Dievas
Lithuanian · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
Lithuanian supreme sky god, the bright heaven personified, descendant of the Indo-European *Dyēus; in folklore the benevolent 'old man God'.
Domains
- sky supreme
Powers
- Order the bright sky and visit mortals as an old wanderer
Epithets
- Dievas senelis God the old man; the benevolent wandering old-man God of folkloreGreimas, Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology (secondary); Gimbutas, The Balts (secondary)
Relations
- rival: VelniasIn Lithuanian dualistic etiological legends Velnias imitates and contests Dievas's creation, botching his own counter-creations.N. Vėlius, Chtoniškasis lietuvių mitologijos pasaulis (1987) (secondary)
- equated with: TýrReciprocal of norse_tyr.equated-with — Reconstruction-only pair (flagged): both continue PIE *deywos/*Dyeus. Dievas remains a serene bright sky-father; Týr narrowed to war and the thing. No contact-era equation — purely the comparative method.M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (2007), ch. 4 on *Dyeus/*deiwos (secondary); J. P. Mallory & D. Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006) (secondary)