ABSTRACT
Interspersed with genealogical information, Hesiod’s Succession Myth presents the patriline Ouranos-Cronus-Zeus; most classicists believe the story was borrowed from West Asia. But Zeus derives from IE *Dyēus which, like Ouranos, means ‘Sky/Heaven’, and (to follow Dumézil) the cognate deity Dyu or Dyaus is incarnated in Bhīṣma, the classificatory paternal grandfather of Arjuna.
My first rapprochement links Bhīṣma’s stepmother’s father, Vasu Uparicara, with Ouranos; moreover, the birth of Vasu’s daughter Satyavatī parallels that of Ouranos’ daughter Aphrodite. But in other respects, Ouranos is paralleled by Grandfather Bhīṣma: each loses kingship and virility simultaneously, and each incurs the hostility of a female. Third, Bhīṣma resembles Zeus: each is the youngest in a set of siblings of whom the others, at birth, are drowned or swallowed by a parent; each supports the Losers in the Great War; and at some point, each is held off the earth (notably by arrows or flowers). Arjuna’s father Pāṇḍu resembles Cronus in that each violently interrupts a copulating couple, and the sons resemble each other as regards modes of fighting and multiple sexual unions. The numerous genealogically interlinked rapprochements imply an IE proto-narrative, probably extending over five generations like the Sanskrit, rather than three, like the Greek.
