding the folk" (pari, "about," and jana, "folk"). Homer's Zeus has absorbed the "Thun- derer," and therefore appears in a double aspect. On the one hand he is "far-eyed Sky" (svpvona);" on the other he is "cloud-gatherer" (vepeλnyepétns), The original etymology is doubtful; see Hirt, Indogermanische Forschungen, i., 436; Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Griechischen Sprache, p. 81. 7