Sometimes Par_g_anya does the work of Indra,[242] the Jupiter Pluvius of the Veda; sometimes of Vâyu, the wind, sometimes of Soma, the giver of rain. Yet with all this he is not Dyaus, nor Indra, nor the Maruts, nor Vâyu, nor Soma. He stands by himself, a separate person, a separate god, as we should say--nay, one of the oldest of all the Aryan gods. His name, par_g_anya, is derived from a root par_g_, which, like its parallel forms pars and parsh, must (I think) have had the meaning of sprinkling, irrigating, moistening. An interchange between final _g_, _s_, and sh, may, no doubt, seem unusual, but it is not without parallel in Sanskrit. We have, for instance, the roots pi_ñg_, pingere; pish, to rub; pi_s_, to adorn (as in pe_s_as, ποικἱλος, etc.); m_rig_, to rub, m_ri_sh, to rub out, to forget; m_ris_, mulcere. This very root m_rig_ forms its participle as m_ri_sh-_t_a, like ya_g_, ish_t_a, and vi_s_, vish_t_a; nay there are roots, such as druh, which optionally take a final lingual or guttural, such as dhru_t_ and dhruk.[243] We may therefore compare par_g_ in par_g_anya with such words as p_ri_shata, p_ri_shatî, speckled, drop of water;[244] also par_s_u, cloud, p_ris_ni, speckled, cloud, earth; and in Greek πρόξ(ω), περκνός, etc.[245] If derived from par_g_, to sprinkle, Par_g_anya would have meant originally "he who irrigates or gives rain."[246] When the different members of the Aryan family dispersed, they might all of them, Hindus as well as Greeks and Celts, and Teutons and Slaves, have carried that name for cloud with them. But you know that it happened very often that out of the commonwealth of their ancient language, one and the same word was preserved, as the case might be, not by all, but by only six, or five, or four, or three, or two, or even by one only of the seven principal heirs; and yet, as we know that there was no historical contact between them, after they had once parted from each other, long before the beginning of what we call history, the fact that two of the Aryan languages have preserved the same finished word with the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient that it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan thought.