Among the neighbors of the Lets, the Esthonians, who, though un-Aryan in language, have evidently learned much from their Aryan neighbors, the following prayer was heard,[251] addressed by an old peasant to their god Picker or Picken, the god of thunder and rain, as late as the seventeenth century.[252]
"Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an ox that has two horns and four cloven hoofs; we would pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, that our straw be copper-red, our grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere all the thick black clouds, over great fens, high forests, and wildernesses. But unto us, ploughers and sowers, give a fruitful season and sweet rain. Holy Thunder (pöha Picken), guard our seed-field, that it bear good straw below, good ears above, and good grain within."[253]
Now, I say again, I do not wish you to admire this primitive poetry, primitive, whether it is repeated in the Esthonian fens in the seventeenth century of our era, or sung in the valley of the Indus in the seventeenth century before our era. Let æsthetic critics say what they like about these uncouth poems. I only ask you, Is it not worth a great many poems, to have established this fact, that the same god Parganya, the god of clouds and thunder and lightning and rain, who was invoked in India a thousand years before India was discovered by Alexander, should have been remembered and believed in by Lituanian peasants on the frontier between East Prussia and Russia, not more than two hundred years ago, and should have retained its old name Parganya, which in Sanskrit meant "showering," under the form of Perkuna, which in Lituanian is a name and a name only, without any etymological meaning at all; nay, should live on, as some scholars assure us, in an abbreviated form in most Slavonic dialects, namely, in Old Slavonic as Perun, in Polish as Piorun, in Bohemian as Peraun, all meaning thunder or thunderstorm?[254]
Such facts strike me as if we saw the blood suddenly beginning to flow again through the veins of old mummies; or as if the Egyptian statues of black granite were suddenly to begin to speak again. Touched by the rays of modern science the old words—call them mummies or statues—begin indeed to live again, the old names of gods and heroes begin indeed to speak again.
All that is old becomes new, all that is new becomes old, and that one word, Parganya, seems, like a charm, to open before our eyes the cave or cottage in which the fathers of the Aryan race, our own fathers—whether we live on the Baltic or on the Indian Ocean—are seen gathered together, taking refuge from the buckets of Parganya, and saying, "Stop now, Parganya; thou hast sent rain; thou hast made the deserts passable, and hast made the plants to grow; and thou hast obtained praise from man."
We have still to consider the third class of gods, in addition to the gods of the earth and the sky, namely the gods of the highest heaven, more serene in their character than the active and fighting gods of the air and the clouds, and more remote from the eyes of man, and therefore more mysterious in the exercise of their power than the gods of the earth or the air.
The principal deity is here no doubt the bright sky itself, the old Dyaus, worshipped as we know by the Aryans before they broke up into separate people and languages, and surviving in Greece as Zeus, in Italy as Jupiter, Heaven-father, and among the Teutonic tribes as Tŷr and Tiu. In the Veda we saw him chiefly invoked in connection with the earth, as Dyâvâ-prithivî, Heaven and Earth. He is invoked by himself also, but he is a vanishing god, and his place is taken in most of the Vedic poems by the younger and more active god, Indra.
Another representative of the highest heaven, as covering, embracing, and shielding all things, is Varuna, a name derived from the root var, to cover, and identical with the Greek Ouranos. This god is one of the most interesting creations of the Hindu mind, because though we can still perceive the physical background from which he rises, the vast, starry, brilliant expanse above, his features, more than those of any of the Vedic gods, have become completely transfigured, and he stands before us as a god who watches over the world, punishes the evil-doer, and even forgives the sins of those who implore his pardon.
I shall read you one of the hymns addressed to him:[255]