tter etymology than that which
assigned it to the root zen, "to live," [99] there was little hope
of understanding the nature of Zeus. But when we learn that Zeus is
identical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to understand
Horace's expression, "sub Jove frigido," and the prayer of the
Athenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians, and on
the fields." [100] Such expressions as these were retained by the Greeks
and Romans long after they had forgotten that their supreme deity
was once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind the physical
significance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of
him as Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and
in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of
the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followed
into Old German, where Zio is the god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon,
where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.

Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from the
examination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the supreme Aryan
god, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never have
been interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to the
sun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples, when similarly
analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power,
nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light
of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originator
of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted
to believe the source, not only of "the golden light," [101] but of
everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, in
accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, we
must be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythology
are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither
Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the
ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeus
or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic
paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to
sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy. Philology itself
teaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was originally
the bright sky and nothing more. Although his name became generali