[518] In Italian, _attonito_ (or, properly speaking, struck by thunder) is the same as "who is much surprised").
[519] _Dionys._ xix 58.
[520] Cfr. Martigny, _Dictionnaire des Antiquites Chretiennes_, s. v.
_veau._
[521] In _Phaedrus_, as we have already observed, the ox and the a.s.s are yoked together.
[522] _Ippolitos_, _os fone Dis_, 1200-1229.
[523] Cfr. the chapter relating to the a.s.s.
[524] Ovidius, _Fasti_, v. 615.
[525] _Ib._ v. 620.
CHAPTER II.
THE HORSE.
SUMMARY.
The horse, favourite animal of the solar hero.--Attributes of the Vedic solar hero.--Animals which draw the Vedic G.o.ds.--The Acvinau sons of a mare.--The mule, the a.s.s, and the horse in relation to each other.--The hero"s horse, prior to being n.o.ble and handsome, is vile and ill-favoured; proofs.--The teeth of the horse.--The figs that make tails grow.--The excrement of the horse.--Three colours of the heroic horse.--Pluto"s horses abhor the light.--Pegasos an imperfect horse.--The black horse generally demoniacal.--The hippomanes.--The monster that makes horses perspire and grow lean; the fire in stables.--To dream of black horses.--The horse of the third brother is small, humpbacked, and lame.--The hero transforms himself into a horse.--The grey horse differs from the black one.--The red horse frees the hero.--The three steps, the three races, the three leaps, the three castles, the three days, the three brothers, and the three horses correspond to each other.--Two hors.e.m.e.n change the hero"s bad horse into a heroic steed.--The horse"s ears; the hero in the horse"s ears.--The horse"s head blesses the good maiden, and devours the wicked one.--The black horseman, the white horseman, and the red one.--The horse-monster that devastates the field surprised by the hero, and destroyed by fire, in the _?igvedas_.--The Dioscuri washing the sweat off their horses.--Salt on the horse"s back.--The hero-horse covered by the waters.--The Acvinau and Agnis give a good horse to the hero who has a bad one.--The three steps of Vish?us are made by the horses of Indras.--Vish?us as horse.--Indras and the Acvinau find the bride on horseback.--Ramas as horse.--Dadhyanc and his ambrosial horse"s head, which discomfits the hostile monsters.--The bones of the horse.--The exchange of heads.--The two brother horses Pegasos and Chrusaor in opposition to one another.--Castor and Pollux.--Discussion upon the nature of the Acvinau.--The two brothers at discord; Sundas and Upasundas.--Nakulas and Vasudevas.--Ramas and Lakshma?as.--The brothers who resemble each other; Balin and Sugrivas; the brother betrays his brother and steals his wife.--Kerecacpa and Urvaksha.--Piran and Pilsem.--The sky a mountain of stone; heroes, heroines, and horses of stone.--The brother seducer in the _Tuti-Name_.--Sunlight and moonlight, two brothers.--The minister"s son and the king"s son.--Horse and cat.--The two brothers on a journey; one becomes a king, the other spits gold; the candle of one of the two brothers lights of its own accord, and he therefore obtains the kingdom; the other brother"s treasure.--Digression concerning the interpretation of the myth.--Agamedes and Trophonios; Piedmontese story of the skilful thief.--The two brothers who resemble each other; mistaken one for the other by the wife of one of them; the brother sleeps with his sister-in-law without touching her; the legend of the pilgrim who comes from Rome; the head fastened on again.--The horse led away out of h.e.l.l.--The solar horse destined for sacrifice carried off by Kapilas; that is, the solar horse escapes, like the solar bull, from the sacrifice.--The stallion destined for the sacrifice touched, and the horse"s fat smelted by Kaucalya as an augury of fruitfulness.--The horse"s head as the mouth of h.e.l.l.--The robber of the horse and of the treasure.--The horns of the stag, the horns or mane of the horse, and the hair of the hero, which catch and fasten themselves to the trees of the forest.--The thief now protects thieves, and now protects men from thieves.--The Miles gloriosus; hero, horse, and tree, united together, discomfit the enemies.--The heroic horse.--The tail of Indras"s horse, and the Hindoo war-horse.--The war-horses of Rustem, of Alexander, of Bellerophon, and of Caesar; the winged horse.--The horse goes through water and fire.--The horse and the apple.--The chains of the heroic horse, and the difficulty of riding him.--The horse that speaks; the horse-spy.--The chariot that speaks.--The solar horse bound that it may not come back again.--The hero who flees in the shape of a horse, and the horse sold with the bridle; transformations of the horse.--The sun without a horse and without a bridle.--The horses of the sun, arrested or wounded, precipitate the solar hero into the waters.--The eternal hunter.--Etacas, Phaethon, Hippolytos.--The horse that delivers the hero.--The neighing of Indras"s horse; the horse of Darius which neighs at the sight of the sun on account of the smell of a mare.--Number of the solar horses.--The hero born of a mare.--The mare"s egg.--The hare born of a mare devours the mare.--Spanish mares made pregnant by the wind.--Horses sons of the wind.--The hero Acvatthaman neighs immediately after birth.--The horses that weep; mythical signification of these tears.--Vedic riddle and play of words upon the letter _r_, and the root _varsh_ relative to the horse.--The foam from the horse"s mouth destroys enemies and cures the cough.--The Acvinau, the Dioscuri, Asklepios and his two sons as physicians.--Caballus.--Ambrosia from the hoof of the Vedic horse.--Hippokrene; the horse"s hoof in relation with water.--Exchanges between moon and sun and between bull and horse.--Horses sacred to the G.o.ds and to saints.--Holy hors.e.m.e.n who help the heroes _mercede pacta_.
The myth of the horse is perhaps not so rich in legends as that of the bull and the cow, but certainly no less interesting. As the horseman is the finest type of the hero, so the horse which carries him is in mythology the n.o.blest of animals.
We have already observed that the best of the three brothers, the third, the victorious one, the morning sun, is, in tradition, distinguished from the other brothers by his swiftness; and that the morning dawn or aurora, which is the third sister, the good one, the best of the three sisters, is she who wins the race. It is, therefore, natural that the favourite animal of the hero should be his horse. The two Hindoo Dioscuri, that is, the Acvinau, the two hors.e.m.e.n, derive their name from the acvas or horse, as being the swift one;[526] and they are very probably identical with the two fair-haired, amiable, splendid, and ardent coursers of Indras, of Savitar (the sun), and proper and worthy to bear heroes,[527] who yoke themselves at a word,[528] are maned, adapted to make fruitful, full of life,[529] having eyes like the sun,[530] made by the ?ibhavas,[531] who, as they made the cow out of a cow, also made a horse out of the horse,[532] black, with white feet, drawing the chariot with the golden yoke, revealing the beings;[533] the two rapid ones; the two most rapid ones;[534] plunging into the inebriating drink before Indras yokes them;[535] beautiful, by means of which the chariot of the Acvinau is as swift as thought;[536] who carry Indras, as every day they carry the sun;[537] are the two rays of the sun;[538] who neigh, dropping ambrosia;[539] the very pure horses of the bull Indras, inebriated, who illumine the sky,[540] with manes the colour of a peac.o.c.k,[541] bridled sixty times (properly six times twice five);[542] beneficent, winged, indefatigable, resolute destroyers (of the enemies).[543] The _aitareya Brahmanam_, when giving the characteristics of the race of each G.o.d, whilst it tells us that Agnis, at the marriage of Somas and Surya, is drawn by mules, and the aurora by red cows (or bulls), teaches us that Indras is drawn by horses, and the Acvinau by a.s.ses; the Acvinau carried off the prize.[544] In the _Mahabharatam_,[545] we find another important circ.u.mstance, _i.e._, the Acvinau represented as sons of a mare, or of Tvashtri, wife of the sun Savitar, who took the form of a mare. Therefore we have here the sons of the mare, who may be horses or mules, according as the mare united herself with a horse or with an a.s.s. Here, then, we have already an evident proof of the identification of the heroes Acvinau with the animals, horses or a.s.ses, which draw them. The _?igvedas_ does not as yet know the word _acvatara_, or mule, but in representing the Acvinau drawn now by horses and now by a.s.ses, it shows us the intermediate character of the real animal that draws the Acvinau, a grey beast, dark-coloured, and white only in its fore parts. Night is the mule that carries the Acvinau or twilights, in the same way as, in the above-quoted _aitareya_, it carries or awakens Agnis, fire or light. In the _Iliad_,[546] mules are sung of as being better adapted than oxen to draw the plough.
The hero"s horse, like the hero himself, begins by being ugly, deformed, and inept, and ends by becoming beautiful, luminous, heroic, and victorious.
The mythical horse of the Hungarians, the horse Tatos, or Tatos lo, when born, is of an ugly aspect, defective and lean; it is therefore said in Hungarian, that "the Tatos comes out of a defective horse." It is, however, always born with teeth,[547] although its chin is sometimes wanting; its bursts out of a black pentagonal egg on an Ash Wednesday, after the hero has carried it for seven summers and seven winters under his arm. In the _Mahabharatam_,[548] the first created horse Uccai?cravas, the king of the horses (and therefore the horse of Indras), which is as swift as thought, follows the path of the sun, and is luminous and white, has, however, a black tail, made so by the magic of the serpents, who have covered it with black hairs. This is probably the black a.s.s"s or horse"s tail which remains upon the ugly or wicked sister"s forehead, in the popular European story of the two sisters.[549] It must also be remarked that, as the word _Uccai?cravas_ means, properly, him of the high ears, it indicates the a.s.s better than the horse.
In the same way, therefore, as the hero of popular tales before becoming a wise man is generally an a.s.s, the animal ridden by the solar hero, prior to being a real and n.o.ble horse, is usually a worthless jade, or a dark-coloured a.s.s. The sun, in the beginning of the night, rides a black horse, and afterwards a grey one, or else an a.s.s or a mule, but in the morning, on the contrary, a white and luminous horse, which has a black tail; or else the dark horse of night has a white head, or white legs, or anterior parts of the body, with golden ears, and the nape of the neck formed of pearls.[550] The monstrous Trojan horse too, of Epeios, a figure which represents the horse of mythology, in Tryphiodoros the Egyptian,[551] has a golden mane, red eyes, and silver teeth.
In the Turkish stories of Siberia,[552] it is upon an iron-coloured horse that the third brother, hated by his father and his two elder brothers, advances against the demon Ker Iutpa. The hero becomes the excrement of a horse, and the horse a crow; the former glues the monster"s lower lip to the earth, the latter suspends his upper lip to the sky. In order better to understand this strange myth, we must remember that the name of one of the Valkiries is "Mist," a word which means excrement and fog. The fog, or frost, or rain, or dew, falls to the ground; the solar horse, or the sun, rises in the sky; the monster of night or of clouds is dispersed.
In the thirteenth Esthonian story of _Kreutzwald_, the third brother comes three times to deliver the princess from the mountain of gla.s.s (or ice), where she sleeps. The first time he is dressed the colour of bronze, upon a bronze-coloured horse; the second time dressed in silver, upon a horse the colour of silver; and the third time upon a gold-coloured horse, dressed in gold.
In an unpublished Piedmontese story, the young prince, whose beloved princess has been ravished beyond seas, is borne over the waves by an eagle, which he feeds with his own flesh. Arrived beyond the sea, he hears that the princess is destined to be the wife of the hero who wins the race three times; the first time he appears dressed in black, upon a black horse; the second time dressed in white, upon a white horse; and the third time dressed in red, upon a red horse. Each time he wins the race, and thereafter receives the beautiful princess in marriage.
Thus we see the first horse of the hero is always dark-coloured, like the devil"s horse, like the horses of Pluto, which, accustomed to darkness, are terrified by light;[553] it then becomes the grey horse of the giantess, the grey horse which smells the dead hero Sigurd in the _Edda_. Pegasos himself, the _hieros hippos_ of Aratos, is born semi-perfect (emiteles),[554] an expression which reminds me of the _equus dimidius_ of an Alsatian paper of 1336, in Du Cange, by which the mule is meant. The Hindoo Aru?as, charioteer of the sun (or even the brother of the sun himself, inasmuch as he is the brother of Garu?as, the solar bird), is said to be born with an imperfect body;[555] he can be luminous and divine only in part. The black horse, on the contrary, has generally an evil and demoniacal nature; the black horse corresponds to the black devil; the colour black itself is, according to popular superst.i.tion, the product of bad humours.[556] Every horse, when born, has, according to Maestro Agostino, a piece of black flesh upon its lips, called hippomanes by the Greeks: "La quale carne dici lo vulgo essere molto sospettosa a li maleficii." Maestro Agostino adds, moreover, that the mother refuses to give suck to the colt as long as it carries this piece of flesh upon its lips, and some say that the mother herself eats it. In an idyll of Theokritos, we read that the Hippomanes is born among the Arcadians, and maddens colts and swift mares.[557] In the first chapter we mentioned the Russian _damavoi_, the demon who, during the night, rides upon cows, oxen, and horses, and makes them perspire.
This superst.i.tion was already combated in Italy in the sixteenth century by Maestro Agostino;[558] and to it can probably be traced the custom, still observed by many grooms, of leaving a lamp lighted in the stable during the night. The devil, as is well known, is afraid of the light (Agnis is called rakshohan, or monster-killer), and his black horse likewise. It is therefore a sinister omen, according to two verses in _Suidas_,[559] to dream of black horses, whilst, on the contrary, it is a good omen to dream of white ones. In the Norman legend of the priest Walchelm, a black horse presents itself to him in the first days of January of the year 1091, and tempts him to mount upon its back; scarcely has Walchelm done so, than the black horse sets off for h.e.l.l.[560] The dead, too, according to the popular belief, often ride upon black or demoniacal horses.[561]
A well-known Russian story in verse, the _Kaniok Garbunok_, or _Little Hump-backed Horse_, of Jershoff, commences thus:--An old man has three sons, the youngest of which is the usual Ivan Durak, or Ivan the fool.
The old man finds his corn-field devastated every morning; he wishes to find out who the devastator is, and sends his first-born son to watch the first night. The first-born has drunk too much, and falls asleep, and so does the second son, and from the same cause, on the second night. On the third night it is Ivan"s turn to watch; he does not fall asleep. At midnight he sees a mare which breathes flames coming. Ivan ties her by a rope, leaps upon her, seizes her by the mane, torments and subdues her, until the mare, to be let free, promises to give Ivan one of her young ones, and carries him to the stable where her three young ones are. She gives Ivan a little hump-backed horse with long ears (the Hindoo Uccai?sravas), that flies. By means of this little hump-backed horse, Ivan will make his fortune; when he leads it away, the mare and the two other colts follow it. Ivan"s two brothers steal the mare and two colts, and go to sell them to the Sultan. Ivan rejoins them, and the three brothers stay in the Sultan"s service as grooms; sometime afterwards, Ivan saves himself from drowning by means of his horse.
In the third of _Erlenwein"s_ Russian stories, a stallion is born to the Tzar"s mare, that had drunk the water in which a certain fish (a pike, in the nineteenth story) had been washed, at the same time as the Tzar"s daughter and her maid give birth to two heroes, Ivan Tzarevic and Ivan Dievic--_i.e._, John of the Tzar and John of the girl, a form representing the Acvinau. Ivan Tzarevic rides upon the stallion. In the nineteenth story, the son of the mare is called Demetrius of the Tzar (Dmitri Tzarevic); hero and horse being identified. In the fifth story of _Erlenwein_, a Cossack goes into the forest, where he is betrayed into the enemy"s hands, who gives orders that he be cut in pieces, put into a sack, and attached to his horse.
The horse starts, and carries him to the house of silver and gold, where he is resuscitated. During the following night, an old man and woman, whose guest the Cossack is, drag him, in order to waken him, by the cross which hangs on his neck, and he is thus transformed into a horse of gold and silver. Towards evening, the horse, by the Tzar"s order, is killed, and (like the bull and the cow) becomes an apple-tree of silver and gold. The apple-tree is cut down, and becomes a golden duck. The golden duck is the same as the golden horse, or as the hero resuscitated, _i.e._, the morning sun. The sack and the horse which carry the hero cut in pieces represent the voyage of the sun in the gloom of night, or the voyage of the grey horse, the imperfect horse, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d mule, or the a.s.s.
In the Russian tales, moreover, a distinction is made between the grey and the black horse; the grey horse helps the hero in the night very effectively, and the black one, on the contrary, is the herald of death.
When, in the ninth story of _Erlenwein_, the horse of Ivan the merchant"s son goes to search for the horses of the princess from beyond the sea, Ivan waits for him upon the sh.o.r.e. If he sees grey horses come forth, it is to be a sign that his own steed is alive; but if, on the other hand, black horses appear, he is to conclude that his own horse is dead. Grey is the colour of sadness, black is the colour of death.
In _Afana.s.sieff_, we find new interesting data. Ivan the fool watches during the night to surprise the horse which devastates his father"s crops, and succeeds in binding it with rods from a linden-tree, after it has smelt the odour of tobacco. Then, by the help of the sister of the hero Nikanore, it acquires the faculty, when running after cows and horses, of turning their tails into gold, as well as their horns or manes, and their flanks into stars. What better image could there be of the starry sky of night, the golden tail of which is the red evening, and the front parts, also of gold, the morning aurora?[562]
In another story,[563] we have Ivan the son of the b.i.t.c.h occupying the place and playing the part of Ivan the son of the mare. Ivan of the b.i.t.c.h, after having delivered the three princesses from the deep cistern, is himself thrown into it. The black horse comes to deliver him, and cannot; the grey horse comes, and cannot either; the red horse comes, and succeeds in dragging the hero out. The black horse represents the dark night, the grey horse the night beginning to clear, and the red horse the roseate morning, which delivers the sun or solar hero.
The third brother Ivan, mounted on a marvellous horse, comes first to the bronze castle, then to the silver one, and lastly to that of gold.[564] This is a variety of the same myth, and represents similarly the solar voyage from evening to morning. The next mythical legend, however, probably alludes rather to the three days of the winter solstice, which the sun takes to return. The hero, Theodore, finds a horse that has been just brought forth, which the wolves have driven towards him; he makes it pasture upon the dew for three dawns (like the Hungarian Tatos, who feeds upon the golden oats in a silver field, that is to say, who, during the silvery night, or else during the white dawn, or the snowy winter, absorbs the dewy humours of the spring, or the morning aurora). The first day, the young horse becomes as high as half a tree; the second, higher than the tree; the third day it is as high as the heavens, and bears the hero Theodore and his wife Anastasia on its back.
Ivan Durak watches three nights at his father"s tomb.[565] His father tells him that if at any time of need he calls with a hero"s whistle, a wonderful grey horse will appear to help him, whose eyes shoot flames, and from whose nostrils issues smoke. Ivan does so, and is answered; he gets into his right ear, and comes out of the left. By means of this horse, Ivan succeeds in taking down the portrait of the Tzar"s daughter three times, though hung high up on the wall of the palace, and thus obtains the beautiful princess to wife.
According to another variety of this story,[566] Ivan, the third and foolish brother, goes with the most worthless jade in the stable into the open air, and calls up the grey horse with a loud shout; he enters into him by one ear, and comes out at the other. Two young hors.e.m.e.n (the Acvinau) appear to him, and make a horse with golden mane and tail come forth; upon this horse Ivan succeeds in three times kissing, through twelve gla.s.ses (the gla.s.s mountain of the Esthonian story), the daughter of the Tzar, who therefore becomes his wife. Here, therefore, we find the ugly horse which is made beautiful by the two hors.e.m.e.n, represented by the two ears of the grey horse out of which they come. These two hors.e.m.e.n give the hero a better steed. Be it understood that their own heroic steed (that is, the sun"s horse), from being ugly or asinine during the night, became beautiful and n.o.ble; in the Kullaros of the Dioscuri, too, we ought probably to recognise a courser that has been transformed from an a.s.s to a heroic horse.
Sometimes, instead of the horse, we have only its head. The step-mother persecutes the old man"s daughter;[567] the persecuted maiden finds a mare"s head, which beseeches her to relieve and cover it; at last it invites her to enter the right ear and come out of the left one. The persecuted girl comes out in the form of an exceedingly beautiful maiden. The step-mother sends her own daughter to try the same means of becoming beautiful; but she maltreats the mare"s head, and the mare"s head devours her.
There is also a singularly clear allusion to the Acvinau in the forty-fourth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, which seems to me to be a full confirmation of these interpretations. When Basilica, the girl persecuted by her step-mother, approaches the house of the old witch (the baba-jega), she sees galloping towards the great door of it a black horseman, dressed all in black, upon a black horse, who disappears underground, upon which night begins.[568] When the day begins to appear, Basilica sees before her a white horseman, dressed all in white, upon a white horse, caparisoned in white. The maiden goes on; when the sun begins to rise, she sees a red horseman, dressed in red, upon a red horse.[569] The myth does not require comment; but it happens to be given to us in the story itself by the witch, who, to appease the curiosity of the girl Basilica, reveals to her that the black horseman represents the dark night (noc tiomnaja), the white horseman the clear day (dien jasnoi), and the red horseman the little red sun (solnishko krasnoje).
Returning from Slavonic to Asiatic tradition, we meet with the same myths.
Let us begin with the demoniacal horse, or demon of horses. The _?igvedas_ already knows it; the yatudhanas, or monster, feeds now upon human flesh (like the Bucephalus of the legend of Alexander), now upon horse flesh, and now milk from cows. We have said it seems probable that the custom of keeping a lamp lighted in the stables is a form of exorcism against the demon; the _?igvedas_, indeed, tells us that Agnis (that is, Fire, with his flame) cuts off the heads of such monsters.[570] But this is not enough; the _?igvedas_ offers us in the same hymn the proof of another identification. We have seen in the last chapter how Rebhas, the invoker, is the third brother, whom his envious and perfidious brothers threw into the well; and we have seen above how Ivan, who is also the third brother, invokes with a sonorous voice the grey horse which is to help him, and how the same Ivan is the one that discovers the monstrous horse which ravages the seed or the crops in his father"s field. In the same Vedic hymn where the flame of Agnis beats down the heads of the monster that torments horses, Agnis (that is, fire) is invoked in order that the hero Rebhas may see the monster which devastates with its claws.[571] Rebhas and Bhu?yus are two names of the hero who falls into the cistern in the _?igvedas_. We have seen, not long ago, in the Russian story, that Ivan, the third brother, who is thrown down into the cistern, is delivered by the red horse. The Acvinau, in the _?igvedas_, deliver Bhu?yus out of the sea by means of red-winged horses.[572] Here the grey and imperfect horse of night is become a red horse. In the same Vedic hymn, Rebhas, overwhelmed in the waters, is identified with his own horse (Ivan is son of the b.i.t.c.h, or the cow, or the mare), he being compared to a horse hidden by wicked ones.[573]
We saw above, in the Russian story, how the two hors.e.m.e.n who come out of the grey horse"s ear give to the foolish Ivan, who has an ugly and worthless horse, a handsome hero"s palfrey, by means of which he accomplishes the arduous undertakings which ent.i.tle him to the hand of the king"s daughter. It is remarkable how completely the Vedic myth agrees with this European legend. The Acvinau have given, for his eternal happiness, a luminous horse to him who has a bad one.[574] In another hymn, the G.o.d Agnis gives to his worshipper a pious, truthful, invincible, and very glorious son, who vanquishes heroes, and a swift, victorious, and unconquered horse.[575]
We have seen, moreover, how Ivan, the most popular type of the Russian hero, has always to make three essays before he accomplishes his undertaking upon the wonderful horse which he has obtained from the two hors.e.m.e.n. The _?igvedas_, which celebrates the famous mythical enterprise of the three steps of Vish?us, of the great body (b?ihaccharira?),[576] of the very vast step (urukramish?a?),[577]
who, in three steps, measured or traversed the whole span of the heavens,[578] betrays in another hymn the secret of Vish?us"s success in this divine enterprise, since it says that when, with the strength of Indras, he made his three steps, he was drawn by the two fair-haired horses of Indras[579] (that is, the two Acvinau lent him the swift and strong horse which was to bear him on to victory). The three steps of Vish?us correspond, therefore, to the three stations of Ivan, to the three races of the young hero to win the beautiful princess. Vish?us also appears in the _Ramaya?am_,[580] in the midst of the sea of liquified b.u.t.ter, attractive to all beings, in the form of a horse"s head. Hero and the solar or lunar horse are identified.
Indras is requested to yoke his right and his left (horses), to approach, inebriated, his dear wife.[581] By means of the horse obtained from the two hors.e.m.e.n, the Russian Ivan acquires his wife; in the _?igvedas_, the two Acvinau themselves, by means of their rapid chariot, became husbands of the daughter of the sun.[582] The horses of the sun are so fully identified with the chariot drawn by them, that they are said to be dependent on it, united with it, and almost born of it.[583] The Acvinau, therefore, by means of the horse now enable the wife to be found by the solar hero, by the old Cyavanas made young again (t.i.thon),[584] now by the sun, and now find her themselves (perhaps drawing the chariot like horses). Ramas, too, who is represented in the _Ramaya?am_[585] as the deliverer of Sita, is compared to the solar horse, to the sun born upon the mountain.
We have seen in the Russian stories how the horse"s head possesses the same magic power as the marvellous horse which the two hors.e.m.e.n give to the hero Ivan. Thus, in the Vedic myth, and in the corresponding brahmanic tradition, the horse"s head Dadhyanc stands in direct relation with the myth of the Acvinau. The wise Dadhyanc shows himself pious towards the Acvinau, to whom, although he knows that he will pay with his head for the revelation he makes, he communicates what he knows concerning the ambrosia or the Madhuvidya. For this, accordingly, Dadhyanc forfeits his head; but the Acvinau present him with a horse"s head (his own), which heroically achieves wonders. With the bones of Dadhyanc, or with the head of the horse Dadhyanc (he who walks in b.u.t.ter or ambrosia), fished up in the ambrosial lake carya?avat (the head of the horse Vish?us in the sea of b.u.t.ter),[586] Indras discomfits the ninety-nine hostile monsters (as Samson the Philistines with the jawbone of an a.s.s).[587] This exchange of heads seems to be common to the traditions which are founded upon the myth of the Acvinau, that is, to the legends of the two brother or companion heroes. In the _Tuti-Name_,[588] the heads of the prince and of the Brahman, who are exceedingly like each other, are cut off and then fastened on again; but, by some mistake, the head of the one is attached to the body of the other, so that the prince"s wife is embarra.s.sed between them. This exchange of the husband (which corresponds to the exchange of the wife in the legend of Berta, referred to in the first chapter) is very frequent in the legend of the two brothers, and often ends in the rupture of the perfect concord reigning between them. The two brothers or companions who dispute about the wife, is a variety of the legend of the three brothers who, having delivered the beautiful princess, wish to divide her between them.
The _?igvedas_ does not seem as yet explicitly to exhibit the two Acvinau at discord--they generally are united in doing good; but as we already know the Vedic blind man and lame man who are cured by the grace of Indras, or of the Acvinau themselves; as we know that the Acvinau, in the _?igvedas_, make Dadhyanc, who has a horse"s head, conduct them to the ambrosia, or indicate where it is, probably in order that they may procure health and strength for themselves; as in the ninth strophe of the 117th hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, the marvellous horse of the Acvinau, which kills the monster-serpent (ahihan), is but one; as we know that the Acvinau run to gain the bride for themselves; and as we cannot ignore the fact that in the story of the blind and lame man, when a woman comes upon the scene, they endeavour to do harm to each other; as we know that of the two h.e.l.lenic brothers, the Dioscuri, one alone had from the G.o.ds the gift of immortality; as, finally, it is known to us that of the two brothers, he alone is the true hero who, by means of his horse, gains the victory over the monster,--it is clear that if we have not as yet in the _?igvedas_ the myth of the two brothers at discord, we have, at least, in the ambrosia, and in the bride won by them the origin of the myth already indicated; and from the idea of the privileged brother that of the envious one would naturally arise.
In Hesiod"s _Theogony_ we have the two brothers Chrysaor and Pegasos, that come out of the Medusa (the evening aurora), who is made pregnant by Poseidon, after Perseus has cut off her head. Pegasos, the younger brother, becomes the heroic horse. In Hesiod himself, and in the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, he carries the thunder and the thunderbolts for Zeus. The hero Bellerophontes rides him, and vanquishes, by his help, the Chimaira and the Amazons; he becomes the horse of the aurora, the horse of the Muses, the ambrosial steed. The monstrous Chimaira appears, in the _Theogony_ of Hesiod, as the daughter of Typhaon and the Echidna, the monstrous daughter of Chrysaor. Therefore in the conflict which Bellerophontes maintains against the Chimaira, we have a form of the battle which goes on between the twin horses Pegasos and Chrysaor, the one divine, the other demoniacal.
In the a.n.a.logous myth of the h.e.l.lenic Dioscuri (the sons of the luminous one, _i.e._, of Zeus, just as the Vedic Acvinau are the sons of the luminous sky;[589] Zeus is united with the Dioscuri, as Indras is with the Acvinau), we again find the twins who fight to recover a woman who had been carried off from them, _i.e._, their own sister Helen. One of the two brothers is mortal, and the other immortal; he who is immortal pa.s.ses the night in h.e.l.l with his mortal brother. The double aspect of the sun, which at evening enters and loses itself in the night, now black, now illumined by the moon, and which, in the morning, comes forth in a luminous form, has enriched the story of the two brothers of mythology. One of the two brothers, the red horseman, is in especial relation with the morning sun; the other, in intimate connection with the silvery moon, the white horseman, and when the latter is amissing, with the infernal gloom.
Several mythologists have interpreted the Acvinau as only the two twilights; but it seems more exact, inasmuch as they are often found together, whilst the two twilights are always apart, to recognise in them two crepuscular lights, the lunar of evening and autumn, and the solar of morning and spring.[590] Of the twin-brothers, one is always imperfect; the lunar crepuscular light offers us a similar imperfection, with respect to the sun. Inasmuch as the Acvinau are affiliated both to the sun and the moon, when they come out of the two ears of the horse of night, we should understand, it would appear, that on one side the moon goes down, while on the other the sun is born, or that the solar horse arises, upon which the young hero lost in the night mounts and wins the princess aurora. In the Russian stories referred to in the preceding chapter, we have seen how the maiden abandons her hero-husband, or brother, to give herself into the monster"s hands; the evening aurora forsakes the sun to throw herself into the night, and the evening twilight stays for a long time with the evening aurora (the reddish sky of evening), when the sun is already gone. In the morning the two lovers, the twilight, or sun and moon, and the aurora, meet once more; when the sun, or solar hero, arrives, he surprises them _in flagrante delicto_, and punishes them.
Sometimes, on the contrary, the twilight and the aurora stay together, preserving their chast.i.ty; in this case the brother twilight figures as the good and honest guardian of the rights of his brother the sun.
This appears to me to have been the most ancient, as it is the most subtle, interpretation of the myth; afterwards, it is possible, and even probable, that in the two Acvinau only the two G.o.ds of morning and of evening were seen, with their respective twilights, considered as two brothers, so like that they were easily mistaken for each other. But from the data of the Russian story, which gives us the lunar twilight as a white horseman and the rising sun as a red one, the aurora being found exactly between the white and the red hors.e.m.e.n, between the moon or the white dawn (alba) and the sunrise, and seeing that the _?igvedas_, which makes the aurora mount upon the chariot of the Acvinau, considers them in the celebrated nuptial hymn as the _paranymphoi_ of Surya, the daughter of the sun or of the aurora herself, I venture to insist upon my interpretation as the most obvious, and perhaps the most logical one. The two brothers may very naturally be conceived of as contending for the possession of the bride when they have her between them, since the Acvinau, considered as lunar light and sun, really take the aurora between them. The Vedic hymn cited above shows us how both the Acvinau, arriving on the swift-running chariot, became the husbands of Surya, the daughter of the sun. But this very Surya, in the Vedic nuptial hymn, must be satisfied with one husband, who is called Somas, so that the Acvinau can only occupy the place of paranymphs. The Acvinau, therefore, would appear to be excluded from the wedding of Surya as princ.i.p.al personages; they would seem to be nothing more than a.s.sistants, and, in fact, they often a.s.sume this part in the Vedic hymns, by enabling now the bride to find a husband, now the husband to recover his bride.
We know already that by means of them Cyavanas, the old sun (a Vedic t.i.thon), became young again, and was able to espouse the aurora. We know that they gave sight to Vandanas (properly, the Face), that they made the blind see,[591] the lame walk, and performed sundry other works of charity, which would, however, have been much more glorious if these acts did not, in fact, always issue in benefit to themselves, as blind, lame, or drowned. It is hence very probable that when they give a bride to the hero, they, being now lunar, now solar heroes, do only appropriate her to themselves. When, therefore, we read that the Acvinau a.s.sist as paranymphs at the nuptials of Surya and Somas, we are much inclined to think that under Somas in this case one of the Acvinau is hidden. In Indras and Somas, often sung of together in the _?igvedas_, it seems to me that we have just another form of the Acvinau, the more so because I also find them both, like the Acvinau, personified in one and the same horse, whose back is covered with honey, and who is terrible and swift,[592] and because they are invoked together against the yatudhanas, which, by the grace of the Acvinau, the hero Rebhas succeeds in discovering and then chasing away.[593] The _Taittiriya_ _Brahma?am_[594] represents to us the daughter of the sun (Savitri) by the name of Sita, as enamoured of Somas, who, on the contrary, loves another woman, the craddha (_i.e._, Faith), almost as if the daughter of the sun, the aurora, were, for him at least, a symbol of infidelity. Probably this embryo of a myth refers to the pa.s.sage of the aurora, in the morning, from her amours with the white horseman (the white twilight), which, as we have said, was supposed to be in particular relation with the moon (Somas), to her amours with the red horseman (the sun), or, _vice versa_, to the aurora who, in the evening, abandons the red horseman, the sun (now her father, now her husband), to throw herself into the arms of the white horseman, the white twilight, the king Somas, or silver G.o.d Lunus. Moreover, Yaskas, in the _Niruktam_,[595] already notices that the Acvinau were identified now with the day and the night,[596] now with the sun and the moon.
When, therefore, we read that the Acvinau obtained for their wife the daughter of the sun, and when we learn that she chose both for husbands,[597] we must interpret the pa.s.sage with discrimination, and conclude that one of them was sometimes preferred, inasmuch as the Vedic nuptial hymn speaks of only one husband of Surya, with the name of Somas, with whom, as we have said, Yaskas identifies one of the Acvinau. We read in _Pausanias_ that, among the Greek usages, when the bride was conducted to the bridegroom"s house, she was accustomed to mount a chariot and sit down in the middle, having the bridegroom on one side, and on the other her nearest relation as paranymphos. The preference given to one of the two brothers over the other is naturally suggestive of a contention between them; however, as I say, the _?igvedas_, which offers us already the myth of the third brother abandoned in the well by his relations, does not record any example of an open strife between the two brothers (_i.e._, the Acvinau, the lunar and the solar light).
An evidently Hindoo variation of this myth is contained in the well-known episode of the _Mahabharatam_, which relates the adventures of Sundas and Upasundas, two inseparable brothers, who lived together in love and concord, each being ruled by the will of the other, and who had never all their lives either said or done anything to displease each other. The G.o.ds become envious of their virtue, and wish to prove it, and send to seduce them a nymph of enchanting beauty. The two brothers, on seeing her, desire each the exclusive possession of the divine maiden, and strive between themselves to carry her off. They fight so long and so desperately that they both die (the moon and the sun see the aurora in the morning, and dispute for her; they see her again in the evening, and fight so long that they both perish miserably, and die in the night). The G.o.ds who are envious of the virtue of the two brothers Sundas and Upasundas, are the same as those who, envying the good which the Acvinau do to mankind, treat them as celestial cudras, under the pretext that they pollute themselves by their contact with men, and refuse to admit them, being impure, to the sacrifices.[598]
In the twin brothers, Nakulas and Saladevas, sons of the Acvinau, the Acvinau themselves revive again, are made better, according to the expression of the first book of the _Mahabharatam_. The first-born, Nakulas, too, is perhaps the real Acvin who kills the monster. Nakulas is the name given to the _viverra ichneumon_, the mortal enemy of the serpents, which refers us back to the horse Ahihan (or killer of the serpent), as the horse of the Acvinau, or perhaps rather of one of the Acvinau, is called, in the _?igvedas_. Of the two Dioscuri, moreover, one alone is especially the horseman; the other is the valiant in combat.[599] The mortal brother, he who has to remain in h.e.l.l, and who has to fight the monsters of night, is Castor the horseman. Pollux, the strong-armed, is, on the contrary, the immortal one, the daily sun, he who profits from the victory obtained by his brother who has fought in the night, during which the Gandharvas (the horses in the perfumes, they who walk in perfume) also ride upon war-horses, heroic, invulnerable, divine, exceedingly swift, who change colour at will--the Gandharvas, whose strength increases during the night, as one of them informs Ar?unas in the _Mahabharatam_, when communicating to him Gandharvic knowledge.[600]