The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.33

c8.33

With all the rich and often perplexing modulations of this myth, we have the common kernel of a heavenly dual pair of divinities in intimate relation with a female divinity of the heavens. The quality of helpers in need and saviours in trouble is almost unquestionably begotten of the universal notion that the divinities of morning light overcome the hostile powers of darkness. We are not quite so certain as are some excellent scholars that the heavenly pair were originally the morning and evening star, nor has any other naturalistic explanation been proposed which is finally satisfactory.¹ In any case, one of the pair, at least, to which the other has been subordinated, belongs to the events of nature in the morning, and the marriage is with the "Sun-Maiden" (Sūryā, Saulē); or the "Sun Maiden" is imagined to be their sister (Helena), or even their mother (Saranyū).² The myth of which I have given here the merest outline flits about considerably among superficially discrepant notions. It is overlaid with many secondary fancies of the poet and story-teller. No sane scholar will now, as was once the habit, try to make each of the silly "stunts" which the Vedic hymns ascribe to the Açvins part of the organic matter contained in the myth. They are mostly later fancy. And even after deducting the crudities of past interpreters we must not quarrel with certain mental reservations as to this and that detail. But in the last outcome no rational historian or antiquarian will ignore such parallels as shows the story of the two "Sons of Heaven" with the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Letts,¹ or be so abstemious as to refrain from looking for reasonable motives for the creation of a myth that has so marked a physiognomy.