Vedic Mythology c5.s1.1.1

c5.s1.1.1

§ 11. Dyaus.—By far the most frequent use of the word *dyaus* is as a designation of the concrete ‘sky’, in which sense it occurs at least 500 times in the RV. It also means ‘day’¹ about 50 times. When personified as the god of heaven, Dyaus is generally coupled with Earth in the dual compound *dyāvāpṛthivī*, the universal parents. No single hymn of the RV. is addressed to Dyaus alone. When he is mentioned separately the personification is limited almost entirely to the idea of paternity. The name then nearly always appears in the nominative or genitive case. The latter case, occurring about 50 times, is more frequent than all the other cases together. The genitive is regularly connected with the name of some other deity who is called the son or daughter of Dyaus. In about three-fourths of these instances Uṣas is his daughter, while in the remainder the Aśvins are his offspring (*napātā*), Agni is his son (*sūnu*) or child (*śiśu*), Parjanya, Sūrya, the Ādityas, the Maruts, and the Aṅgirases are his sons (*putra*). Out of its thirty occurrences in the nominative the name appears only eight times alone, being otherwise generally associated with Pṛthivī or mentioned with various deities mostly including Pṛthivī. In these eight passages he is three times styled a father (1, 90⁷. 164³³; 4, 1¹⁰), once the father of Indra (4, 72³), once he is spoken of as rich in seed (*suretāḥ*) and as having generated Agni (4, 17⁴);