Indo-European Poetry and Myth

SKY AND EARTH AS A PAIR

In the lengthy lists of deities invoked as witnesses to Hittite treaties, ‘Heaven
and Earth’ regularly appear as a pair. They do not, to be sure, stand in a
position of any prominence but in the middle of the closing sequence of
cosmic entities: ‘Mountains, Rivers, Springs, the Great Sea, Heaven and Earth,
Winds and Clouds’.^61
The Vedic evidence is of much greater mythological interest. Here Dyaus
the father is frequently paired with Pr
̇

thivı ̄ the mother.

Díyaus

̇

pítah

̇

, Pr ́

̇

thivi ma ́ ̄tar ádhrug.

O Heaven (our) father, Earth (our) guileless mother. (RV 6. 51. 5)

Dyáus ́ ca nah

̇

pita ́ ̄ Pr

̇

thivı ̄ ́ ca ma ̄ta ́ ̄.

Heaven is our father and Earth our mother. (AV Paipp. 5. 21. 1)

Cf. RV 1. 89. 4, 164. 33, 191. 6; 6. 70. 6; AV Paipp. 2. 64. 3. They are called
‘parents of the gods’ (deváputre, literally ‘having gods for sons’, RV 1. 106. 3,

159. 1, al.), ‘the former-born parents’ (pu ̄rvajé pitára ̄, 7. 53. 2), ‘the parents
     good of seed’ (surétasa ̄ pitára ̄, 1. 159. 2, cf. 6. 70. 1). They are good of seed
     because from their union all things grow. Dyaus’ seed is more specifically the
     rain (1. 100. 3; 5. 17. 3), with which he fertilizes the earth.
     In Greek epic formula Zeus is ‘the father of gods and men’; Earth, as we
     have seen, is celebrated as ‘the mother of the gods’ or ‘mother of all’. How-
     ever, the two of them do not make a couple as Dyaus and Pr
     ̇

thivı ̄ do. The
ancient pairing has been broken up. We see why. As Zeus developed into
something much more than the deified Sky, his place as primeval father of the
gods and consort of Earth was transferred to Ouranos, a new personification
made from the ordinary classical word for ‘sky’. A theogonic scheme was
worked out (as in Hesiod) in which Ouranos and Gaia, Heaven and Earth,
are the primeval parents, while Zeus is born only in the third generation. His
traditional title ‘father of gods and men’ survived in spite of this. The old
designation of the gods as Celestials was also maintained (or reinvented) after
the loss of the word *deiwo ̄s, by calling them the Ο1ρανωνε (Il. 1. 570, 5.
373, etc.).
In Hesiod the union of Ouranos and Gaia is put in the distant past. The
amputation of Ouranos’ genitals by Kronos put a stop to it. The oriental
myth of the castration is incompatible with the Vedic picture of Heaven’s
impregnation of Earth as a continuing process whose effects we witness. But

(^61) Gurney (1977), 5; Beckman (1999), 29, 52, 58, 63, 68, 92, 121.

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