It is sometimes argued that these Goddesses were not important because they did not often have temples dedicated to them, however the Indo-Europeans knew that these names meant ‘sun’ and ‘hearth fire’ and they worshipped them directly, as the sun at dawn, and as the hearth fire at home. The Indo-Europeans thought of fire as a little bit of the sun come down to earth, and they sometimes use the same name for both sun and fire. In countries that are very warm, the name is more often associated with the planet Venus, which is beautiful but doesn’t heat things up. Many cities had a communal hearth fire, which was thought of as the protector of the city and these were maintained at public expense.

In many countries this Goddess is celebrated with a festival in March, usually at the spring equinox, and usually accompanied by bonfires (Golden Bough, Volume 10). This is still celebrated today everywhere in northern countries; in English it is called Easter after her. These Goddesses are often mentioned in literature and hymns and they have specific myths which relate to their obvious power to warm and comfort. It should also be noted that the Indo-Europeans deified the Sun under several other names, for example Surya, and Sol and their related forms.

Anatolian Dialects including Hittite
As with the other Indo-Europeans deities, gender is not a fixed characteristic, and so this deity can be either male or female. In Hittite, it’s usually male. The form in Hittite, aššu means ‘lord, God’ and assara, a feminine form. Other forms of this deity in Hittite have an intrusive t between the s and the r (-s-t-r-), and so the forms Estan, Istanus, Istara are known from various Anatolian dialects (based on a reconstructed form *H_aeust(e)ro (p. 294, 301, Mallory and Adams in Oxford Introduction, and also see the form *as-t-r, given on p. 702 and 780, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov). It was once assumed that some of these forms had to have been borrowed into Indo-European languages from various languages of Mesopotamia and the Middle East, but linguists can now reconstruct cognate forms going back to a Proto-Indo-European origin.

Sanskrit
Ushas is the beautiful Goddess of dawn in the Rig Veda, and there are a number of hymns especially for her. It seems that later when the conflict developed between the priests who spoke Sanskrit and those who spoke Avestan, the Ashuras (a later form of the name) were demonized in the later Sanskrit literature (see the Pandemonium, below).

There is evidence of an alternative form with an intrusive -t- between -s- and -r-, in the name Atri (RV 2.85), which was the name of a fire demon. The Sanskrit speakers continued to worship fire and use fire in worship, as all Indo-Europeans did, but the old name was replaced with Agni, the God of fire in the Rig Vedas. Later still, Agni is effectively replaced by Ganesha, but each of these deities remains the first to receive offerings because fire was the medium through which food offerings were made to the Gods.

Avestan and the Zoroastrians
In the Zoroastrian religion the word ahura is used for a good spirit and Ahura Mazda is the highest God of the Zoroastrians. This word is a perfect cognate with the Sanskrit word ashura, and it is a general word for ‘a god, any god.’ The Avestan speakers also have a form of the word with the intrusive -t- which is Atar, the word for the sacred fire of the Zoroastrians. [fuggle26]

At the Spring Equinox, on the festival of Nov Ruz, which means ‘New Year’ the Zoroastrians keep a fire burning all night to help the Sun come up. This is one of the seven the major festivals known as Gahambars among the Zoroastrians. In many areas this spring fire festival is called Ashur and among the Zoroastrians, it is sacred to the Persian God Ahura Mazda. New Year’s Day or Ashur was a holiday in, for example, Morocco, according to the Golden Bough, which gives a description of the celebration (Vol. 10, p. 216-217). In Moslem countries generally, Ashur is now celebrated on the 10th day of Moharram, the 1st month of the Islamic calendar. As Frazer puts it: “All strictly Mohammadean feasts being pinned to the moon, slide gradually with that luminary through the whole period of the earth’s revolution about the sun,” so Ashur falls in a different month every year. In some Moslem countries it is celebrated twice, once at the spring equinox and again at the moveable Islamic New Year. In addition, the name for the annual celebration of Ashura has broadened to refer to any gathering, including a council of elders (which however excludes women in Moslem countries) in a number of languages.

Greek
The Goddess Éos is very well known in Greek, where she is often mentioned in the Iliad as the ‘rosy-fingered dawn.’ An alternative form of this name with the intrusive -t- is found in the Greek Goddess Hestia, who is a Goddess of the hearth.

Latin
In Latin, Aurora is a dawn Goddess, although the Romans retain relatively little of the ancient mythology. An alternative form of this word with an intrusive -t- is found in the Latin Goddess Vesta, a Goddess of the hearth whose temple in Rome was considered necessary for the continuation of the city. The entire month of June is devoted to her festival, the Vestalia. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov also argue that the name of Mount Vesuvius is from the same basic root form.

In ancient Rome, fire was rekindled on March 1st, according to the Golden Bough, Vol. 10, p. 138. Roman Catholic churches continue the ritual of rekindling of fire, still set to Easter, which is a moveable holiday among Christians. All lights are extinguished, and a new fire is made in church with flint and steel or a burning glass. See also Golden Bough, Vol. 10, p. 120 for more about this tradition.

Celtic
The very early Gaulish God Esus is probably a God of hearths, though little is known about him, and much of that is contradictory. He is described as a God of hearths in one early Roman text which was a pep talk by a Roman commander intended to scare the troops right before a battle. Lucius also refers to him, but seems to have confused him with another God. There are also two sculptures in Paris with the name Esus carved on them; they show a man cutting down trees with an axe.

Germanic Languages
In Old Norse, the word ass (singular) and Aesir (plural), and in Old English, Ôs (singular), are general words for ‘a god, any god.’ This word is used for the dominant group of deities in the Scandinavian pantheon though this may be because of influence from Zoroastrian sources, one of the effects of the Pandemonium (see below). The close correspondence between the Zoroastrian Gods and the Germanic Gods has long been recognized, and is referred to as the Aesir-Asura correspondence. There are other correspondences too, such as the eschatological nature of time (belief that the world will come to an end) which is seen in Zoroastrianism and in the “Gotterdammerung” in Norse mythology. These concepts are not general to the Indo-European Pagans who thought of time as being cyclical.

An alternative form of the name of this deity with intrusive -t- appears in Old English as Eostra, a Goddess mentioned by Bede, with Old Saxon Ostara and the modern English form Easter. She is associated with the warmth of spring, and the festival at the spring equinox.

Among the Germanic-speaking people, the Goddess Eostra, or Ostara was worshiped in early times with offerings and she continues to be remembered in the name of the holiday Easter (in German Ostern), and in the customs of fires on hill tops at the Spring Equinox and with giving presents of Easter eggs, which are said to have been laid by the Easter bunny.

Another form of this word gives us the common English word ‘star.’

Slavic
The name Jarilo or Iaro looks very different but it is just another cognate word for a deity associated with warmth, in this case, a God of summer, Iaro being a word for summer in the Slavic languages. Iarovit is another old reference to this deity on what is described as an image with four faces: the four faces have names which represent the four seasons of the year.

Baltic Languages
In Lithuanian Aušra means ‘dawn’ and this Goddess appears in folk tales. The Goddesses of the morning star, i.e. the planet Venus, also have related names; in Latvian Auseklis, and in Lithuanian Aušrine. These Goddesses appear in folk tales and in the dainas, sacred songs of the Lithuanians and Latvians.

Albanian
In an Albanian folk tale, a name of the moon is Arap Ushas. Here Ushas, a name of the sun, is substituted for the name of the moon as often happens, possibly because of a taboo on names of the moon. However the fact that it appears at all in this form seems to show the very conservative nature of Albanian folklore, since it is difficult to see who they could have borrowed this word from, in a form corresponding to ancient Sanskrit.

Armenian
Astghik is a native Armenian name of a star Goddess, who has characteristics of the Goddesses associated with the planet Venus. This word shows the form with the intrusive -t-.

Tibetan Buddhism
It’s not clear exactly what the relationship is, but a number of Goddesses in Tibetan Buddhism have the name Tara, based on a form having the intrusive -t- (between s and r) according to Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, see p. 702 and 780. Green Tara is the most famous and beloved of these Goddesses; others are White Tara and Red Tara. Green Tara is identified with the planet Venus, while the others are connected to other stars or planets.

The Pandemonium
Pandemonium, meaning ‘all demons,’ was an expression which Jaan Puhvel used to describe the effect when the Sanskrit speakers and Avestan speakers demonized each other’s Gods. This mutual demonization occurred when Zarathustra demonized the Gods of the Sanskrit speakers, especially Indra and the Devas, while the Sanskrit-speaking priests of the Rig Veda demonized the Gods of the Zoroastrians, especially the Ashuras. The effect was wider than just Sanskrit and Avestan: it is also noticeable in the Germanic languages where the Scandinavian pantheon comes out on the same side as the Zoroastrians. The reason and the exact timing for these effects are uncertain.

Asher Gods in Semitic Countries
It has long been noticed that there are many correspondences between the Indo-European Gods and the Gods in the Afro-Asiatic language family (usually called Semitic languages: Egyptian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic, to name a few). Especially noticeable are Goddesses like Asherah, and Isis and the Assyrian God Assur, “the supreme national God” of Assyria. Other names appear to have the intrusive -t-, such as Ishtar, Esther (who appears as a “Queen” in the Bible, i.e. the Book of Esther), Astarte and Ashtoreth. It was once thought that the Indo-European Gods must have been borrowed from the Semitic deities, but this doesn’t seem to be possible based on the evidence of historical linguistics (p. 772, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov). At present the exact relationship is unclear.

References
• Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. and Ivanov, Vjaceslav V., Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 80, 2 Vol. Set), with Werner Winter, ed., and Johanna Nichols, translator (original title Indoevropeiskii iazyk i indoevropeistsy), M. De Gruyter, Berlin & NY, 1995.
• Frazer, James, Golden Bough, MacMillan & Co. Ltd., London, 1919-1920 (12 vol. edition).
• Mallory, J. P., and Adams, Douglas Q., Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.
• Puhvel, Jaan, Analecta Indoeuropaea, (a collection of articles), published by Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft, Innsbruck, 1981.

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