Note 157 — Chapter IV

"We have in the Veda the invocation Dyaūs pítar, the Greek Ζεῦ πατερ, the Latin Jupiter; and that means in all the three languages what it meant before these three languages were torn asunder—it means Heaven-Father. These two words are not mere words; they are to my mind the oldest poem, the oldest prayer of mankind, or at least of that pure branch of it to which we belong—and I am as firmly convinced that this prayer was uttered, that this name was given to the unknown God before Sanskrit was Sanskrit, and Greek was Greek, as when I see the Lord's Prayer in the languages of Polynesia and Melanesia, I feel certain that it was first uttered in the language of Jerusalem." Professor Max Müller's Science of Religion. New Ed. p. 172.