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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s6: § 6. The Açvins

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s6

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§ 6. The Açvins

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The Açvins are, next to Indra, Agni, and Soma, the gods most frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, where they claim more than fifty hymns and are mentioned over 400 times. The most constant feature is their duplicate nature: they are compared to eyes, hands, feet, wings, and animals which go in pairs. They are bright, young, yet ancient, many-formed, beautiful, agile, strong, red, and they possess profound wisdom and power. Alone of gods are they described as having ruddy paths or golden paths. The epithet *dasra*, wondrous, is almost exclusively theirs, and they are called the Nāsatyas, and once the encompassing Nāsatya is mentioned alone. The sense of the epithet, which in the singular Nāoṅhaithya is the name of a demon in the Avesta, is unknown: its great age is proved by its occurrence among the names of the gods of the Mitanni; naturally the Indian mind explained it as not untrue (*na-asatya*), but the value of such an etymology is obviously nil.¹

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¹ Cuny (*Rev. ét. anc.* 1909, p. 280) argues that the etymology is strengthened by the mention of the gods in the treaty, but at most this would only prove the early existence of this conception. Brunnhofer (*Vom Aral bis zur Gaṅgā*, p. 99) suggests *nas*, ‘save’, as in Gothic *nasyan*. Connexion with *nāsa*, ‘nose’, is implausible, though epic (Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 169).

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The Açvins are peculiarly connected with honey: they have a skin of honey, the birds of their cars are full of honey; they bestrew the sacrifice and the worshipper with a honey whip, their car is honey hued and honey bearing. They are honey-handed and give the bee its honey. In comparison they are less vitally connected with Soma, though they are said to drink it at each pressing, and in some circles they were probably not at first reckoned among the Soma-drinking gods, though for this² the proof is rather inadequate.

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² Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 241 ff.; iii. 393, n. 5. They are more prominent in RV. v and vii than in vi.

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The chariot of the Açvins has curious qualities: it is not merely golden in all its parts, but it is three-wheeled, has three fellies, and all its parts triple. One of its wheels is said to have come off when the Açvins went to the wedding of the maiden Sūryā, and it is possible that the three wheels are connected with the fact that, unlike other gods, the Açvins in their chariot bear with them Sūryā, for whom, therefore, there must be provided a third seat. Possibly too the triplication, of which much appears in the myths of the Açvins, owes its being to this simple cause, though it has been traced to the three seasons of the year. The steeds which draw their car are sometimes horses—there is no trace of the Açvins as horsemen—but more often birds, swans or eagles, occasionally buffaloes, and even a single ass: in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa³ they are said to have won a race at the wedding of Soma and Sūryā with a car drawn by asses. Their chariot in a single day traverses heaven and earth, a power attributed also to the chariots of the Dawn and the sun: it goes round the sun, and the epithet going round (*parijman*) is often given to their car or them, as also to Vāta, Agni, and Sūrya.

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³ iv. 7–9; cf. KB. xviii. 1; JB. i. 213 (where Uṣas herself shares in the race, like Atalanta); Oertel, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 174; possibly an echo of a marriage competition custom; see below.

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The presence of the Açvins is ubiquitous: they are declared to be in the heaven, the air, in plants, houses, the mountain top, above and below. The time of their appearance, however, is *par excellence* the early dawn, when they waken Uṣas, or in their car follow after Uṣas, who is born at the yoking of their car. The appearing of the Açvins, the kindling of the fire of the sacrifice, the break of dawn, and the sunrise are even treated as simultaneous, but the normal place of the Açvins is clearly after the dawn and before the sunrise. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa¹ the Açvins, Uṣas, and Agni are stated to be the gods of dawn: they also receive in the ritual red-white animals in accordance with their own colour. On the other hand, they have both in the Rigveda and elsewhere offerings at midday and evening as well as at dawn, which, however, is their place *par excellence*, as they are the recipients of the morning litany, Prātaranuvāka, for which the appropriate time is the period when the dawn has arisen. Their special connexion with the light is shown by the fact that they drive away the darkness and put to flight the evil spirits.

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¹ ii. 15.

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The Açvins have many parents: they are children of Dyaus, but also the ocean is their mother; they are the sons of Vivasvant and Saraṇyū, daughter of Tvaṣṭṛ, and they are the parents of Pūṣan and have the Dawn, as it seems, for their sister. But their more important relationship is with the maiden called Sūryā or the daughter of Sūrya. She is their wife and mounts their car, and she bears the name Açvinī as the outcome of this relationship. But Sūryā is also the wife of Soma, in which case the Açvins appear as groomsmen who seek the bride for the husband.² In this connexion they are at the marriage of mortals invoked to conduct the bride home to her husband on their chariot. Their connexion with marriage appears also in their being invoked with other deities to make the union fruitful. With this their feats agree: they make the barren cow to give milk, and they bestow a child on the wife of the eunuch. They bring lovers together and they give an old maid a husband.

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² *RV.* x. 85. 9, 26.

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The power of the Açvins as the helpers in time of trouble is extraordinarily often extolled: no other gods are so steadfastly helpful as they are. They differ in essential features from Indra, who is also a present aid to his devotees. Indra is the warrior god who helps his followers in battle and who brings them in safety across the streams as they advance to attack their enemy. The Açvins appear not to do combat, but to save those who are in distress of any kind. They are the gods who are connected with the ocean, and they rescue from it in ship or ships. Bhujyu, son of Tugra, was alone in the midst of the ocean in the darkness, or was clinging to a plank in the midst of the waves: the Açvins heard his supplications and rescued him in a ship of a hundred oars, with four ships, with a winged boat, with three flying cars with a hundred feet and six horses, with their headlong flying steeds, or with their chariot swift as thought. They are the physicians of the gods, and guardians and granters of immortality and freedom from disease. The old and decrepit Cyavāna they released from his decrepitude and made him young again, and desirable to his wife. In the Çatapatha and Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇas¹ the tale is told at full length, and the centre of it is the magic water, in which Cyavana bathes and so recovers youth and beauty, a motive of world-wide fame. The same story seems to have been told of a certain Kali referred to in the Rigveda. To the young Vimada they brought as a wife Kamadyū, who seems to have been the wife of Purumitra: apparently in so doing they imitated the action of Aphrodite to Helen. Viṣṇāpū, like a lost animal, they found and restored to his father Viçvaka, their worshipper. They revived and saved Rebha who had been stabbed, bound, and cast into the waters, and abandoned as dead for ten nights and nine days.² They brought Vandana out of a pit in which he lay as dead. From a burning pit they rescued Atri Saptavadhri, and placed him in a cool place, a feat once attributed to Agni, who may have been deemed to have acted through the Açvins. A quail was saved by them from the jaws of a wolf. At the prayer of a she-wolf they restored the sight of Ṛjrāçva who had slain for her to eat a hundred and one sheep. They cured Parāvṛj of his blindness and his lameness. To Viçpalā—mare or maiden—whose limb was cut off in battle like the wing of a bird, they give an iron limb. Pedu received from them a strong steed dragon-slaying, and Kakṣīvant abundant blessings including the making to flow for him of a hundred jars of honey or wine from a strong horse's head. Akin to this story is the legend that they placed on Dadhyañc, son of Atharvan, a horse's head, which then told them of the place of the mead of Tvaṣṭṛ.

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¹ ÇB. iv. 1. 5; Hopkins, *JAOS.* xxvi. 45 ff.; JB. iii. 120-8; V. Henry (*Mythes naturalistes*, p. 12) sees in him the setting sun and compares Sisyphos. The RV. has Cyavāna. Cf. Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 244 f.

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² On this mode of reckoning cf. Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 360 ff. Conceivably there is here a relic of a nine-day week, but the notion is isolated. Cf. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 666. Max Müller (*Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth.* ii. 160) prefers the twelve nights of the winter solstice, and suggests a Lettish parallel.

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This is a formidable list of achievements and many more are given by name of the recipients in the Rigveda. For one and all explanations based on natural phenomena have been found:³ thus the blind man is healed when the sun is released from the darkness—whether of winter, as Max Müller holds, or the arctic, as Tilak, or the rains, as A. C. Das, and it may be that, in many of the incidents, there is more than the mere record of remarkable rescues of real men from misfortunes. There is not the slightest doubt that such rescues might give rise to traditions of the sort recorded in the hymns, but the explanation is one which cannot be given with certainty in all cases: the giving of an iron limb to a horse is a feat which no modern could accomplish, and, while it might be ascribed to the Açvins in recognition of their great powers, still it is rather doubtful if this is enough to explain the incident, though the suggestion that Viçpalā is the first quarter of the new moon is no more plausible. The rescue of the quail from the mouth of a wolf and the slaying of 101 sheep by Ṛjrāçva are episodes also which seem mythical. But to recognize that there may be a mythical foundation to a story and to discover that foundation, when the episode is given in the form of a mere reference in a few words in the Rigveda, are totally different things, and it would be contrary to sound method to seek to penetrate the exact force of these legends: it is not difficult to interpret them, but the fatal objection to such attempts is that several ways of interpretation are always open, and that we have no standard of criticism by which to judge of the comparative merits of the different views.

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³ Various views are suggested by Myriantheus, *Die Açvins* (Munich, 1876), and since him many more have been put forward. Cf. Tilak, *Orion*, pp. 363 ff.; Max Müller, *Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth.* ii. 150 ff.; Baunack, *ZDMG.* l. 263 ff.; von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 441 ff.; A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, i. 530 ff.

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It is a different matter with the question of the essential nature of the two gods: while that is obscure, some effort to elucidate it is made requisite by the abundance of the material. In the first place, however, it is important to note that in part at least the Indo-European character of the deities is beyond all reasonable doubt:¹ there is a very famous Lettish myth which shows us the two sons—or one son—of a god who are helpers in time of need and who come riding on their steeds to woo the daughter of the sun for themselves or for the moon, just as in the Rigveda the Açvins are both wooers of the sun-maiden for themselves and also for Soma, the moon. Here the god or gods are also described as the morning star. In the Greek myth of the Dioskouroi and their relation to Helene we have a clear variant of the legend, and the Dioskouroi are of course *par excellence* the saviours of men, especially at sea.² Moreover, the evidence of Boghaz-Köi, as we have seen, proves the early existence of the Nāsatyas,³ and makes it most probable that the Avesta knew them; before the reform of Zoroaster the Nāoṅhaithya must have been great gods. This fact explains in great measure the obscurity of the mythic conception of the gods; they have in the course of transmission attained greater personality, and therefore the natural substratum of the gods is hard to recognize.

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¹ Cf. the prayer of Alkaios in eleven-syllable metre as in Vedic, E. Leumann, *Buddha und Mahāvīra*, pp. 8 f.; Mannhardt, *Zeitschrift für Ethnologie*, vii. 312 ff. *Contra*, Farnell, *Greek Hero Cults*, pp. 175 ff.

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² Cf. J. Rendel Harris, *Essays and Studies presented to W. Ridgeway*, pp. 549–57.

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³ Germanic and Celtic parallels are alleged in Tacitus, *Germ.* 43; Timaios in Diod. iv. 56. Cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 321 ff. More distantly von Schroeder (*Arische Religion*, ii. 404 ff.) compares the sacred marriage of Zeus and Here, Jupiter and Juno, &c.

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The difficulty was fully known in the earliest period of Vedic interpretation: Yāska⁴ gives as alternative views sky and earth, which is the view of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁵ or day and night, or sun and moon, or two kings, performers of holy deeds. The last view is naturally that of Geldner,⁶ who denies their connexion with the Dioskouroi and asserts that they are merely Indian saints who save in time of trouble, a view which is clearly based on a false effort to dissociate Indian from Indo-European mythology. The view that the gods are sun and moon has the support of Ludwig,¹ Hillebrandt,² and Hardy,³ but nothing else whatever can be said for it. The explanations as day and night and sky and earth have equally feeble support, and more plausibility attaches to the suggestion, perhaps made by Yāska and adopted by Goldstücker, that the twilights are meant, the half-dark, half-light period before dawn, and this would account for the fact that one only is said to be a son of Dyaus. The more probable alternative to this view is that of Mannhardt⁴ and Oldenberg,⁵ who, on the strength in part of the mention of the morning star and the evening star in the account of the Lettish god or gods, take the two gods to be the morning and the evening star respectively. The difficulty of this conception is, of course, the fact that the gods are so essentially twin, and the view, if adopted, necessitates the supposition that this fact had gradually been obscured. There are indeed some traces of their separate character in the Rigveda⁶ itself: thus they are called ‘separately born’ and ‘born here and there’, and Yāska preserves a verse⁷ of which he says: ‘One is called the son of night, the other the son of dawn.’ This is, it must be admitted, far from convincing evidence of a real recollection of the twin character of the stars, but the suggestion of Weber,⁸ that they are to be taken as the twin stars of Gemini, is open to the quite fatal objection that there is nothing but the twin nature to commend it. Nor is the loss of the primitive connexion at all impossible, with the growing importance of the morning as the time of sacrifice.⁹

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⁴ *Nir.* xii. 1.

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⁵ iv. 1. 5. 16.

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⁶ *Ved. Stud.* ii. 31.

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¹ *Rigveda*, iii. 34.

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² *Ved. Myth.* iii. 379–96.

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³ *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, pp. 47–9.

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⁴ *Loc. cit.*

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⁵ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 209–15.

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⁶ v. 73. 4; i. 181. 4.

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⁷ *Nir.* xii. 2.

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⁸ *Rājasūya*, p. 100.

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⁹ Wide (*Lak. Kulte*, p. 316) denies the star character of the Dioskouroi, and Farnell (*Greece and Babylon*, pp. 112, 113) follows him. But see von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 445 ff.; Fox, *Greek and Roman Myth.*, pp. 246 f.; Cook, *Zeus*, i. 760 ff.; Güntert, pp. 253 ff.

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A very different conception of the nature of the twins is suggested by Harris,¹⁰ whose collections of ethnic materials reveals the idea that of pairs of twins one is often held to have a divine origin, without there being any myth of nature involved. Whatever the value of the theory for other cases, it seems to have no special plausibility for Indian religion,¹¹ in which the natural background is clear, as it is in the Lettish myths, whose importance seems unduly to be depreciated by failure to realize the remarkable character of the parallels with the Indian legends.

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¹⁰ *The Cult of the Heavenly Twins* (1906) and *Boanerges* (1913).

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¹¹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 211, n. 1, suggests that the native legend may have borrowed aspects from the magic powers ascribed by many peoples to twins as uncanny.

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Other questions are suggested by the nature of the steeds of the Açvins. The conjecture that they were once not merely regarded as borne on chariots with horses, but were conceived as horses, can be supported by analogy: thus the sun is certainly called a horse, and the mother of the Açvins is, according to an old, if not Rigvedic, tradition, called a mare. Beyond this we cannot go. The fact that the chariots are also borne by birds is of some interest: are we to see in this fact, as suggested in another connexion of the Dioskouroi by S. Reinach,¹ a relic of a time when the Açvins were regarded themselves as birds, and in special swans? It is clearly impossible to determine this with any security: there is no trace of such a view in the Vedic literature, and to conjecture it into that literature is, therefore, illegitimate, since it is not necessary thus to explain the fact that the chariot of the gods is borne by birds.

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¹ *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, ii. 42–57. Cf. the bird form assumed by the Hotṛ when reciting the morning litany at the Atirātra, ĀÇS. vi. 5. 4.

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The connexion of the gods with Sūryā presents difficulties in that it is not at all clear what Sūryā represents: Mannhardt² suggests for her the Dawn, E. H. Meyer³ the goddess of the clouds, while Oldenberg⁴ thinks that Sūryā means literally the sun-maiden as the feminine form of the sun, the alternative expression ‘daughter of the sun’ being invented to remove the apparent inconsistency of the usage. It is difficult to feel any certainty as to this identification: the fact that Soma is said to marry the maiden does increase the probability that she is the sun, but the further fact that Pūṣan also marries her makes the idea less likely. Ingenuity might also connect the legend of the victory of the Açvins in a chariot race at the wedding of Sūryā to Soma as a trace of an older version, in which the Açvins were able to win her hand by showing their superior swiftness to the other wooers in a chariot race, and this idea would carry us into the sphere of conceptions which are seen in the Indian Svayaṁvara, but common sense forbids us to combine priestly speculations in this manner.⁵

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² *Op. cit.*, p. 295; so AB. iv. 7 f.

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³ *Indog. Myth.* ii. 673.

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⁴ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 213; von Schroeder (*op. cit.* ii. 414, n. 3) regards her as the young sun, who is renewed yearly and celebrates a fresh marriage.

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⁵ The legend of Pelops has, it is well known, of late led to the most remarkable speculations of annual victims, determined as the result of races, by the Cambridge school of religion; see *Themis*, pp. 220 ff. Usener (*Götternamen*, pp. 228, 229) compares the wedding of Soma and Sūryā to that of Zeus and Here; see also von Schroeder, *op. cit.* ii. 392 ff. Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* ii. 41 f.) strongly supports Sūryā as Uṣas. The apparent polyandry of Sūryā in myth, not the wedding hymn, is clearly not to be taken as a reflex of human usage despite von Schroeder (*op. cit.* ii. 402); cf. the connexion of the morning and evening stars with the twilights, Gray, *Myth. of All Races*, iii. 325. Different ideas may easily lie at the bottom of the myths.

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