guished by the names of Dasra and Nâsatya, we find another couple of gods, Indra and Agni, addressed together in the dual, Indragni, but likewise as Indra, the two Indras, and Agni, the two Agnis (vi. 60, 1), just as heaven and earth are called the two heavens, and the Asvins the two Dasras, or the two Nâsatyas. Indra is the god of the bright sky, Agni the god of fire, and they have each their own distinct personality; but when invoked together, they become correlative powers and are conceived as one joint deity. Curiously enough, they are actually in one passage called aśviná 1 (i. 109, 4), and they share several other attributes in common with the Aśvins. They are called brothers, they are called twins; and as the Aśvins were called ihehajâte, born here and there, i. e. on opposite sides, in the East and in the West, or in heaven and in the air, so Indra and Agni, when invoked together, are called ihehamâtarâ, they whose mothers are here and there (vi. 59, 2). Attributes

1

which they share in common with the Aśvins are vṛishanâ, bulls, or givers of rain;2 vṛitrahanâ, destroyers of Vritra, or of the powers of darkness; sambhuva, givers of happiness; supânî, with good hands; vîļupânî,5 with strong hands; jenyâvasû, with genuine wealth. But in spite of these similarities, it must not be supposed that Indra and Agni together are a mere repetition of the Asvins. There

1 Dr. Kuhn, l. c. p. 450, quotes this passage and others, from which, he thinks, it appears that Indra was supposed to have sprung from a horse (x. 73, 10), and that Agni was actually called the horse (ii. 35, 6).

2 Indra and Agni, i. 109, 4; the Aśvins, i. 112, 8.

8 Indra and Agni, i. 108, 3; the Aśvins, viii. 8, 9 (vṛitrahantamâ).

4 Indra and Agni, vi. 60, 14; the Aśvins, viii. 8, 19; vi. 62, 5.

❝ Indra and Agni, supâņî, i. 109, 4; the Asvins, vilupâņ!, vii. 73, 4.

• Indra and Agni, viii. 38, 7; the Aśvins, vii. 74, 3.

are certain epithets constantly applied to the Asvins (subhaspatî, vâjinîvasû, sudânû, &c.), which, as far as I know, are not applied to Indra and Agni together; and vice versa (sadaspati, sahuri). Again, there are certain legends constantly told of the Asvins, particularly in their character as protectors of the helpless and dying, and resuscitators of the dead, which are not transferred to Indra and Agni. Yet, as if to leave no doubt that Indra, at all events, coincides in some of his exploits with one of the Asvins or Nûsatyas, one of the Vedic poets uses the compound IndraNásatyau, Indra and Nâsatya, which, on account of the dual that follows, cannot be explained as Indra and the two Aśvins, but simply as Indra and Nâsatya.

Besides the couple of Indragni, we find some other, though less prominent couples, equally reflecting the dualistic idea of the Aśvins, namely, Indra and Varuna, and Indra and Vishņu, and, more important than either, Mitra and Varuna. Instead of Indra-Varuna, we find again Indra,1 the two Indras, and Varuna, the two Varunas (iv. 41, 1). They are called sudânû (iv. 41, 8); vṛishanâ (vii. 82, 2); śambhû (iv. 41, 7); mahâvasû (vii. 82, 2). Indrâ- Vishnû are actually called dasra, the usual name of the Asvins (vi. 69, 7). Now Mitra and Varuna are clearly intended for day and night. They, too, are compared to horses (vi. 67, 4), and they share certain epithets in common with the twin-gods, sudânû (vi. 67, 2), vṛishaṇau (i. 151, 2). But their character assumes much greater distinctness, and though clearly physical in their first conception, they rise into moral

1 As in Latin Castores and Polluces, instead of Castor et Pollux.

powers, far superior in that respect to the Asvins and to Indragnî. Their physical nature is perceived in a hymn of Vasishtha (vii. 63):

"The sun, common to all men, the happy, the allseeing, steps forth; the eye of Mitra and Varuna, the bright; he who rolls up darkness like a skin."

"He steps forth, the enlivener of men, the great waving light of the sun; wishing to turn round the same wheel which his horse Etaśa draws, joined to the team."

"Shining forth, he rises from the lap of the dawn, praised by singers, he, my god Savitar, stepped 1 forth, who never misses the same place."

"He steps forth, the splendor of the sky, the wideseeing, the far-aiming, the shining wanderer; surely, enlivened by the sun, do men go to their tasks and do their work."

"Where the immortals made a walk for him, there he follows the path, soaring like a hawk. We shall worship you, Mitra and Varuna, when the sun has risen, with praises and offerings."

“Will Mitra, Varuna, and Aryaman bestow favor on us and our kin? May all be smooth and easy to us! Protect us always with your blessings!"

The ethic and divine character of Mitra and Va

ruņa breaks forth more clearly in the following hymn (vii. 65):

"When the sun has risen I call on you with hymns, Mitra and Varuna, full of holy strength; ye whose imperishable divinity is the oldest, moving on your way with knowledge of everything." "

1 Chhad as scandere, not as scondere.

2 The last sentence is doubtful.

"For these two are the living spirits among the gods; they are the lords; do you make our fields fertile. May we come to you, Mitra and Varuņa, where they nourish days and nights."

"They are bridges made of many ropes leading across unrighteousness, difficult to cross to hostile mortals. Let us pass, Mitra and Varuna, on your way of righteousness, across sin, as in a ship across the water."

Now, if we inquire who could originally be conceived as the father of all these correlative deities, we can easily understand that it must be some supreme power that is not itself involved in the diurnal revolutions of the world, such as the sky, for instance, conceived as the father of all things, or some still more abstract deity, like Prajapati, the lord of creation, or Tvashṭar, the fashioner, or Savitar, the creator. Their mother, on the contrary, must be the representative of some place in which the twins meet, and from which they seem to spring together in their diurnal career. This place may be either the dawn or the gloaming, the sunrise or the sunset, the East or the West, only all these conceived not as mere abstractions, but as mysterious beings, as mothers, as powers containing within themselves the whole mystery of life and death brought thus visibly before the eyes of the thoughtful worshipper. The dawn, which to us is merely a beautiful sight, was to the early gazer and thinker the problem of all problems. It was the unknown land from whence rose every day those bright emblems of a divine power which left in the mind of man the first impression and intimation of another world, of power above, of

order and wisdom. What we simply call the sunrise, brought before their eyes every day the riddle of all riddles, the riddle of existence. The days of their life sprang from that dark abyss which every morning seemed instinct with light and life. Their youth, their manhood, their old age, all were to the Vedic bards the gift of that heavenly mother who appeared bright, young, unchanged, immortal every morning, while everything else seemed to grow old, to change, and droop, and at last to set, never to return. It was there, in that bright chamber, that, as their poets said, mornings and days were spun, or, under a different image, where morning and days were nourished (x. 37,2; vii. 65, 2), where life or time was drawn out (i. 113, 16). It was there that the mortal wished to go to meet Mitra and Varuņa. The whole theogony and philosophy of the ancient world centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright gods, of the sun in his various aspects, of the morn, the day, the spring; herself the brilliant image and visage of immortality.

It is of course impossible to enter fully into all the thoughts and feelings that passed through the minds of the early poets when they formed names for that far, far East from whence even the early dawn, the sun, the day, their own life, seemed to spring. A new life flashed up every morning before their eyes, and the fresh breezes of the dawn reached them like greetings wafted across the golden threshold of the sky from the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds, beyond the dawn, beyond "the immortal sea which brought us hither." The Dawn seemed to them to open golden gates for the sun to