BOOK Comple mentary deities. The dualism of Nature. Functions of the Asvins. exultation of Polyphemôs when he has drunk the wine given to him. by Odysseus. SECTION III.-CORRELATIVE DEITIES. A very slight acquaintance with the language of the Vedic hymns will suffice to show that the idea of any one deity rarely failed to suggest to the mind of the worshipper the idea of another god, whose attributes answered to, or were contrasted with, his own. The thought of Dyaus, the sky, was bound up with that of Prithivi, the earth, who was his bride; and their very names, blended into one word Dyava-prithivi, denoted their inseparable union. The idea of Varuna, the veiling heaven, brought up that of Mitra, the lightillumined sky. The connexion was forced upon them by the phenomena of the outward world. We cannot sever in our minds the thought of day from that of night, of morning from evening, of light from darkness; and "this palpable dualism of nature" has left its most marked impression on the mythology of the Veda. The dawn and the gloaming, the summer and the winter may, it is obvious, be described as twins or as sisters, standing side by side or dwelling in the same house. Thus, not only are Dyava-prithivî, heaven and earth, described as twins, but Indra and Agni are spoken of in the dual as the two Indras, Indragni, not only ushasanakta, the dawn and the night, but ushasau, the two dawns, and the two Varuņas. Like Indragni again, the twin Asvins, or horsemen, are called Vritrahana, destroyers of Vritra.3 These Asvins have been made the subject of a perhaps unnecessarily lengthened controversy. Their features are not very definite, but in the oldest hymns they are worshipped with a peculiar reverence, as able not merely to heal sicknesses but to restore the aged to youth. Their relations to each other and to their worshippers are placed in a clearer light by a reference to Greek mythical phraseology. Speaking of these beings, the commentator Yaska says that their sphere is the heaven, and remarks that some regard them as heaven and earth, as day and night, or as sun and moon, while they who anticipated the method of Euêmeros affirmed that they were 1 Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 486. 2 Ib. 487, 495. 3 This dualism seems to reach its acme in the phrase which speaks of Osiris as "the Lion of the double lions." "These two lions, two brothers, the two lion-gods, are two solar phases, as diurnal and nocturnal, Har and Let, Shu and Tafnut; and as there is but one solar orb, so he is the Lion of the double lions.'"-Brown, The Unicorn, 80. THE TWIN DEITIES. II. 207 two deified kings. But when he adds that their time is after mid- CHAP. night, whilst the break of day is yet delayed, all room for doubt seems taken away. The two Ahans, or Dawns, Day and Night, are born, it is said, when the Asvins yoke their horses to their car. The twins are born "when the Night leaves her sister, the Dawn, when the dark one gives way to the bright." After them comes Ushas, the Greek Eôs, who is followed first by Sûryâ, a feminine, or sister of Sûrya, the sun, then by Vrishakapayi, then by Saranyû," and lastly by Savitar. They are ihehajâte, born here and there, either as appearing in the East and in the West, or as springing up on the earth and in the air; and this epithet may explain the alternate manifestations of the Dioskouroi, who stand to Helen in the same relation which the Asvins bear to Saramâ or Ushas. of the The Asvins are thus the conquerors of darkness, the lords of Parentage light ever youthful, swift as thought, and possessed, like Indra, Asvins. Agni, and Phoibos, of a profound wisdom. If the poet needs to give them a father, he must assign them a parent in the clear heaven, or say that they are the children of Prajâpati, Tvashtar, or Savitar, names for the Creator. Their mother must be the East or West, from which they spring, regarded not as a place, but as the being who imparts to them their mysterious life. As ushering in the healthful light of the sun, they are, like Asklepios and his children, healers and physicians, and their power of restoring the aged to youth reappears in Medeia, the daughter of the Sun. They are adored at morning and evening tide as Rudrau, the terrible lords of wealth, and are thus identified or connected with another deity who became of supreme importance in the later Hindu mythology. rêtes and Telchines, like Proteus, Thetis, and the they have the power of changing their shape at will. Like the Kouother fish-gods, "The twin pair adopt various forms; one of them shines brightly, the other is black; twin sisters are they, the one black, the other white," phrases which bring before us the rivalry not only of the Dioskouroi, but of the Theban Eteokles and Polyneikes, and perhaps the black and white eagles in the Agamemnon of Eschylos. Like Phoibos the healer, and like Asklepios and his sons Podaleirios and Machâôn, the Asvins are "physicians conversant with all medicaments." In the Norse tale of Dapplegrim we have the Asvins in their original form as horses; for when the lad, who, having won on 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 314. 2 Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 498. 3 lb. 492. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. H. H. Wilson, R. V. S. iii. 97. II. BOOK his wonderful steed the victories of Indra, Heraklês, and Bellerophôn, is told that he must produce its match or die, complains to the horse that the task is not easy, "for your match is not to be found in the wide world," the steed replies that he has a match, although it is hard to get at him, for he abides in Hell. The Twins. In Indra and in Agni, Mitra and Varuṇa, and in the Asvins we have three sets of twins, Yaman, Gemini, each being spoken of as Yama or Yami, the twin brother or the twin sister. These Yaman are the children of Vivasvat, who is wedded both to the morning and to the evening; and their sister, the night, prays her brother to become her husband. In this Yama we have probably the Hindu god of the dead, whose two dogs with four eyes and wide nostrils go about among men as his messengers. As both are children of Vivasvat, Professor Max Müller thinks it unnecessary to assume that two Vivasvats were each the father of Yama. The twin who represented the evening would naturally become the lord or judge or guide of the departed. As from the East came all life, so in the West lay the land of the dead, the Elysian fields, the region of Sutala; and thither the sun hastens as he sinks down from the heights of heaven. Thus "Yama is said to have crossed the rapid waters, to have shown the way to many, to have first known the path on which our fathers crossed over";1 and the gulf is not wide which separates the functions of the Psychopompos from those of Hades. Like Varuna, Yama has his nooses, and he sends a bird as a token to those who are about to die. But although a darker side is not wanting to his character, Yama remains in the Veda chiefly the god of the blessed in the paradise where he dwells with Varuņa. Yama reappears in the Yima of the Avesta, his father Vivasvat being reproduced as Vivanghvat; and in Yima we have an embodiment of the Hesiodic golden age free from heat and cold, from sickness and death, an image of the happy region to which Krishna consigns his conquered enemy. In a grotesque myth of the later Yamen, the death of men in youth as well as in old age is accounted for by a mistake made by the herald of Yamen after the latter had been restored to life by Siva who had put him to death. While Yamen lay dead, mankind multiplied so that the earth could scarcely contain them. Yamen on returning to life sent his herald to summon at once all the old men, for none others had ever been called away before. The herald, getting drunk, proclaimed instead that hence 1 Max Müller, Lectures, second series, 515; Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. 575. This 2 Max Müller, Lectures, second series, 522. EROS AND ANTEROS. 209 forth all leaves, fruits, and flowers, should fall to the ground, and CHAP. thus men of all ages began to yield to the power of death. II. The connexion of Soma with Uma has been already noticed. Soma and Another couplet of deities is found in Soma and Sûryâ, the daughter Sûryâ. of Surya the Sun; and here the twin Asvins stand by the side of Soma as the friends of the bridegroom. A later version, which says. that, although Savitar had destined his daughter Sûryâ to be the wife of Soma, she was nevertheless won by the Asvins,' repeats the story of Pelops and Hippodameia, which represents the maiden as becoming the prize of the hero who can overtake her in a foot race. So again Arjuna, the Argennos of the myth of Agamemnon, stands to Krishna, who is represented as declaring him to be his own half, in that dual relation which links Phaëthôn with Helios, Patroklos with Achilleus, Theseus with Peirithoös, Telemachos with Odysseus, and which is seen again in the stories of Pelias and Neleus, Romulus and Remus, Prometheus and Epimetheus, Hengest and Horsa, and in the Teutonic tales of the Two Brothers and of the Faithful John who guards his prince as carefully as the Luxman of Hindu folk-lore guards Rama. This dualism we find again in the Hellenic Eros and Anteros, and still more plainly in the myth of Hermaphroditos. The tale which describes Arjuna as receiving from Mahâdeva the Pasupata (or sceptre which guides the cows) under a strict charge not to use it rashly as it might destroy the whole world, carries us to the ill-omened gifts which brought destruction to Phaëthôn and Patroklos. In the same way Rama is linked with his brother Laxmana, and one myth which regards Rama as a mortal hero speaks of both as wounded and rendered senseless by a cloud of serpents transformed into arrows. SECTION IV.-THE DAWN. wanderer. To the poets of all ages and countries the phenomena of morning The lonely and evening are full of pathos and sadness. The course of the day itself is but brief, and the career of the bright being who bears it across the heaven may be little more than a series of struggles with the vapours which strive to dim his splendours. All his life long he must toil for the benefit of the mean thing called man, and look 1 Muir, Contributions to a Knowledge of Vedic Theogony, 3. This story is after all only a coun terpart of the legends of Echo and Selene, whose part is here played by the nymph of the well, Salmakis. Like Endymion and Narkissos, the youth rejects her love, until the nymph lays Adonis. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 196, 225. Ib. 384. The modern version of the story has been already given, book i. ch. viii. P BOOK Developement of the myth. on clear streams and luscious fruits without daring to quench his thirst or appease his hunger. He may be armed with invincible weapons; he may be the conqueror of all his enemies: but the doom is upon him; he must die in the flower of his age. Still there is for him a grief yet more bitter than this. Throughout almost the whole of his long journey he must go alone. The beautiful being who cheered him when his heart beat high and his limbs were fresh was parted from him almost as soon as he had found her, and there remains of her grace and loveliness only a consoling memory. He has hard toils before him, and there are grievous perils to be encountered. Still for him, as for the sons of men, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, But although he cannot go back to the bright land where he saw his Under this thin disguise we see at once the story of Odysseus and |