The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s2.5

v1.c11.s2.5

There are a few cases where the parallelism existing among the words used by the different Indo-European peoples gives us the right to conclude the existence of a common worship. Thus we know that the conception of the gods as heavenly is Indo-European and that there existed the figure of Dyaus Pitṛ, the Greek Zeus Pater, the Latin Jupiter:² the similarity of this god as concerned with the thunder with the German Donar³ and Norse Thorr is clear: moreover his connexion with the oak as at Dodona has a plausible parallel in Jupiter feretrius, in the Lithuanian Perkúnas,⁴ the Slav Perunu,⁵ perhaps the Phrygian Bagaios,⁶ and also among the Celts⁷ and the Germans, a fact which has recently been brilliantly explained by Warde Fowler, confirming the older views of Grimm, as directly due to the observation that the lightning strikes the oak far oftener than any other European forest tree. But this very case shows how little can be won for Indian religion: Dyaus is a faint and shadowy figure in Indian mythology, and it is impossible not to remember that in Aegean religion in Greece and in Asia Minor, whose connexion with Europe in religious matters was close before the rise of any of the Aryan religions in Europe, a thunder god is a conspicuous figure.