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

Thu Jun 2 15:49:17 UTC 2022

Dear Dean,

Thanks! Parenthood has been amazing so far. It's not lost on me that as a
new father I am making a lot of claims about heavenly fatherhood.

Regarding the claim that "the importance of a dyaus pitar can't even really
be reconstructed to the Indo-Iranian level," what I mean is that Iranian
doesn't provide any evidence for us, so if Dyaus Pitar was an important
figure, his importance likely declined already in a shared Indo-Iranian
period prior to the speech community's division.

I am not certain there is particular importance, personally, to assign to
the figure of Tiu. Consider Old English Tīwesdæg "Tuesday" is
etymologically cognate with a hypothetical Sanskrit devadaha*, which I
think is the name of the great-grandfather of the Buddha (via Devadaha >
Anjana > Maya > Siddhartha), if I am not mistaken. And in Irish, the Dagda
would go by cognate, hypothetically, with a Sanskrit dahadeva.* My point is
first, Tiu goes back to deva not dyaus, and that's a real difference.
Second, it's possible to create what looks like a PIE figure from Tiu,
Dagda, and Devadaha but I think it would be ill-advised to do so.

BUT In an email to me, John Lowe pointed out, and I think quite
convincingly, that we have to reconstruct a vocative Dyews Phter to the
proto-level---which is suggestive of a certain use, isn't it? An atheist
today might well say "o god!" without believing in god, simply because the
vocative is an inherited part of the lexicon. So, this pragmatic dimension
does make me reconsider what I said earlier, and I thank him for pointing
this out. Still, this figure would likely not resemble, in my mind, the
Greek Zeus and the figure of Ouranos looks to NW semitic to me for a
reliable reconstruction (cf. Ugaritic El, sky-father of the gods, who are
conceived of as the stars in the sky), when this astrological element is
absent from Sanskrit Dyaus Pitar (although Varuna does have night-sky
affinities...). I'll have to think very carefully about this.

On that note, Kuiper's publication is Varuna and Vidusaka (
https://archive.org/details/varunaandvidusakaontheoriginofsanskritdramakuiperf.b.j./page/n1/mode/2up
)

As for Indra's replacing Dyaus Pitar, I am not convinced. I do think a
sukta-era Indra-ism did result in the appropriation of a broad spectrum of
heroic deeds to Indra, but in this case it's more likely that Indra is
taking over mythical deed once attributed to Trita and Mitra, this there is
some comparative data from Avestan that let's us think through the problem.
But what is the evidence of IIr Dyaus Pitar actually doing anything?

Conversely, let's consider for a second what we know about the sukta-era
political system and the function of the Soma pressing ritual. It seems
like it was used to consecrate a temporary leader, we might think of this
leader as suzerain but I think kingship goes a bit too far in terms of
sovereignty. This kind of power was likely based on a patron's personal
charisma legitimized through priestly/poetic performance and ritual
distribution of wealth to shore up support. In other words, part of a
process of coalition building. Any coalition would have old leaders and new
leaders, and not necessarily ones from the same clan let alone household.
It stands to reason that a mythological structure that provided a
conceptual map for the peaceful transition of power would be completely
appropriate in such a system. This is something Kuiper, Jamison, and
Brereton observe in X.124, the peaceful switch from asura power to Indra's
devic supremacy. Put differently, we need not imagine that a deus otiosus
ever needed to be, once upon a time, the primary object of worship. His
role could always be that of deus otiosus going back as far as you need.
It's unmotivated to assume the necessity of mythological replacement, when
there is real social value in the figure of a "sky god emeritus." In fact,
in Ugarit this is exactly how the god El functioned, Baal was the primary
object of worship and El was a creator/fertility entity whose primary job
was to resist and then accept Baal's supremacy.

Not that we should reconstruct PIE to be like Ugaritic! My point is that a
myth like this could serve a social function, while different systems of
political organization, for example polis kingship in Greece, could
reinvent the figure by fusing elements of a deus otiosus with a heroic
actor (thus Zeus, this parallels the figure of Yahweh who appears to be a
fusion of Baal and El).

So, at the risk of seeming strident and insistence (and I don't actually
have a real theory of Dyews Phtr just qualms), I think what the figure
meant and indicated in PIE is still very much an open question, but if I
were a betting man (and thank the gods I am not), I would ask myself what
the political organization of steppe peoples is like and if it is more like
how Indo-Iranians were organized or more like how Greeks and Romans were
organized, and what kind of myths would make sense to the worldview of that
audience and would be useful for their own political operations. Just
thinking out loud!

Best,
Caley

On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 11:02 AM Dean Michael Anderson <
eastwestcultural at yahoo.com> wrote:

> First, congratulations to Caley on the newborn!
>
> Thanks to everyone for the useful and insightful comments.
> Thanks to Hans Henrich for giving me some valuable pointers to look
> further into the situation regarding Dyaus, Zeus, Jupiter, and the sadly
> mysterious Germanic Tiu.
> Thanks to Caley and others for taking it beyond my original thoughts to
> suggest other connections.
>
> Forgive my limited knowledge and understanding. Caley (and others) how
> would you view your comment that "the importance of a dyaus pitar can't
> even really be reconstructed to the Indo-Iranian level" in light of the
> connection beyond the Indo-Iranians to the Greeks, Romans, (and the sadly
> mysterious Germanic Tiu)?
>
> > Important father figures are the Father Asura from RV 10.124,
> >Kuiper has some interesting thoughts on this.
>
> Do you happen to remember the name of Kuiper's publication?
>
> >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
>
> And yet I have read elsewhere of Indra "replacing" Dyaus. What are your
> thoughts on this?
>
> Dean
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, May 31, 2022 at 10:48:14 PM GMT+5:30, 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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