by being given the masculine (or animate) form, here the neuter plural vásu ̄ni
that the gods bestow are transformed into the masculine plural Vásavah
̇
,
representing the active principle of good-giving: instead of benefits,
Benefactors.
The wesu- stem is attested in central Europe by personal names such as the
Illyrian Vescleves and the Gaulish Bellovesus. It is almost certainly to be
recognized in the name of the Italo-Celtic goddess who appears in central
Italy as Vesuna, at Périgueux as Vesunna, and perhaps at Baden-Baden as
Visuna.^80 She is surely the ‘Mistress of good things’, with the familiar nasal
suffix. She stands in the same relationship to the Vedic vásupati- as the
Lithuanian Earth goddess Zˇemyna to the male Zˇeme ̇patis. She probably owes
her sex to the European substrate that favoured goddesses. She might have
replaced an Indo-European Wesunos, though there is no necessity to postu-
late one. Given the continued productivity of the -no- suffix, a Wesupotis or
Wesus would have been a sufficient model.
Our Fridays are named after an old goddess Frı ̄g, corresponding to Norse
Frigg, Old Saxon Frî, Old High German Frîja, who was taken for calendrical
purposes as the northern equivalent of Venus. A Langobardic form Frea
appears in Paulus Diaconus’Historia Langobardorum (1. 8). The proto-
Germanic form is reconstructed as Friyo ̄, and it is from Indo-European
priya ̄‘dear, loved, own’.^81 In RV 1. 46. 1 the beautiful Dawn goddess is called
priya ̄ ́ Diváh
̇
, ‘the beloved (daughter) of Dyaus’. The Germanic goddess was
the adulterous wife of Odin/Woden.
Was there an Indo-European goddess Priya ̄, or was Friyo ̄ a local creation
from an epithet which, as the Vedic evidence shows, could be applied to
goddesses? That she had a wider currency than the Germanic lands might
follow if an alleged Old Czech Prije= Aphrodite were better accredited.^82
It is equally doubtful whether she can be recognized in Wanassa(?)Preiia,
named on early coins of Perge in Pamphylia, as that must be the city goddess
elsewhere called (Artemis) Pergaia.
It is generally accepted that the Greek Hestia, eponymous goddess of the
hearth, is cognate with the Roman Vesta, despite the absence of an initial
(^80) S. Weinstock, RE viiiA. 1798 f.; F. Heichelheim, ibid. 1800 f.; Meid (1957), 106–8; Olmsted
(1994), 429.
(^81) Lorenz (1984), 177; Meid (1991), 28. On the Germanic deity see de Vries (1956), ii. 302–7.
From the fact that in part of Germany Fridays are particularly favoured for weddings he infers
that she was originally the goddess of marriage. In view of her mythical infidelity as a wife it
might be preferable to say love and marriage.
(^82) Grimm (1883–8), 303, probably from the Mater verborum of the notorious forger Václav
Hanka. The *priy- root is well represented in Slavonic words for friend, pleasant, agreeable,
etc.
144 3. Gods and Goddesses