thunderstone can be called Perku ̄ ́no akmuõ, ‘Perkunas’ stone’. This makes a
possible link between the senses of ‘stone’ and ‘sky’.^10
If Eκμων was an old word for the sky, like asman- in Iranian, it might have
been personified as Akmon, and the rival names Akmon and Ouranos then
harmonized by making one the father of the other, much as Hyperion was
made the father of Helios. Both names, of course, were partial replacements
for the original Dyeus.
In other parts of the Indo-European territories a different word took on
the meaning ‘sky’. This was nébhes- ‘cloud’ (Vedic nábhas-, Greek νφο),
which became the word for ‘sky’ in Hittite (ne ̄bis-), Slavonic (*nebo), Latvian
(debess), and Celtic (Old Irish nem, Welsh nef, Breton neñv; Ben Nevis,
Britain’s highest peak, is ‘the Mountain of Heaven’). The same semantic shift
has taken place between Norse ský‘cloud’ and English sky. It reflects a differ-
ent way of thinking, or a different focus, from the conception of the stone
heaven.
Body imageryThere is a Vedic word na ̄ ́ka- signifying the surface of the sky, that which
appearsfiery by day (RV 5. 17. 2, 54. 12) or decorated with stars by night
(1. 19. 6, 68. 10; 6. 49. 12). It is sometimes combined with the genitive diváh
(1. 34. 8; 9. 73. 4, 85. 10). It was evidently conceived as convex, like an animal’s ̇
back: it has a ‘back’ (pr
̇
s
̇t
̇hám, 1. 125. 5; sa ̄ ́nu, 8. 103. 2), and at 3. 2. 12 it is
equated with divás pr
̇
s
̇t
̇hám, ‘heaven’s back’. This latter phrase occurs in eight
other places in the Rigveda. At 1. 115. 3 the Sun’s horses are described as
mounting it. We find the same image in Euripidean lyric. Zeus changed the
course of the sun in the time of Atreus, τw δ, aσπερα ν;τ, $λα3νει θερμ|ι
φλογ? θεοπ3ρωι, ‘(since then) he chases the westward back (of the sky) with
the hot flame of his divine fire’ (El. 731). And in a fragment of the Andromeda
(114) Night is addressed as one journeying far in her chariot, qστεροειδα
ν;τα διφρευ ́ ουσ, α!θρο Uιερ|, ‘riding across the starry back of the holy
air’. Plato (Phaedr. 247b) speaks of souls rising up to heaven and landing on
its back, $π? τ;ι το ο1ρανο ν.τωι.
The metaphor is more commonly used in Greek of the sea; $π, ε1ρα
ν;τα θαλα ́ σση is a Homeric formula, and the image remains alive in
tragedy (Aesch. Ag. 286, Eur. Hel. 129, 774). This is paralleled in Old English
(^10) Cf. J. P. Maher, JIES 1 (1973), 441–62. A Jesuit record from 1583 (Mannhardt (1936), 435)
attests the cult in Lithuania of a ‘saxum grandius’ under the name of Akmo, but we do not know
whether it was supposed to have any connection with the sky.
- Cosmos and Canon 343