Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/172

158 "Succourers are they of men in the very thick of peril, and of horses maddened in the bloody press of battle, and of ships that, defying the setting and the rising of the stars in heaven, have encountered the perilous breath of storms." A few examples of the friendliness of the Asvins may be selected from the long list given by Muir. They renewed the youth of Kali. After the leg of Vispala had been cut off in battle, the Asvins substituted an iron leg! They restored sight to Rijrasva, whom his father had blinded because, in an access of altruism, he had given one hundred and one sheep to a hungry she-wolf. The she-wolf herself prayed to the Asvins to succour her benefactor. They drew the Rishi Rebha out of a well. They made wine and liquors flow from the hoof of their own horse. Most of the persons rescued, quail and all, are interpreted, of course, as semblances of the dawn and the twilight. Goldstücker says they are among "the deities forced by Professor Müller to support his dawn-theory." M. Bergaigne also leans to the theory of physical phenomena. When the Asvins restore sight to the blind Kanva, he sees "no reason to doubt that the blind Kanva is the sun during the night, or Agni or Soma in concealment." A proof of this he finds in the statement that Kanva is "dark;" to which we might reply that "dark" is still a synonym for "blind" among the poor.

M. Bergaigne's final hypothesis is that the Asvins "may be assimilated to the" two celebrants "who in