[57] An old Germanic name of Odin related to Divus. Odin's descendants were the “Tivar”. (Pronounce _Dyaus_ as one syllable rhiming with _mouse_.)
As the Greek Cronus (Roman Saturn) slew his father Urănus (Heaven), so did Indra slay his father Dyaus (Heaven). His earth-mother addresses him, saying: “Who has made thy mother a widow? Who has sought to slay the sleeping and the waking? What deity has been more gracious than thou, since thou hast slain thy father, having seized him by the foot?”[58]
[58] _Rigveda_, iv, 18. Wilson, vol. iii, p. 153.
The Indian father-slaying myth appears to be connected with the doctrine of reincarnation. In the _Laws of Manu_ it is stated that “the husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her; for that is the wifehood of a wife, that he is born again by her”.[59] In the famous story of Shakuntălā, the husband is similarly referred to as the son of his wife, the son being a reincarnation of the father.[60] This belief resembles the Egyptian conception which is summed up in the phrase “husband of his mother”.[61]
[59] _The Laws of Manu_, ix, 8; p. 329. (_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxv.)
[60] _Adi Parva_, sect. lxxiv of _Mahabharata_, Roy's translation.
At the barley harvest in spring and the rice harvest in autumn offerings were made to the gods. A sacrificial cake of the new barley or rice was offered to Indra and Agni, a mess of old grain boiled and mixed with milk and water was given to the other gods, and a cake was also offered to Father Heaven and Mother Earth in which clarified butter was an important ingredient; or the offering might consist entirely of butter, because “clarified butter is manifestly the sap of these two, Heaven and Earth; ... he (the offerer) therefore gladdens these two with their own sap or essence”.
The reason for this harvest offering is explained as follows: The gods and the demons contended for supremacy. It chanced that the demons defiled, partly by magic and partly by poison, the plants used by men and beasts, hoping thus to overcome the gods. Men ceased to eat and the beasts stopped grazing; all creatures were about to perish because of the famine.
Said the gods: “Let us rid the plants of this.”