Who Dyaus is
Dyaus is the sky. The word means the bright one, and in the Rigveda it is used about five hundred times simply for the sky overhead. Sometimes the poets go one step further and speak to that sky as a person. Then he is Dyaus Pitar, Father Sky.
He is the oldest father in the hymns, and that is nearly all that is said of him. No hymn of the Rigveda is addressed to Dyaus alone. When his name appears it is usually to say whose father he is. Ushas, the Dawn, is called the daughter of Dyaus again and again. The Ashvins are his offspring. Agni is his child, and so are Parjanya the rain, the Sun, and the storm gods called Maruts. One hymn says that Dyaus is the father of Indra himself.
The poets rarely picture him. A few times he is a bull, a red bull that bellows downward, because rain falls from him and makes the earth bear. Once he is compared to a dark horse decked with pearls, and anyone who has looked up on a clear night knows what that means. Once he is said to smile through the clouds.
He is seldom alone. He has a partner, Prithvi, the Earth, and the two are praised as one pair in six hymns. They are the Father and the Mother. They are two great bowls, one turned over the other, and the Sun travels between them. They have no feet and never move, yet they hold up every creature that has feet and moves. The gods are their children. People ask this pair for the plainest things, which are food, rain, safety and a good name.
One poet stops in the middle of his praise to ask a question he cannot answer. Which of the two is older? How were they born? Who knows?
Dyaus is my father, the one who gave me life. This wide Earth is my mother and my kin.
That line comes from a hymn of riddles. Another hymn says it as a prayer: O Heaven our Father, Earth our guileless Mother, bless us.