The Arctic Home in the Vedas c13.17

c13.17

But the most important of the Ashvins' legends, for our purpose, is the story of Atri Saptavadhri. He is described as having been thrown into a burning abyss and extricated from this perilous position by the Ashvins, who are also said to have delivered him from darkness (tamasaḥ) in VI, 50, 10. In I, 117, 24, the Ashvins are represented as giving a son called Hiraṇya-hasta, or the Gold-hand, to Vadhrimatī or the wife of a eunuch; while in V, 78, a hymn, whose seer is Saptavadhri himself, the latter is represented as being shut up in a wooden case, from which he was delivered by the Ashvins. Upon this Prof. Max Muller observes, “If this tree or this wooden case is meant for the night, then, by being kept shut up in it, he (Saptavadhri) was separated from his wife, he was to her like a Vadhri (eunuch), and in the morning only when delivered by the Ashvins he became once more the husband of the dawn.” But the learned Professor is at a loss to explain why Atri, in his character of the nocturnal sun, should be called not only a Vadhri but Saptavadhri, or a seven-eunuch. Vadhri, as a feminine word, denotes a leathern strap, and, as pointed out by Prof. Max Muller, Sāyaṇa is of opinion that the word can be used also in the masculine gender (X, 102, 12). The word Saptavadhri may, therefore, denote the sun caught in a net of seven leather straps. But the different incidents in the legend clearly point out that a seven-eunuch, and not a person caught in seven leather straps, is meant by the epithet Saptavadhri as applied to Atri in this legend.