________________
sees that these deities are not regarded as self-created; for the seers of old, or, according to one poet some wonderful divine artisan, "most wondrous worker of the wonder-working gods," created them. Their chief office is to exercise benign protection and bestow wealth. Once they are invited to come to the sacrifice "with the gods," but this, of course, is not meant to exclude them from the list of gods[56].
The antithesis of male and female, to Bergaigne's insistence on which reference was made above (p. 43), even here in this most obvious of forms, common to so many religions, shows itself so faintly that it fails utterly to support that basis of sexual dualism on which the French scholar lays so much stress. Dyaus does, indeed, occasionally take the place of Indra, and as a bellowing bull impregnate earth, but this is wholly incidental and not found at all in the hymns directly lauding Heaven and Earth. Moreover, instead of "father and mother" Heaven and Earth often are spoken of as "the two mothers," the significance of which cannot be nullified by the explanation that to the Hindu 'two mothers' meant two parents, and of two parents one must be male, - Bergaigne's explanation. For not only is Dyaus one of the 'two mothers,' but when independently used the word Dyaus is male or female indifferently. Thus in X. 93.1: "O Heaven and Earth be wide outstretched for us, (be) like two young women." The position of Heaven and Earth in relation to other divinities varies with the fancy of the poet that extols them. They are either created, or they create gods, as well as create men. In accordance with the physical reach of these deities they are exhorted to give strength whereby the worshipper shall "over-reach all peoples"; and, as parents, to be the "nearest of the gods," to be "like father and mother in kindness." (1. 159, 160.2, 5.)
One more attribute remains to be noticed, which connects Dyaus morally as well as physically with Savitar and Varuna. The verse in which this attribute is spoken of is also not without interest from a sociological point of view: "Whatsoever sin we have committed against the gods, or against a friend, or against the chief of the clan (family)[57] may this hymn to Heaven and Earth avert it." It was shown above that Savitar removes sin. Here, as in later times, it is the hymn that does this. The mystery of these gods' origin puzzles the seer: "Which was first and which came later, how were