If derived from parg, to sprinkle, Parganya would have meant originally "he who irrigates or gives rain."[246]
When the different members of the Aryan family dispersed, they might all of them, Hindus as well as Greeks and Celts, and Teutons and Slaves, have carried that name for cloud with them. But you know that it happened very often that out of the commonwealth of their ancient language, one and the same word was preserved, as the case might be, not by all, but by only six, or five, or four, or three, or two, or even by one only of the seven principal heirs; and yet, as we know that there was no historical contact between them, after they had once parted from each other, long before the beginning of what we call history, the fact that two of the Aryan languages have preserved the same finished word with the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient that it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan thought.
Now there is no trace, at least no very clear trace, of Parganya, in Greek, or Latin, or Celtic, or even in Teutonic. In Slavonic, too, we look in vain, till we come to that almost forgotten side-branch called the Lettic, comprising the spoken Lituanian and Lettish, and the now extinct Old Prussian. Lituania is no longer an independent state, but it was once, not more than six centuries ago, a Grand Duchy, independent both of Russia and Poland. Its first Grand Duke was Ringold, who ruled from 1235, and his successors made successful conquests against the Russians. In 1368 these grand dukes became kings of Poland, and in 1569 the two countries were united. When Poland was divided between Russia and Prussia, part of Lituania fell to the former, part to the latter. There are still about one million and a half of people who speak Lituanian in Russia and Prussia, while Lettish is spoken by about one million in Curland and Livonia.
The Lituanian language even as it is now spoken by the common people, contains some extremely primitive grammatical forms—in some cases almost identical with Sanskrit. These forms are all the more curious, because they are but few in number, and the rest of the language has suffered much from the wear and tear of centuries.
Now in that remote Lituanian language we find that our old friend Parganya has taken refuge. There he lives to the present day, while even in India he is almost forgotten, at least in the spoken languages; and there, in Lituania, not many centuries back might be heard among a Christianized or nearly Christianized people, prayers for rain, not very different from that which I translated to you from the Rig-Veda. In Lituanian the god of thunder was called Perkúnas,[247] and the same word is still used in the sense of thunder. In Old Prussian, thunder was percunos, and in Lettish to the present day pérkons is thunder, god of thunder.[248]
It was, I believe, Grimm who for the first time identified the Vedic Parganya with the Old Slavonic Perûn, the Polish Piorun, the Bohemian Peraun. These words had formerly been derived by Dobrovsky and others from the root peru, I strike. Grimm ("Teutonic Mythology," Engl. transl., p. 171) showed that the fuller forms Perkunas, Pehrkons, and Perkunos existed in Lituanian, Lettish, Old Prussian, and that even the Mordvinians had adopted the name Porguini as that of their thunder-god.
Simon Grunau, who finished his chronicle in 1521, speaks of three gods, as worshipped by the Old Prussians, Patollo, Patrimpo, and Perkuno, and he states that Perkuno was invoked "for storm's sake, that they might have rain and fair weather at the proper time, and thunder and lightning should not injure them."[249]
The following Lituanian prayer has been preserved to us by Lasitzki:[250]
"Check thyself, O Percuna, and do not send misfortune on my field! and I shall give thee this flitch."