[INDOLOGY] the late fate of the the Rig Vedic Dyaus Pater?

Wed Jun 1 14:25:59 UTC 2022

Dear John,

Thank you for pointing out this article, I think the core gist of it does
appear in Jamison and Brereton's 2014 translation, which I will quote in
extenso here. I should note this is perhaps the only place in that
translation where Jamison and Brereton produce different introductions to
one hymn, because they radically disagreed on what this hymn was really
about. I, for one, find both their readings really probative and
interesting although I myself have a third reading I am working on, which
builds on their work as well as Kuiper's and Proferes'. It's a pretty tough
one to say the least. Here's Stephanie's remarks from 2014:

"Although, given the apparent failure of so many R̥gvedic interpreters to
identify
the deserted party successfully, it is foolhardy to suggest my own
candidate,
I will make an unemphatic essay in that direction. Note first that the
figure most
clearly left behind by the deserting gods is a “father”—qualified once as
Father
Asura/lordly father (3c), once just as father (4b). Note also the first
half of verse
6, where Indra points to the sun and its previous preeminence on the scale
of
value, but suggests that it is now eclipsed or rivaled by the light of the
broad
midspace. Let us also remember the heads of the pantheons in Greek and Roman
mythology, Zeus Patēr and Iuppiter respectively, and the curious fact that
the
cognate figure in ancient India, formulaically transparent Dyaus Pitar
“Father
Sky/Heaven,” has no comparable prominence in Vedic mythology though he is
reasonably well attested in the texts. On putting these clues together, it
seems
possible that the old sky-centered religion focused on the inherited
paternal
divinity Dyaus quietly gave way to one located in realms closer to men,
where
divinities concerned themselves with issues important to mankind, such as
the
release of the waters (vss. 7–8), and actively sought the praise and
sacrificial
offerings of men (vs. 9 and, by implication, throughout the hymn). Dyaus
Pitar
remained a revered figure but played little role in the sacrificial system.
There
was thus no violent rupture in the social or religious fabric, just a
peaceful fading
into well-but-perfunctorily-honored irrelevance for Dyaus, displaced by
ritual-centered gods like Agni and Soma and those deeply involved with men’s
affairs, ethically (Varuṇa) or martially (Indra)."

For me, this peaceful power transfer is of paramount importance, but I
disagree that there is a clean break between " an "ethical Varuṇa" and a
"martial Indra," if anything the younger portions of the RV seem to be
working hard to expanded Indra's character beyond pure martial application.
I think, beyond a god of summertime to a year-round god, including the
domain in which formerly Varuṇa was more prominent. This may, I think, be
linked to certain structural changes to ritual organization (if not
practice sensu stricto), which will culminate in a form of the ritual which
compresses an entire ritual calendar into the thrice pressed Soma.

Let me now try to address Jamison's claim that "it seems possible that the
old sky-centered religion focused on the inherited paternal divinity Dyaus
quietly gave way to one located in realms closer to men."

I am not certain what she means by "sky-centered religion" as, I think from
a comparative religious studies perspective, whatever a religion is
theologically centered upon iti always "touches down" in ways that are
meaningful, socially or materially, to its adherents. In the reconstructed
PIE religious idiom of Djeus PHter, we may not be able to see that
dimension but it seems ill-advised to assume it doesn't exist and that such
a figure wouldn't be relevant to the formation of social constituency and
material gain for a stable or unstable coalition of pastoralists.

I also, however, wanted to ask us---and i don't have an answer here---to
pause and re-think what the heck "sky-centered religion" at the PIE level
should even mean, or is it an empty signifier of something we know really
nothing about. For instance, while the collocation may have endure it's
perfectly possible that whatever character Jupiter had prior to contact
with the Greeks, he has been wholly re-fashioned into a Zeus-like figure.
Where does Zeus get his particular characteristics from? Well, not to
speculate wildly---but in the interests of casting doubt on what seems
certain---its well known that once upon a time in 14th century BCE Ugarit,
Baal, the storm god, defeated the two favored sons of El, Yam and Mot, the
Sea and Death. Some have remarked that this splitting of the world into
three domains ruled by three (almost brothers) prefigures the Greek model
in interesting ways. That is Heaven / Sea / Earth = Baal / Yam / Mot = the
much later Zeus / Poseidon / Hades (these last two with rather uncertain
etymologies).

So, what I want to suggest is this--is it valid to imagine a PIE with a
Djews PHter who operated like Jupiter or Zeus, when the particular domain
of these figures may be areal, that is part of a religious conceptual space
that participated with Anatolia and the Levant. If that's so, can we talk
about an Indo-Iranian diminishing of a sky-father figure if the primacy of
Jupiter and Zeus is demoted? And if so, what does the PIE religious
imagination look like in that scenario? What does the collocation of Djews
PHter really indicate? What if Djews pHter was always a diminished deus
otiosus going back to PIE? What if the marginal status we see for the
collocation in Indic is older, and the new important in Greek and Roman
religion secondary? That's all I wish to suggest here, not that it is in
fact so, but that we not think about gods in this teleological way of
needing to be originally more or less important, it's possible that there
was a good political reason to have the idea of an Old Weak Father and a
New Boss, and we don't have to actually imagine a time when Old Weak Father
character was any different. Isn't this so for Cronus and Uranus? Do we
need to imagine a phase of religious history where they were chief
dedicands of devotion? Sorry for the long winded thought experiment, mainly
just thinking out loud here.

Best,
Caley

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 4:22 AM John Lowe <john.lowe at orinst.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear all,
> I may have missed some of this thread due to an overactive spam filter,
> but to my knowledge no one has mentioned Stephanie Jamison's paper which
> addresses precisely this issue, 'The Divine Revolution of Ṛgveda X.124: A
> New Interpretation Beyond Asuras and Devas', in the Fritz Staal FS *On
> Meaning and Mantras*, 2016.
> Best wishes
> John
> ------------------------------
> *From:* INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Caley
> Smith via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Sent:* 31 May 2022 20:19
> *To:* Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock at illinois.edu>
> *Cc:* Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] the late fate of the the Rig Vedic Dyaus Pater?
>
> I understand, but it nevertheless seems relevant to the notion of "origin
> and fate" of a collocation if it's importance and use in most branches of
> PIE is vastly different than 2 branches taken, perhaps ad hoc, as
> representing some original or default state. That's all I wished to
> express.
>
> Best,
> Caley
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:47 PM Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock at illinois.edu>
> wrote:
>
> What Dean was talking about is the specific word dyau.h and the
> collocation dyau.s pitā, the latter of which is compared to Greek zeus
> patēr and Lat. iuppiter. Obviously there are many other deities connected
> with the sky, but that was not the point of the query and the response
>
> All the best
>
> Hans Henrich
>
> On May 31, 2022, at 12:18, Caley Smith <smith.caley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 
> It seems to me speaking of an Indic diminishing of a dyaus pitar as maybe
> jumping the gun. There are plenty of heavenly figures (tvastr and savitar
> are often characterized as deva/divya) but the importance of a dyaus pitar
> can't even really be reconstructed to the indo-Iranian level. Important
> father figures are the Father Asura from RV 10.124, Kuiper has some
> interesting thoughts on this. And of course there is a heavenly mother in
> Aditi, I think it's first in Breretons the Rgvedic Adityas he suggests an
> adj a-diti "unbound" that applied to heavenly could be reanalyzed as the
> femimine partner of Heaven and become a goddess in her own right. If I
> misremember these things please forgive, I'm on my phone bouncing my
> newborn currently.
>
> It seems to me a particulary important part of Indra's character that he
> is not a biological father, and thus perhaps any study of the figure of a
> dyaus pitar might have to really re think what the family as an in situ
> political unit means in PIE and IIr. It's not really obvious to me that a
> steppe clan based family in a segmentation society should in any way have a
> similar concept of family and paternity as the fixed field agrarian Greek
> or Roman one. Sorry is not more helpful.
>
> Best,
> Caley
>
> On Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:27 PM Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Thanks Hans Henrich,
>
> I was aware that he was not widely mentioned in RV but I hadn't thought of
> the ramifications of that until your post.
>
> I realize this may be the wrong place to ask this, but are you aware of
> any studies on the origin and fate of Dyaus/Zeus/Tiu across or within the
> other Indo-European languages?
>
> Best,
>
> Dean
>
> On Monday, May 30, 2022, 10:21:02 PM GMT+5:30, Hock, Hans Henrich <
> hhhock at illinois.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Dean,
>
> Even in the RigVeda *dyauṣ pitṛ *appears only six times; *dyauḥ *by
> itself, of course, occurs frequently, but often in feminine gender. In
> addition, there is the compound *dyāvāpṛthivī. *
>
> So, while *dyauṣ pitṛ* (and his relation to *pṛthivī mātṛ*) may be
> important from the perspective of comparative Indo-European mythology, his
> role in the Vedic tradition is highly diminished from the beginning. Other
> deities (Agni, Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, etc.) play a more important role, and
> in Vedic Prose, Viṣṇu, as personification of the sacrifice, becomes more
> important (as well as Rudra), and of course Prajāpati, the ‘lord of
> creatures’.
>
> I hope this at least partly answers your query.
>
> All the best,
>
> Hans Henrich
>
>
>
> On 30 May2022, at 08:43, Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Dear Indology List,
>
> Can anyone point me to any studies that discuss what happened to the Vedic
> Dyaus Pater who was important in the Rig Veda but who seems to have been
> supplanted in later times?
>
> It's particularly interesting for Indo-European studies because Dyaus is
> related to the Greek Zeus and the Germanic Tyr/Tius and Dyaus Pater to the
> Roman Ju-piter.
>
> Best,
>
> Dean
>
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