Acvins, and Indra), as there is of the motherhood of Earth, but there is no further exaltation.  No exaggeration—­the sign of Hindu enthusiasm—­is displayed in the laudation, and the epithet ‘father’ is given to half a dozen Vedic gods, as in Rome Ma(r)spiter stands beside Jup(p)iter.  Certain functions are ascribed to Heaven and Earth, but they are of secondary origin.  Thus they bring to the god he sacrifice,[54] as does Agni, and one whole hymn may thus be epitomized:  ’By the ordinance of Varuna made firm, O Heaven and Earth, give us blessings.  Blest with children and wealth is he that adores you twain.  Give us sweet food, glory and strength of heroes, ye who are our father and mother.’[55]

The praise is vague and the benevolence is the usual ’bestowal of blessings’ expected of all the gods in return for praise.  Other hymns add to this something, from which one 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.  I:  “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.” (I. 159; 160. 2, 5.)