1993 Sun Maidens Wedding An Indo European Surise Sunset Myth (Steets)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORmA
Los Angeles
The Sun Maiden's Wedding:
An Indo-European Sunrise/Sunset Myth
A microfi 1 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

m or xerographic print of this
dissertation may b requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
e purchased from
University Microfilms in Indo-European Studies
International
300 North Zeeb Road
by
Ann
Arbor, Michigan 48106
Cheryl Steets
1993
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Ami cro f i]
1 m Or xerographl'C A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
print of this
dissertation may b requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
e purchased from
University Microfilms in Indo-European Studies
International
300 North Zeeb Road
by
Ann Arbor , ,lchlgan
M' . 48106
Cheryl Steets
1993
The dissertation of Cberyl Steets is approved.
Steven Lattimore
Hanns-Peter Schmidt, Committee Cbair
University of California, Los Angeles
1993
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
VI
INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER I DRAMATIS PERSONAE: THE INDO-EUROPEAN

SUN MAIDEN FIGURES 7
I.A. Universal Sun Maidens and Divine Twins 8

LB. Indo-European Sun Maiden Figures 9
1. C. Summary of Motifs in the
Indo-European Myth 27
1. D. Prior Surveys 35
CHAPTER 2 THE SARA~YD MOTIFS: DISAPPEARING BRIDES

AND SUBSTITUTE FEMALES 42
2.A. Saranyu: A Survey 43

2.B. Disappearing Brides and Substitute Females 69
2.C. Chastity in Question 95
2.D. A Mortal Husband 99
2.E. Equine Characteristics 108
CHAPTER 3 USAS AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN

DAWN GODDESS 112
3.A. U~as: A Survey 113

3.B. The "Daughter of the Sky" 119
IV
3.C. The Marriageable Maiden and her Dowry 133
3.D. Liberation of the Dawn 143
l CHAPTER 4 SURYA. AND THE WEDDING OF THE SUN MAIDEN 151
4.A. Surya: the "Daughter of the Sun"

as a Sun Maiden 151
4.B. The Sun Maiden's Wedding as
Ritual Prototype 154
4.C. The Wedding: a May Day/New Year
Celebration? 169
CONCLUSION 174
BIBLIOGRAPHY 178
v
LIST OF ABBREVIA nONS
Sanskrit Texts
AgniP Agni Purana

AiB Aitareya Brahrnana
ApaGS Apastamba Grhya Sutra
AsvSS Asvalayana Srauta Sutra
AV Atharva Veda
BaudhGS Baudhayana Grhya Siitra
BhavP Bhavisya Purana
BrahmaP Brahma Purana
Brahmandaf' Brahrnanda Purana
BrD Brhad Devata
Hariv Harivamsa
Ka!hGS Kathaka Grhya Surra
Kaus Kausitaki Sutra
KurmaP Kurma Purana
LiilgaP Linga Purana
Mfu1GS Manava Grhya Siitra
MarkP Markandeya Purana
MS Maitrayani Sarnhita
Nir Nirukta
PWS Paraskara Grhya Siitra
RV Rg Veda
SailkhGS Sankhayana Grhya Siitra
SB Satapatha Brahmana
SivaP Siva Purana
TB Taittiriya Brahrnana
TS Taittiriya Samhita
Vasistha V asistha Dharmasiltra
VayuP Vayu Purana
Vi~t:luP Vi~t:lu Purana
Vi
Journals and Series
HOS Harvard Oriental Series

HR History of Religions
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
]]J Indo-Iranian Journal
KZ Kuhns Zeitschrift
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBBRAS Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
JIES Journal of Indo-European Studies
HOS Harvard Oriental Series
SBE Sacred Books of the East
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift fir die Kunde des Morgenlandes
ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft
ZVS Zeitschrift fir vergleichende Sprachforschung
ZE Zeitschrift fir Ethnologie
Vll
I
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am greatly indebted to my teacher through these many years, Harms-Peter
Schmidt, who was the original inspiration behind this project and has been very
involved in helping to shape it and sharpen its focus. His immense learning and
clarity of mind have been a constant source of education for me, and I have greatly
benefited from this association. I also wish to convey my sincere gratitude to
Hartmut Scharfe for his valuable insights and criticisms at various stages of this
project; likewise, many thanks to Jaan Puhvel and Steven Lattimore of the Classics
Department for their helpful comments. The students of the Indo-European
Studies program have proved a useful sounding board along the way; in particular
I am indebted to my friend Mona Merideth Reddick for her continual interest in
this project and am grateful for our worthwhile discussions concerning it. Need-
less to say, the responsibility for any errors is my own.
My parents and family have provided much long-distance encouragement over my
graduate school years, for which I will always be grateful. Very special thanks
also to Binnie Gitlin, Nancy Friedman Gitlin, and Seymour Bruskoff for their sup-
port and love. Finally, the largest debt of gratitude is owed to my husband Larry
Gitlin, whose steadfast support, patience and enthusiasm throughout this project
has made all the difference to me.
Vlll
VITA
October 2, 1954 Born, Warwick, Rhode Island
1977 B.A., Classics

University of Rhode Island
Kingston, Rhode Island
1978 Colaisde Gaidhlig (Gaelic College)

Isle of Skye
Scotland
\984-199\ Teaching Assistant (Teaching Fellow, 199\)

Department of Classics
1986 Research Assistant

Department of Germanic Languages
1986-1987 Hortense Fishbaugh Memorial Scholarship
1989-\990 Departmental Fellowship

Indo-European Studies
1989-1993 Research Assistant

Indo-European Studies Program
1990 C. Phil., Indo-European Studies

1991-1992 Mabel Wilson Richards Foundation Scholarship
IX
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
1
by
Cheryl Steets
Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies
University of California, Los Angeles, 1993
Professor Harms-Peter Schmidt, Chair
There is abundant evidence for a distinctive Indo-European (IE) myth which des-
cribes the wedding of a "sun maiden," known variously as the "Daughter of the
Sun" or the "Daughter of the Sky," and her subsequent disappearance and rescue;
the myth is shown to be a solar allegory for the fleeting sunrise/sunset glow. This
dissertation builds upon the early work of Mannhardt and Schroeder as well as
several recent studies (Ward, Nagy, Boedeker, Biezais, Clader, O'Brien and Grot-
tanelli) which have discussed Indic, Baltic, Germanic, Greek, and Celtic evidence
for the sun maiden figure. Here, the Indic textual evidence is examined in detail,
particularly the myths of Saranyu, U~, and Siirya, leading to the conclusion that,
despite their differences, all three Indic figures are indeed developments of an
original IE goddess who is the personification of the rosy glow in the sky preced-
x
ing sunrise and following sunset. The parallel Greek figures - namely, the dawn
goddess Eos, Helen of Troy, and Aphrodite - are also reexamined in detail, show-
ing them clearly to be reflexes of the same IE myth. Germanic and Celtic
evidence for this figure has also been collected and sifted. In many of these tradi-
tions, the "substitute maiden" motif is shown to be a common and probably archaic
feature of the myth, and new examples are added to Pisani's striking correlation of
Saranyu's savama and Helen's er8WAOV. This "look-alike" figure represents the
sunset glow which mirrors the pre-sunrise sky (following Lammel's allegorical
interpretation). The striking similarities in the myths of all of these sun maiden
figures make it certain that they are genetically related and not independent
developments of a universal myth. Furthermore, an examination of ritual evidence
indicates that the myth was in some cases the foundation for human wedding ritual,
in which the bride impersonated the sun maiden at her celestial wedding. The
same myth also celebrated the annual return of the post-winter-solstice sun,
renewed and brighter, beginning with the first dawn of the New Year.
Xl
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine evidence for the sun maiden
("Daughter of the Sun" or "Daughter of the Sky") in Indo-European (IE) mythol-
ogy and, to whatever extent possible, in ritual, and to evaluate it in light of certain
Indic evidence which has, in the literature on this figure to date, not been fully
examined. The sun maiden is an integral component of a well documented IE
tradition concerning divine, celestial twins, and she has generally been studied
from that perspective, as an incidental accompaniment to the more striking parallel
stories of divine twins which occur throughout IE literature. However, the sun
maiden herself proves to be an intriguing and worthy subject for independent
study. The literary evidence examined here, culled from the many IE traditions,
will show that there is a clearly delineated, distinctively Indo-European sun maiden
myth, and that the evidence for the sun-maiden figure is much more cohesive and
more widespread than has heretofore been presumed.
Over a century ago, interest was sparked in this subject by the discovery of
multiple correspondences between Indic, Greek and Baltic stories of divine twins
and an accompanying sun maiden, which led nineteenth-century researchers to
postulate an underlying Indo-European myth. I Attention was first focused on fea-
tures of the divine twins: their celestial nature as sons of the sky-god, their associa-
tion with horses, their reputation as healers and saviors of men in distress at sea or
in battle' , their role as brothers and/or lovers or joint husbands of a sun maiden
I Wilhelm Mannhardt, "Die lettischen Sonnenmythen," Zeitschriftftlr Ethnologie 7 (1875): 73-104,

209-244, 281-329 (see esp. 309-314); C. Renel, L'Evolution d'un My the: AlviM. et DiosC1l~es
(paris: Libraires de I'Academie de Medicine, 1896); Leopold von Schroeder, Ans~ Religion2
(Leipzig: H. Hassel, 1916), 392ft.; Alexander Haggerty Krappe, Mythologie Universelle (paris:
Payot, 1930), 80ft.
I
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine evidence for the sun maiden
("Daughter of the Sun" or "Daughter of the Sky") in Indo-European (IE) mythol-
ogy and, to whatever extent possible, in ritual, and to evaluate it in light of certain
Indic evidence which has, in the literature on this figure to date, not been fully
examined. The sun maiden is an integral component of a well documented IE
tradition concerning divine, celestial twins, and she has generally been studied
from that perspective, as an incidental accompaniment to the more striking parallel
stories of divine twins which occur throughout IE literature. However, the sun
maiden herself proves to be an intriguing and worthy subject for independent
study. The literary evidence examined here, culled from the many IE traditions,
will show that there is a clearly delineated, distinctively Indo-European sun maiden
myth, and that the evidence for the sun-maiden figure is much more cohesive and
more widespread than has heretofore been presumed.
Over a century ago, interest was sparked in this subject by the discovery of
multiple correspondences between Indic, Greek and Baltic stories of divine twins
and an accompanying sun maiden, which led nineteenth-century researchers to
postulate an underlying Indo-European myth. 1 Attention was first focused on fea-
tures of the divine twins: their celestial nature as sons of the sky-god, their associa-
tion with horses, their reputation as healers and saviors of men in distress at sea or
in battle' , their role as brothers and/or lovers or joint husbands of a sun maiden
1Wilhelm Mannhardl, "Die lettischen Sonnenmythen," 'kitschriftfilr Emnologie 7 (1875): 73-104,

209-244, 281-329 (see esp. 309-314); C. Renel, L'Evolution d'un Myth.: ASviIlS" Dioscures
(paris: Libraires de I'Academic de Medicine, 1896); Leopold von Schroeder, Ansme RellglOIl 2
(Leipzig: H. Hassel, 1916), 392ff.; Alexander Haggerty Krappe, Mythologt. Universelle (pans:
Payol, 1930), 80f[
I
figure. Certain features of these divine-twin myths seem to be universal (e.g., the
twins' association with fertility, their status as divine progeny of a sky-god, and
their opposite natures attributed to dual parentage, one mortal and one immortal).2
Despite these universal features, however, extraordinary parallels of specific details
were observed in the IE versions to prove beyond doubt that a distinctive tradition
about divine twins had sprung up in remote IE antiquity and had persisted in
numerous forms even into the Christianized world. That there is a specific Indo-
European version of the myth is widely accepted in current scholarly literature and
is the basis of many studies on the nature and characteristics of the divine twins.J
The female figure who accompanies the divine twins - the Sun Maiden, or,
as she is frequently called, "Daughter of the Sun" - appears to have been an
integral part of the dioscuric myth. She attends the divine twins as lover, wife,
and/or sister of one or both twins; in later epic, where these divine myths were
transposed into epic, she becomes a princess whose earthly escapades with a pair of
males - usually one is her fiance or husband and the other is her or his brother -
parallel closely those of their celestial counterparts. Prominent features of the
myth include details of her celebrated wedding to one of several suitors, whether
the divine twins (one or both of them), a sun-figure, or a moon-figure; her sub-
2]. Rendel Harris, The Cult of the Heavenly Twins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1906),6-7.
3Donald Ward, The Divine Twins: An Indo-European Myth in Germanic Tradition (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1968); Steven O'Brien, "Dioscuric Elements in Celtic and Germanic
Mythology," lIES 10 (1982): 117-36; M. Shapiro, "Neglected Evideoa; of Dioscurism(Divine
Twinning) in the Old Slavic Pantheon," lIES ~O(1982): 137-65. Ward s volume contains an
excellent select bibliography of the scholarly literature on this problem.
2
sequent disappearance from her husband (whether voluntary or due to an abduc-
tion) and the installation of a look-alike substitute meant to fool the husband during
her absence; the discovery by the husband of the trick and his pursuit of and
reunification with his wife. In some versions, the wife bears twins either before or
after the separation (or both); frequently one or many of the personages involved
have the hippomorphic features or affiliations with horses frequently emblematic of
IE sun deities.
In contrast to the voluminous bibliography of scholarly works on the divine
twins, however, the sun maiden figure herself has received far less attention and is
the subject of only a few studies. In 1875, Wilhelm Mannhardt, in a seminal
study" on the Latvian parallels to Vedic and Greek myths of divine twins and their
accompanying sun maiden, pointed out the striking parallels between the Latvian
sun maiden and two Vedic figures, the dawn-goddess Usas and the "daughter of
the sun" Surya; he also noted parallels with the Greek Helen of Troy. Vittore
Pisani (1928) brought to light the further parallel of the "substitute figure" element
in the Greek and Indic myths.> Donald Ward's 1968 study provides perhaps the
most comprehensive view of evidence for the IE sun maiden, albeit in the context
of his search for Germanic parallels to the IE divine twin myth.6 Recently, Linda
Lee Clader (1976) has made an in-depth study of the Greek sun maiden figure,
Helen of Troy, which is the most complete analysis to date of the IE background
4Mannhardt, "Die lettiscben Sonnenmythen."
5Pisani, Vittore. "Elena e l'.lOwMP" Rivista de Filologia e de lstruzione Classica 56 (1928) 476-
99; reprinted with appendix in his Lingue e Culture (Brescia, 1969) 325-45.
6Ward, Divine Twins.
3
of Helen, though many IE parallels (including the work done by Pisani and Ward)
are overlooked." Cristiano Grottanelli (1986) approaches from a different angle,
reviving Pisani's theory; he compares Helen, Vedic Saranyii, and Indic Sita as IE
sun maiden figures, speculating that Irish Macha may be a member of the set as
well. 8 Recent articles have also touched upon the sun maiden figure, as does a
1990 book by Gabriela Zeller on the divine twins.?
None of these researches, however, is comprehensive in scope on this sub-
ject. Many questions remain unanswered. Can an original IE form of the sun
maiden myth be postulated, and if so, what are its components? Which IE bran-
ches contain survivals (transparent or disguised) of the myth? Is there any
evidence in religious ritual for sun maiden worship (paralleling the well known
evidence for dioscuric ritual)? And finally, can the significance of the myth and/or
ritual be clearly determined?
Our research task here is threefold: (I) the examination and categorization
of the features of the sun maiden myth, which we approach primarily via the
representative Indic sun-maiden figures; (2) an exploration of apparently parallel or
related myths which have not yet been brought into the circumference of the IE sun
maiden myth, and (3) the exploration of ritual material pertaining to the sun
7Linda Lee Clader, Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1976).
8Cristiano Grottanelli, "Yoked Horses, Twins, and the Powerful Lady: India, Greece, Ireland, and
Elsewhere" lIES 14 (1986): 125-152.
9800 O'Brien "Dioseurie Elements"; Gregory Nagy, "Phaelhon, Sappho's Phaon, and the White
Rock of Leukas," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 77 (1973): 137-177; Gabriele Zeller, Die
vedischen Zwillingsgoner (Wiesbaden, 1990).
4
maiden figure in various IE cultures, for whatever light it can shed on the nature of
the myth and its meaning.
One final note here concerns the genre of such heavenly mythical figures as
sun maidens, sun gods and celestial divine twins - or for that matter, gods of rain,
thunder, earthquake, etc.: these necessarily and without question must bear some
relationship to the natural phenomena with which they are associated, whether they
actually personify a function of nature or merely reflect various aspects of that
function. The problem one faces when writing on this issue stems from the
modem-day rejection (albeit a neccessary one) of the reductionist interpretations of
late nineteenth-century scholars, who, despite many remarkable insights into IE
religious texts, fallaciously sought to reduce complex deities into nature gods and
mere personifications of the various functions of nature. Subsequent investigations
not only vigorously disproved many of the false equations promoted by these early
scholars, they also spawned a too-hasty rejection of the earlier notion that these
deities can be, in particular myths or functions, allegories or personifications of
functions of nature.
All of this has quite naturally given "nature mythology" a bad name: the
pendulum of scholarship has since swung far in the opposite direction to the point
where it seems passe to discuss the "nature" aspect of deities who are nevertheless,
according to the texts themselves, associated with natural phenomena and whose
tales often do seem TOOtedin some type of allegory for those phenomena. Where
religious texts involve the invocation and celebration of a deity, or even detail
certain escapades of that deity, expressly associated with a natural phenomenon,
5
one need not walk on eggs when exploring the possibility of some type of nature
allegory at work - it is the most logical course to pursue. Yet the truth of the
matter lies somewhere in between the two extremes: though the deities in question
usually cannot be reduced to flat allegories of natural phenomena, in most cases
their very existence seems to be connected with the phenomena, and some of the
stories which comprise their mythology can be best explained by considering the
specifics of the phenomena with which they are connected. This approach also
opens the way for discovering ritual connections, where rituals celebrate the
specific naturalistic function of the deity and appeal to the deity as a personification
or allegory of that function.
Thus this project approaches the various myths of the sun maiden for what
they are: myths that are not only stories about the radiance and warmth of the sun,
the maiden-like beauty of the dawn glow or the imagined adventures of a quixotic
twilight goddess, but on a deeper level, also myths about the sun's cycles, the con-
sistency of its diurnal journey, and its post-hibernal resurrection into the renewed,
stronger sun of spring. Underlying these myths, then, is a pseudo-scientific folk
recording of observations about the cycles and workings of the sun, much as the
accompanying rituals indicate the esteem in which this knowledge was held.
In sum, this project has the purpose of collecting, evaluating and delineating
the literary evidence for the IE sun maiden and determining if there is any validity
to the speculation that certain cultic practices surviving into historical time reflect
the sun maiden myth.
6
CHAPTER 1
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
THE INDO-EUROPEAN SUN MAIDEN FIGURES
Summary:
l.A. Universal Sun Maidens and Divine Twins
l.B. Tndo-European Sun Maiden Figures
1. C. Summary of Motifs in the Indo-European Myth
I.D. Prior Surveys
One of the delights of working with Indo-European mythological material is
In many instances (and in this one in particular) the extraordinary variety of
resources to be explored. The literatures of widely separated cultures offer a
cornucopia of information to be sifted, catalogued, and with great care, inter-
preted. Such a venture, however, is at the outset fraught with problems which
may temper the initial delight of the comparativist. To what degree do parallel
episodes in myths of disparate cultures reflect the same idea? Can it be clearly
shown that these ideas have a common origin? Questions like these need to be ans-
wered, and to help in this task one must extend beyond the realm of pure mythol-
ogy and into its correlates, the study of ritual and historical linguistics. With
these, the ground under foot becomes more certain. Later chapters of this work
consider these fields of study for what they have to offer.
The preliminary task called for in a work under this title is a survey of all the
relevant original resources in an effort to identify features of the sun maiden myth.
Such a survey constitutes the bulk of the present chapter. Sun maiden figures
appear not infrequently throughout Indo-European (IE) literature, though perhaps
the reason no comprehensive study has yet been done is that these figures fre-
quently appear in a variety of disguises, and surviving versions of the common
7
myth retain only selected motifs, rendering the story unrecognizable at first glance.
Nevertheless, when the fragmented remains are placed side by side for analysis, it
becomes clear that the various versions reflect parts of the whole - and in order to
establish exactly what comprises that "whole", we begin with the following over-
view, to layout for examination the "cast of characters" with which the remainder
of this investigation is concerned.
This chapter has the secondary purpose of summarizing in brief the history of
the scholarship upon which the current thesis rests, that which focuses on the sun
maiden figure as Indo-European in origin. This will provide a necessary back-
ground for argumentation in later chapters. Important secondary sources on this
subject are quite few in number; no mention will be made of those which treat our
subject only in passing and do not add substantial input into the history of the ques-
tion. Descriptions of scholarship considering aspects of individual sun maiden
figures, and therefore restricted to one cultural group, are left for discussion in
subsequent chapters under relevant sections.
l.A. Universal Sun Maidens and Divine Twins
Myths about a pair of divine twins with an accompanying female (sun-)
figure, are a worldwide phenomenon and by no means restricted to the Indo-
European cultural group. Evidence for this universal tradition is surveyed in
Harris' The Cult of the Heavenly Twins; Harris demonstrates that the trio in its
many forms evolved from a mother and her twin sons; the persecution of the
mother and sometimes also of her sons (or one of the two) is rooted (according to
Harris) in the archaic tribal condemnation of a woman who has borne twins: the
8
double birth is taken as proof that the woman was unfaithful to her husband and is
simultaneously bearing the children of two different men. Harris relates evidence
from West and South African tribes to this effect (i.e., the ostracism and abuse of
a woman who has borne twins)! and also discusses the evidence for a Semitic set
of divine twins.? Parallels can also be found in South America and among the
Masai.J
Much as the IE dioscuric myth has been shown to be a distinctly demarcated
version of the generic, universal divine twin myths, the IE sun maiden myth is, I
believe, also clearly differentiated in a number of features from these more
universal myths of female twin-mothers and/or sun-divinities. Beyond its broad
similarities to universal sun maiden myths, our IE myth has a different set of
specific, even peculiar, motifs which to my knowledge do not appear in non-IE
traditions. The IE sun maiden myth has a number of predictable features which
survive in whole or in part in the different IE versions that have come down to us.
These features are surveyed in the following section.
I.B. Indo-European Sun Maiden Figures
Though the elements of the myth vary from tradition to tradition, the basic
plot can be discerned. A female sun-figure, often explicitly called the "sun
maiden" or "daughter of the sun", apparently an immortal, is ceremoniously
married to one of her many suitors, usually (I) a pair of divine twins; (2) a male
!Harris, Heavenly Twins, 10-23.
2Harris, Heavenly Twins, 3042.
3Krappe, Mythowgie Universelle, 80.
9
sun-figure, or (3) a moon figure. In some cases, her husband's status as mor-
tal/immortal is ambiguous. Either before or after the ceremony, the bride dis-
appears, frequently as the result of an abduction, and she must be rescued from the
far-away palace/fortress of the abductor, usually across a sea. In several versions
the maiden is tormented by the abductor's mother or some other figure. Her res-
cue is often accomplished by the "divine twins" who are either her brothers or her
lovers; in cultures adverse to such an incestuous, polyandrous union, she is rescued
by her husband/fiance and another innocuous male, often her brother; in the latter
case, the pair often shares features and/or epithets of the divine twins. In her
departure either from her husband or from her abductor, a look-alike substitute
figure is left behind as a replacement for her. This figure is an exact duplicate of
the sun maiden, and the trick works well for some time but is eventually
unraveled. The husband journeys to retrieve the sun maiden; he raises the question
of her chastity during her absence from him. After proving her innocence, the sun
maiden is reunited with her husband, sometimes with the begetting of progeny,
which may expressly or impliedly be the divine twins in myths where they are not
her husbands. Frequently there is an association of one or several of the figures
with horses, or even hippomorphosis. In some cultures the tale appears to have
ritual associations with weddings and possibly with New Year celebrations.
This, at least, is my reconstruction of the original myth, though it does not
survive in a complete form in any of the versions we have. But enough of the
details survive in many of these tales as tantalizing clues to the full story of the
myth, and when combined with evidence for rituals in celebration of the central
deity, they indicate the importance of the content of this myth.
10
The relevant myths may be summarized by region as follows. Of necessity
in this survey, a brief sketch of the evidence is presented; detailed examinations of
relevant texts are reserved for subsequent chapters.
§ 1. India. The earliest sun maiden figures appear in the Rg Veda, which
contains an extraordinarily rich sun mythology. It is highly refined, with
numerous sun gods and goddesses each allocated a fairly distinct sphere of
influence. Male sun-figures, of varying importance, abound, each with particular
epithets and myths. Surya, the Vedic term for the sun and the name of the sun
god", is the sun-disc itself, bringing light to the world below; he is imagined as the
all-seeing eye of other deities, a spy on the world.f Savitr, another sun-figure fre-
quently mentioned in the Rg Veda, is often connected with Surya but is clearly dis-
tinct as the "impeller" or "stimulator" which his name (sa, "set in motion")
implies; he is the invigorating power behind the rising sun, raising up the eastern
light in the morning; he seems also to be connected with the day's end (4:53.6,
7:45.1; also 2:28). Pusan, yet another solar deity in the Rg Veda.v has quite dif-
ferent associations from the two preceding figures: he conducts the dead on their
celestial path and is, in the earthly sphere, worshipped as a guardian of roads.
4Gk. ~No,;Latin sol; Lith. saule; Goth. sauil.
S See Riidiger Schmitt, Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit, (Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz, 1967): 163f. The word "spy" may connote only an overseer or observer, without the
notion of secrecy: H. Scharfe, The State in Indian Tradition, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989): 127.
6 The traditional interpretation; though Gonda points out that the texts do not show clearly that
Pusan represents a natural phenomenon but rather emphasize his identity as the world's herdsman.
Jan Gonda , Pusan
. and Sarasvatt (Amsterdam: North Holland Pubhshing Co., 1985), 68-70.
11
According to one story, the gods gave him to the sun maiden Surya"; he is also
connected with the marriage ceremony in the Vedic wedding hymn (10:85). In
this he parallels Vivasvant, the traditional husband of the sun maiden Saranyu,
though whether and in what sense Surya and Saranyu are to be equated is a
separate issue to be discussed later. Vivasvant is apparently representative of the
rising sun; his name means "brilliant, shining forth" (vi-vas) and is cognate with
the word for dawn, usas. By Saranyii he is the father of the Asvins, twin celestial
deities, and of Yama, who becomes the god of death, and Manu, the progenitor of
man. Many interpretations focus on Vivasvant's character as first mortal, first
sacrificer, and ancestor of the human race, emphasizing parallels with his Iranian
counterpart, Vivanhvant. 8
Similarly proliferate are the female figures in Indic myth which have been
considered as sun maiden figures. Surya is the daughter of the Vedic sun-god
Surya (hence the epithet duhita saryasya).9 There is little description of her in the
Rg Veda, but the central feature of her mythology is her grand wedding (RV
10.85).10 Sayana, a fourteenth-century commentator on the RV, relates regarding
RV 1.116.17 that the sun god had promised his daughter Surya to be the wife of
7RV 6.58.4. Gonda speculates that this verse need oot be taken literally but might refer only to the
auspiciousness of sun-beams (bringing qualities of the sun, like growth, wealth, well-being, etc.)
which are crucial to the world herdsman's role; he also speculates that Ptisaa's name may have been
interpolated into the list of Siirya's husbands. (Gonda, Pusan and SarosvalT, 70-71.)
801denberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhetm Hertz, 1894), 122; SHE 46: 392.
Cp. also Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1908), 140ft.,
and JAOS 15 (1893): 176-77.; Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie 2 (1927; reprint, Hildesbeim:
Georg Olms Verlagsbucbbandlung, 1965), 343ff.
9Elsewhere, e.g., AiBr 4.7., Siirya's father is Prajipati. See Chap. 4, n. 17.
IOCf. Ai.B. 4.7-9.
12
Soma (a deified plant with celestial epithets and aspects central to Vedic ritual), but
this was disagreeable to all the other gods, who then resolved to contend for the
maiden's hand in a race toward the sun. The Asvins (the Vedic divine twins), not
Soma, win the race and become the joint husbands of Surya, The Rgvedic "wed-
ding hymn" (RV 10.85, the silryf1sakJam), in contrast, describes her wedding to
Soma, with the Asvins as groornsmen.U The wedding ritual described in this
hymn is apparently the prototype for human weddings, where the bride adopts the
role of Surya in the ritual.I? In later times the name "Siirya" simply denoted
"fiancee" or "bride. "13 Though her spouses vary, Surya's myth consistently
portrays her as bride, and the fact that her wedding-story becomes the foundation
of such an important ritual reveals the wedding motif as quintessential to the story.
Usas is the Vedic dawn goddess; her name is cognate with classical figures
like Greek EOs ('Hw<;) and Latin Aurora, likewise both dawn goddesses. Vedic
Usas is lauded by the poets as a maiden of exceptional beauty, resplendent with
lights as her ornaments, clothed in the reddish hues of daybreak. Her appearance
dispels the darkness. She rises each day ever young, though she is ancient; her
II Richard Pischel (Vedische Studien I (Stuttgart: W. KohIhammer, 1889), 27ff.) points out that
there were apparently two myths about Siirya intertwined: one where she takes one husband, the
other where she takes the two Asvins. Pischel thinks the latter is the older myth. In his reconstruc-
tion, the myth tells how all the gods want 10 court Siirya; they send Pusan as a messenger, and the
Asvins accompany him. All three are in love with Siirya, but she chooses the Asvins. The
aforementioned story of the race may be considered part of this old tradition as well, in which the
gods must then battle the Asvins for their position, though the ASvins are in the eod victorious.
12See below, Chapter 4.A.
13Geldner, Karl F., trans., Der Rig-Veda aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsch ilberulZt, 4 vols., in Har-
vard Oriental Series vols. 33-36 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951-57),3:267;
VisJ;lu-Puriil)a 4.12.12.
13
repeated risings shorten the days of men.14 She awakens all creatures; she is their
very life and breath. 15 She rouses the worshipper so that the sacred fires may be
kindled.If She arrives on a shining car which is well-adorned and drawn by ruddy
steeds or cows or bulls. 17 Genealogically, she is referred to as the daughter of the
sky (diva duhit/i). She is the sister and friend of the Asvins.18 Usas sometimes
appears in the plural in the Rg Veda, reflecting the multiplicity of recurring dawns.
The worshippers of the Rgvedic era distinguished Usas, the colorful pre-
sunrise dawn sky, from the rising morning sun, which is for speakers of modem
English frequently often synonymous with "dawn." Textual evidence differentiates
the dawn sky (Usas) as a distinct phenomenon (and a distinct deity) from the rising
sun. For example, Usas is asked not to linger, for if she tarries, the rising sun will
scorch her.J? Elsewhere, Usas delivers the "eye" of the gods and the "white
horse", the rising sun.20 She is the lover, and wife, of the sun she ushers in; she
is occasionally referred to as his mother. 21 Clearly" dawn" ends (with the god-
dess disappearing) the moment the sun rises, except perhaps for a few moments of
"maternal" labor or "conjugal" bliss.
14RV 1.92.10.
15RV 1.48.5,10.
16RV 1.113.9.
17RV 7.75.6,; 1.92.2; 1.124.11; 5.80.3.
18RV 7.71.1; 4.52.1-3.
19Rv 5.79.9' the Baltic sun maiden is also accused of tarrying: ·0 Sonne Gottes Tochter I Wo
siiumtest du so lange? I Wo weiltest du so lange I ... (selection no. 4 in Mannhardt, Die lettischen
Sonnenmythen, 76).
2~V7.77.3.
14
A third Indic figure, Saranyu, is mentioned in the Rg Veda only once, at RV
10.17, which describes events surrounding her wedding to Vivasvant, whose
name22 seems connected with the sun. Everyone on earth attends the wedding.
But for some unexplained reason, the gods whisk her away and "hide the immortal
from mortals"; a look-alike (sava17Jl1) is placed in her stead. This story is not
developed in the brief RV passage, but it appears frequently in expanded forms in
later literature. There, the sava17J11 deceives Vivasvant for a while, but he
eventually discovers the truth and leaves in pursuit of Saranyu, who has now
metamorphosed into a mare. Vivasvant himself turns into a stallion, and the two
mate hippomorphically to produce the Indic divine twins, the Asvins, who also
have hippomorphic characteristics.23 The Puranic versions sometimes also contain
an element of concern for the chastity of the sun maiden in the absence of her hus-
band. When Vivasvant comes to his father-in-law Tvastr's palace looking for his
wife, he interrogates Tvastr about Saranyu's fidelity; we will see that the same
motif occurs in several other IE versions of the myth.
In the classical era, the epic Ramayana tells the story of Sita, one of India's
most popular Hindu heroines revered as the perfect, devoted wife of Raffia. Raffia
won Sita's hand in marriage by passing a test required by her father - stringing
21RV 1.92.11; 4.5.13; 1.115.2.
22From vi-vas 'shine forth'; his name is a common word for the sun in post-Vedic literature. The
word u.,as is from the same root.
23See Maurice Bloomfield's treatment of this myth in 'The Marriage of Sarll\lyU, Tvastr's
Daughter,' section 3 of 'Contributions to the Interpretation ~f the Veda' lAOS 15, (1893); the
Puranic versions of this myth have been treated by A. Blau, Puramsche Streifen, ZJJMG 62
(1908).
15
the gigantic bow of the god Siva. Rama performs the required feat accompanied
by his brother Laksmana; the pair (the poet tells us) look like the Asvins, the Indic
divine twins. Rama and Sita are then happily wed, but through the plotted evils of
another household member, Rama is banished to the forest with his devoted Sita
and Laksmana. Stta, a paragon of virtue, is abducted by the monstrous Ravana
and taken to the island of Lanka. Rama and Laksmana rescue her, but Rama
suspects she has been unfaithful to him with Ravana, Sita reassures him of her
purity and is vindicated in the end. She gives birth to twins, Lava and Kusa, who
also reflect aspects of the divine twins. We can see in Sita, then, several features
of the IE sun maiden, despite her associations with agriculture (her name means
"furrow. ")
§ 2. Baltic. The Baltic sun maiden is, like Surya, called "daughter of the
sun" (Latvian saules meita; Lithuanian saules dukterys); like Usas and Surya, she
is the sister and beloved of the divine twins (who are in both Latvian and
Lithuanian "sons of God" or "Sons of Heaven", Latv. Dieva deli, Lith. Dievo
suneliai). Like Usas, the saules meita appears in both the singular and plural
forms.24 As the Vedic sun maiden is carried in the chariot of the divine twins, the
saules meita is a passenger in their boat, sailing across the (heavenly) ocean.
Many of the Latvian poetical dainas celebrate the wedding of the sun
maiden. The saules meita is promised in marriage to the Sons of Heaven, but
given to the moon, paralleling one Vedic version of Surya's betrothal to her
suitors, the Asvins, but subsequent marriage to Soma, who has a lunar identity. 2S
24E.g., numbers 317 and 414 in Michel Jonval's us ChansonsMythologiquu Lettonnes, (Paris:
Librairie Picart, 1929); similar examples occur throughout.
16
In the Latvian dainas, as in the Rg Veda, the identity of the sun maiden's husband
changes in certain verses: another daina portrays her as marrying the twins with the
moon as a kind of "best man." 26 In a third daina the moon abducts the bride from
the twins and takes her "from the Daugava to Germany." 27 Elsewhere, her rescue
from near-death by the divine twins is described; she is said to have been drowning
while washing golden pitchers.P This washing motif, specifically washing items
at the seashore, appears in several other Indo-European sun maiden myths and is
apparently derived from certain aspects of solar observation (e.g., the "golden"
rising or setting of the sun which is dipping into, or "drowning" in, the ocean at
the edge of the world). 29
There are several other features of the Baltic sun myths which link it to
themes in other IE variants - the heavenly mountain, the heavenly ocean, the con-
ception of the sun as an egg or golden apple, the jewels and treasure chest (as
dowry) of the sun maiden, the connection to a sacred tree. These are discussed at
length by Mannhardt and, where relevant, discussed below.
§ 3. Greek. In Greece, the theme of liberation is at the center of the surviv-
ing tale. Here the sun maiden has been transformed into an epic heroine, Helen of
Troy, who has long been recognized as an embodiment of the sun maiden.w Her
25 Ward, Divine Twins, 65.
26Ward,Divine Twins, 65.
27Ward,Divine Twins, 66.
29ward, Divine Twins, 66; Mannhardt, Die lettischen Sonnenmythen, 232.
30E.g., As early as Mannhardt's Die lettischen Sonnenmylhen; for a modem treatment of the
17
epithets reflect her solar nature; she is clothed in shining, immortal garments, she
uses shining materials, she has shining attendants.U Although in Homer she has
the status of a mortal, she is no ordinary woman: tradition holds her to be the
daughter of Zeus. Her epithet t1tlJ, Ov-yaT1)p is cognate with Vedic diva duhita, an
epithet of Usas. Moreover, Helen is closely associated with the Greek incarnation
of the IE divine twins: her brothers are the Dioskouroi.
The Trojan war is focused on the liberation of Helen from the Trojan palace
of King Priam, whose son Paris has abducted her from the house of her husband
Menelaos. Menelaos and his brother Agamemnon lead the Argive host across the
Aegean Sea to retrieve her, in an effort typical of the divine twins, for whom these
two brothers seem to be hypostases.R Helen is returned to Menelaos, who is still
partial to her and unable to kill her despite her infidelity. A later version of the
tale by Stesichoros, possibly based upon early sources, is also concerned with her
fidelity: in this, only a look-alike (etOWhOV) is captured by Paris and raped, while
the real Helen is safe in Egypt, chastity inviolate, awaiting Menelaos' return.33
The object of the latter tale and its parallel versions is clearly the fidelity of
Helen - witness the curse placed upon Stesichoros by the deified Helen for his
blasphemous prior tale about her infidelity. Helen is a most ambiguous female:
evidence for Helen as a sun maiden figure, see Clader, Helen,
3!Clader, Helen, 61.
32See Clader, Helen, 52.
33The primary source here is Plato, Phaedrus 243a; see also Aristide 2:72, 3:150; Dio Chrysoslom
II :178; the scholiastto Lycophron 113; and Euripides' Helen, which IS based upon this theme.
18
here her purity is insisted upon, yet she is blamed by the majority of poets for
starting the Trojan War and for all the evils which befell the Greeks there, and she
is a favorite target of poets for her selfishness and Iasciviousness.H She frequently
figures in stories with men other than Menelaos, which seems to attest to her
promiscuous proclivities; most prominently, she is carried off by Theseus (who, it
must be admitted, is an infamous abductor of women).35 On the other hand there
persist other versions in which she maintains her chastity, and there is even ritual
evidence of a Spartan cult for maidens centering around worship of Helen and pos-
sibly the reenactment of her wedding; this cult, taking Helen as a role model,
praised her domestic virtues and therefore presumably celebrated her chastity and
not her lasciviousness.Jf This again points to the recurrent theme of the
importance of the chastity of the sun maiden and her primordial nature as the" first
wife" to be imitated by human brides.
Yet how can this view of Helen as a wifely paradigm square with the view of
"ravaged Helen" so predominant in the stories of her multiple rapes? There may
be a more satisfactory explanation for Helen's "rape" history, and indeed, we can
postulate both metaphorical and sociological grounds for the abduction element in
the original IE story. Aside from the theory37 regarding the contamination of
34 E.g., Aischylos, Agamemnon 403ff.; Euripides, Hecabe 943ff.
35Clader, Helen, 71, notes his involvements with Ariadne, Phaidra, and Persephone.
36"Nobody winds from her work basket yarn such as Helen produces I Nobody cuts from her pat-
terned elaborate loom such a close-knot weh ... as Helen ... Beautiful, charming, adorable maiden, a
housewife already!" Tbeocritus, Idyll XVITI. Daryl Hine's translation, from his Theocritus: Idylu
and Epigrams (New York: Atheneum, (982), 67-68.
37 See, e.g., Clader, Helen, 71ff., 81ff.
19
Helen's sun-oriented myth with stories of local Mediterranean vegetation goddesses
who undergo seasonal "abductions" (the disappearance of vegetation), Helen's
"rapes" may rather some aspect of the sun's daily disappearance which is likewise
portrayed as an abduction. As mentioned above, the abduction/rape motif is a
genetic component of nearly all of the IE sun maiden myths under consideration
here. Furthermore, such abductions are not only a working metaphor (as we
believe) for the fleeting disappearance of the sunrise glow, they are also a very
ancient, socially legitimate means of capturing a bride; mock-abductions, an out-
growth of real ones, are a part of many early bridal rituals, and since our IE myth
seems closely connected to wedding ritual, perhaps the abduction element should
come as no surprise in the metaphor.
§ 4. Germanic. Several sun maiden figures have been found in medieval
Germanic literature.If In the Middle High German epic Kudrun, the heroine is
promised in marriage to Herwig but is abducted before the wedding by Hartmut
and taken to Ormanie (Normandy). Kudrun refuses to have anything to do with
her abductor and because of this she is turned over to the care of Hartmut's
mother, Gerlind, who forces her to perform difficult and humiliating tasks.
Thirteen years later, she is washing clothes at the seashore when she sees a boat at
sea bearing two knights - her fiance Herwig and her brother Ortwein, who have
come to rescue her. She casts the clothes into the sea and returns to the castle.
The next morning Herwig and Ortwein return, leading a large army. They defeat
38Ward, Divine Twins, 60--79; see also his" An Indo-European Mythological Theme in Germanic
Tradition" in Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, ed. ~rge Cardona, Henry M. Hoenigswald,
and Alfred Senn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvarua Press, 1970), 409-11.
20
the Normands and deliver Kudrun to safety. Hartmut, in the end, receives an
ersatz bride, Hildeburc, who had suffered loyally alongside Kudrun during her tri-
a1s.39
Another Germanic version in the late medieval Icelandic poem, Saul us and
Nicanor, also contains a substitute-maiden motif, in this case, the substitution of a
look-alike figure. Here, the maiden Potentiana is abducted by Matteus of Phrygia
from her home in Bar. Her brother Nicanor and her fiance Saulus take a ship with
twenty men and sail off to liberate her. When they arrive in Matteus' country,
they pass themselves off as musicians, and in this guise they attend the wedding of
the maiden to her abductor and even join in the bridal procession. Furthermore,
they are asked by the unsuspecting groom to act as valets for the wedding couple
and are ordered to be with the newlyweds on their wedding night in the bridal
chamber. Saulus and Nicanor drug the groom's wine and replace the bride with a
clay figure. They then make their escape with the maiden. Even though the Saulus
and Nicanor poem is very late and probably postdates the introduction of classical
sources into Iceland, the tale does not really parallel any known classical source
(being very different from the Helen story and more in line with the Germanic ver-
sions), and for the moment we can accept it tentatively as a third parallel substitu-
tion story.
Likewise, Svanhild of the Scandinavian legend40 is married off to King
39 I am indebted here to H. Scharfe for pointing out the significance of Hildeburc as a substitute
maiden.
4f\. Gud rh t If, mMsmal Snorri's Edda, Saxo Grammalicus, and th. Vlilsunga saga; it also
TVln tuna YO, a , a1lad Ward D·· n."
appears in German historical sources and a low German popular b ; see , IVIM, w,ns,
70).
21
Jormunrek, who is led to believe that his bride is guilty of infidelity and has her
trampled to death by horses. The version in Snorri's Edda has Svanhild washing
her hair in a stream when Jormunrek orders his men to perform the execution.s!
Her death is avenged by her brothers (two, in the earlier Gothic version of the
myth, three in these later versions), though these brothers are in the end slain.42
In Fomaldor saga 27, Svanhild's lineage is given as the daughter of Dagr ("Day")
and Sol ("Sun"), further connecting this figure to other IE sun maidens. Several
variants of this story occur in other Germanic heroic legends, attesting to its
popularity.
§ 5. Celtic. IE sun maiden motifs have been noted in the tales of Irish
Macha43, a complex deity who is often analyzed by scholars as a compilation of

different goddesses with the same name. In many myths, she is one of a trio of
war goddesses, including Badb and M6rrigan, who appear in various animal
guises. Nevertheless, several of her myths reflect what appear to be sun maiden
motifs, like the birthing of twins, association with horses, an association with mar-
riage rituals, a demand to prove herself (although not specifically regarding a ques-
tion of her chastity) at the instigation of her husband, and a disappearance from her
husband (which, it must be admitted, is a generic Irish motif). For example, in
one story, Macha is a mysterious and beautiful woman who visited and then
remained with a widowed peasant Crunnchu. Though Macha wishes to keep her
42Ward, Divine Twins, 71.
43 See, e.g., GrollaneUi, "Yoked Horses: 133ff., and O'Brien, "Dioscaric Elements: tff.
22
presence there a secret from others, she is ultimately forced to appear before an
assembly of all married couples in the town. The king holds Crunnchu hostage
there until she arrives, in order to verify his boast that his woman is swifter than
the king' s best horses. The king demands that Macha, though pregnant and now in
labor, must run a footrace against his two fastest racehorses; Macha, objecting, is
forced to run the race; she wins and immediately gives birth to twins (and curses
the king and the Ulstermenj.v' The parallels in this particular tale are limited to
the contest/wedding theme, the equine characteristics of the protagonist (as pitted
in a race against the king's swiftest horses), and the bearing of twins; other ele-
ments do not seem to occur.
Another Macha story is quite different. King Conchobar and his men, while
on a hunt, are the guests of Macha, who is pregnant, and her husband. Conchobar
declares it his right to sleep with the wife of every man in his kingdom, but since
Macha is pregnant, she is not forced to have intercourse with him but only to lie
with him. In the morning, a boy (Cuchulainn) is found in Conchobar's cloak; in
one version a mare outside the door gives birth to twin foals the moment the
woman delivers her child. The house and the couple disappear, and the king gives
the boy to his sister, who declares that she will treat him exactly like her own son
Conall (a reminder, perhaps, of the inverse situation in the Saranyu tale, where the
substitute-figure is given Saranyu's children to raise and an issue is made of the
fact that she does not treat them as her own.). As Ford has pointed out,45 ConalI
44 See "Ard Macha" and "Emain Macha" in Edward Gwynn, 00. and trans., TheMerrictll Dind-
shenchas (1924); reprint, 4 vols. (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute (or
Advanced Studies, 1991) 124-131 and 309-311, respectively.
45palrick Ford, The Mabinogi (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977), 8.
23
and Cuchulainn are, in the text, impliedly twins; Ford further notes how these
"twins" exhibit typical dioscuric contradistinctions, one being victorious over mor-
ta! opponents, the other over supernatural ones. The twin foals are likewise clas-
sified, one excelling in earthly greatnesses, and the other one supernatural.
There are several other figures in Irish mythology who seem to be connected
with our sun maiden myth. Aine is apparently a sun deity, known as wife either of
Echdae, a sun-god in horse-form (ech "horse"), or of Mannanan, the Irish sea god
(sometimes she is instead his daughter). Her name apparently means "brightness"
or "radiance'v'"; she is worshipped on 51. John's night (a midsummer ritual)47 at
Knockainey, Co. Limerick, where men circle her mound (sid) at Cnoc Aine carry-
ing poles with flaming bunches of straw and hay tied to them.48 In the district of
Lissan, Co. Derry, she is regarded as a lady who was taken away from her hus-
band's side at night by the "wee folk" and never returned; a vanishing maiden
motif.49 The goddess Blain was born as a mortal and married an Irish king, but
her previous god-husband, Midir, sought to reclaim her and by various devices he
ultimately did; the two metamorphose into swans (another common sun-deity trans-
formation) as they flyaway. Furthermore, Midir fools Blain's earthly husband by
creating duplicate images of her (some sixty of them!), one of which is chosen as
46 Royal Irish Academy, Dictionary of the Irish Language, Dublin (1983),s.v. aiM; .the word also
means "swiftness", a fact which T. O'Rahilly takes as further evidence of her solar ongm; see Early
Irish History and Mythology (1946; reprint, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976),
290.
47 O'Rahilly, Early Irish History, 288.
48 O'Rabilly, Early Irish History, 288.

49 Daragh Smyth, A Guide to Irish Mythology (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1988), 15.
24
real by the deceived human; the creation of a duplicate female brings to mind
similar stories in Indic, Greek and Germanic sources and raises the question of
whether a common origin for this motif should be sought. A final example may be
in the story of the Irish god-hero Mongan, who has various wives seeming to be
sun-maiden types: one, Dubh Lacha, is coveted by and ultimately given to the
king of Leinster; Mongan still desires her and uses his magical powers to change
an old hag into a young woman, whom he puts into the king's bed as the substitute
female, while he successfully makes his getaway with Dubh Lacha. It must be
readily admitted that shape-changing is a common motif in Irish literature, 50 but
when it is found in conjunction with other IE sun maiden motifs, it is hard not to
consider these select Irish tales as additional evidence of an ancient, inherited sun
maiden myth.
The Welsh Mabinogi echoes many of the same themes in the tale of Rhian-
non, a maiden who is won in a contest by Pwyll, reminiscent of other contests for
sun maidens' hands. Here, Rhiannon appears before Pwyll as a vision, dressed in
gold and riding a white horse. Try as they might, none of Pwyl!'s men can catch
up with her, and Pwyll himself finally manages to stop her; the two agree to
marry. Rhiannon bears Pwyll a son, Pryderi, who mysteriously disappears, and
Rhiannon is accused of having done away with him. She is punished by having to
carry passengers on her back like a horse. The story continues with a neighboring
lord, Teymon, who has had a similar disappearing problem - each year his mare
50 And especially so with Mongan: "He will be in the shape of every beast both on the azure sea
and on land, he will be a dragon before hosts, he will be a wolf of every great forest .• {Translated
by KuDO Meyer, The Voyage of Bran, Son ofFebal, ro the Land of the Livmg (1895; repnnt, New
York: AMS Press, 1972),24-25).
25
foals but the offspring vanishes. 51 When one year Teymon vigilantly catches the
thief (a monster) about to steal the newborn foal, he overcomes him and recovers
not only the foal, but Rhiannon's son as well. 52 Teyrnon and his wife raise the
child as their own; eventually the boy and the colt are given to Rhiannon and
Pwyll. Clearly, Rhiannon's hippomorphic aspect clearly governs her punishment,
wherein she is forced into duty as a horse; the foal foster-child brings to mind the
adventures of Saranyu, who mates in horse-form with Vivasvant and begets the
Asvins ("horse-possessing", from SkI. asva, "horse").
Also in the Mabinogi is the tale of Branwen, who is married off to an Irish
king, Matholwch, by her two brothers, Bendigeidfran and Manawy. Matholwch
forces his bride to act as a cook for the court and otherwise humiliates her. Bran-
wen sends a message to her brothers, using a starling which she has trained, and
the two brothers set out across the sea to rescue her (Bendigeidfran, a giant, simply
wades across). Here, then, the story is inverted: instead of the typical story of a
husband (or the divine twins) rescuing the maiden from an abductor, we have two
loving brothers rescuing her from an evil husband. The framework of the story,
however, is a clear borrowing: O'Brien has pointed out parallels between the
language of the Mabinogi concerning the rescue of Branwen and the Homeric
account of the Atreidae's pursuit of Helen of Troy.53
51Both Pryderi and the foal disappear on May's Eve. See O'Brien, Dioscuric Elements, 126.
52Cf. Cuchulainn's hirth simultaneous with that of a fnal outside Macha's door.
530'Brien, Dioscuric Elements, 128.
26
§6. Survivals in Non-IE Language Areas. Survivals in Estonian54 and Fin-
. h55 .
ms echo the story rather exactly. These survivals have been seen as borrowings
from neighboring IE cultures, as are IE linguistic intrusions upon these Baltic sea
cultures. However, there is another point of view, discussed in 1930 by Krappe,
that certain components of the divine twin myth are so ancient as to predate the
separations of the IE people from a substratum which underlies many of the
peoples in territories into which the IE people later spread. Whatever the truth, the
IE version of the story can be distinguished from indigenous myths by its
peculiarities, which are enumerated below.
l.C. Summary of Motifs in the Indo-European Myth
Many of the above myths, or aspects of them, have been loosely or directly
associated with the IE sun maiden, though to my knowledge no study has yet con-
sidered all of these versions as a group. Therefore it is initially important to
categorize the prominent features of the myth based upon this more complete col-
lection of materials.
I. Her role as a sun-figure. "daughter of the sun" or "daughter of the sky" is
apparent in Indic (Siirya as duhitt1 st.ryasya, Saranyu as wife of the sun-god Vivas-
vant), Baltic (the Latvian saules meita and Lithuanian saules dukterys), and Greek
54Jaan Puhvel "Filles du soleil: folklore eslonien et mylhologie indoeuropeenoe," Studi es in

Honor of AnI;Oras (Stockholm; Vaha Eesti, 1965): 167-J.77; reprint, Analeeta Indoeuropaea
(lonsbruck: Institut fUr Sprachwissenschaft der Universitat Inosbruck, 1981), 66-76.
55The Finnish epic Kalevala contains certain eleme~tswhicb. parallellhe IE my1h;. lh~ are dis-
cussed below, Chapter 2. See also Richard Garbe, Die schone Jungfrau von Pohjola 1D
Festschriftfur Ad. Bezzenberger(Gallingen: Vandeohoek & Ruprecht, 1921),39-43, who
reconsiders this as a nature-mylh.
27
(Helen's alternate genealogy from Helios56). She is a "daughter of the sky"
(Vedic Usas is diva duhiui, Greek Helen is tub, (Jtry61TTJP, the Lithuanian sun
maiden is dieva dukryte). She is also a dawn goddess (again, Usas; here we must
also consider her counterparts Gk. 'Hw, and Lat. Aurora, among others. The
Leukippides were also considered in this regard by Eitrem.J? In the Indic, Greek
and Baltic material, this figure appears both in the singular and in the plural. The
portrayal of the maiden as a sun figure, however, is not prominent in the Celtic or
Germanic material.
2. Her equine characteristics. The hippornorphic aspect of IE sun deities is
a well-established phenomenon, and the centrality of the horse in IE ritual clearly
dovetails with equine metaphors for movement of celestial bodies. Like dioscuric
hippomorphism, many IE sun-maiden figures share this proclivity. Examples
include Saranyir's transformation into a mare, after which she mates with stal-
lionized Vivasvant (and the ensuing progeny - the "horse-possessing" Asvins);
Irish Macha proves herself a better "racehorse" than the king's two best racers58;
Welsh Rhiannon is forced to act like a horse by bearing passengers and has a child
whose "twin" is a foal, As Ford and O'Brien have noted, Macha and Rhiannon
may be related to Epona, a horse-goddess and fertility deity known among con-
tinental Celts and worshipped by Roman cavalry. 59
56Photius, Bibliotheka 149a; Ptolemaeus Cbennus, Hist. Nov. 189.
57S. Eitrem, Die gal/lichen Zwillinge bei den Griechen, Videnskabsselskabet i Christiania Skrifter,
II. Historisk-filosofisk Klasse, 1902,00.2. Christiania ([Oslo): Breggers, 1903), 13ff.
58rn other versions (see Ford, Mabinogi, 8), twin horses are actually born of Macha.
59Ford, Mabinogi, 5; O'Brien, "Dioscuric Elements," t21ff.
28
3. Portrayal as a maiden ready for marriage. Nearly all of the above figures
fall into this category. Reference is sometimes made to the dowry of the girl, or
her "treasures" - e.g., the treasures of Helen, the wealth of Vedic Usas and the
Baltic sun maiden's treasure chest from which she bestows gifts to the forest trees
as decorations for her wedding. 60
4. A contest or test for the bride's hand is held, usually at the house of the
father; either a difficult test is posed for the suitors to pass, or the maiden is
allowed free choice among them. The contestltest motif is apparent in the above-
cited stories of Surya, S'ita, Helen, the Latvian saules meita, and Welsh Rhiannon.
Irish Macha herself, not her suitor, participates in a contest (the horse-race), which
may be a vestige of the more common motif.
S. A large, widely-celebrated wedding is another frequent feature; Saranyu,
Surya, Kudrun, Potentiana, Svanhild, Rhiannon, Branwen, and the Baltic sun
maidens are all brides. There is speculation that there were annual ritual celebra-
tions of the wedding of the sun maiden as part of a springtime ceremony; such
celebrations have been considered as the foundation of European May Day celebra-
tions, with features like tree decorating (the Maypole) and auctioning off bride-
figures. 61 Such ritual celebrations (in India, Greece, and, according to West,
everywhere from Russia to Ireland) seem to have connections with both the grow-
ing summer sun and with springtime weddings. The Indic reenactment of her wed-
ding by brides, as part of the human wedding ritual, firmly cemented the myth to
human social institutions, ensuring its survival. The ritual aspects of the myth, and
60 Mannhardt, "Die 1ellischen Sonnenmythen," 219.

/
/ 61M.L. West, Immortal Heun (London: Bedford College, 1975), 12f.
29
the question of whether similar ritual ties exist in other Indo-European traditions,
will be discussed in various contexts throughout the remainder of this work.
6. The bride is abducted or suddenly and mysteriously absent in the stories
of Saranyu, SIta, Helen, the saules meita, Kudrun, Potentiana, SvanhiJd, Rhian-
non, and Macha. The abducted maiden in usually held in a fortress or a tower. A
case will be made that in many myths the abduction of a sun-maiden figure
represents the fleeting disappearance of the sunrise glow upon or shortly after the
appearance of her husband, the sun. Care must be taken to distinguish this motif in
the context of this myth from other disappearing maidens, e.g., the abduction or
absence of other maidens who are primarily vegetation deities. These are a com-
mon worldwide phenomenon, representing agricultural and not strictly solar
cycles. Such myths should not be confused with the myth delineated here, despite
superficial similarities (e.g., Persephone, the Greek maiden abducted by Hades;
vegetation fails because her mother Demeter, the grain goddess, mourns her
absence, but there is no real connection to the sun maiden myths described above).
The confusion of these figures becomes especially problematic in the Mediter-
ranean area, where fertility deities proliferate.

7. A substitute figure is in some versions left in place of the abducted bride;
we consider this look-alike female to characterize the evening sunset glow, based
on strong Indic evidence as discussed in the next chapter. For Saranyii, a savama
is left behind to deceive Vivasvant; Helen's eLOwhoP serves Paris in her stead at
Troy in certain non-Homeric versions; Potentiana's fiance leaves a clay figure in
the bed under the covers to fool her drunk abductor. In all these cases (and others,
30
to be described in Chapter 2), the purpose of the substitute figure is to deceive the
sun maiden's husband or abductor; the device works equally well to make the hus-
band (in Saranyu's case) believe his wife is still there, though she is away, and to
make the abductor (in the other two cases) think his prize is still there, though she
has escaped to safety. Furthermore, in three of the tales, the child(ren) of the sun
maiden are entrusted to the care of the substitute: Saranyu' s savarna is entrusted
with Saranyii's children, and Macha's king's sister acts as a "substitute" mother in
Macha's unexplained absence. In the Welsh version, Rhiannon's child and the foal
born simultaneously are given to Teymon's wife to raise. The substitute female
implicitly or explicitly promises to treat the child(ren) as her own; this promise is
fulfilled in the Irish and Welsh versions and transgressed in the Vedic one.
8. A close association of the heroine with the IE divine twins is a major dis-
tinguishing feature apparent in nearly every version of the myth. She is seen as
lover of the twins (Silrya, Helen, the saules meita/saules dukterys, Kudrun, Svan-
hild, and Potentiana, with the twins metamorphosed in both cases to a "fiance and
brother" pair, in an apparent aversion to polyandry). She is the mother of the
twins in the cases of Saranyii, Macha, Rhiannon, and Branwen. Though her
relationship to the twins varies (depending upon the features retained or elaborated
upon in each myth), the sun maiden is consistently depicted with twins, usually
recognizable as the IE divine twins.

9. The rescue and liberation of the sun maiden, frequently by the divine
twins. Therefore we see Helen's rescue either by Menelaos and Agamemnon, as
hypostases of the Dioskouroi,62 in the Homeric version; in non-Homeric versions
62Clader,Helen, 52.
31
where she is kidnapped by Theseus, she is rescued by the Dioskouroi in person.
The Baltic sun maidens are rescued by the divine twins, as are all Germanic
maidens; SiUiis rescued by two sets of twin-types, human and monkey.
10. The cruel stepmother/mistreater. Ward noticed that in several cases we
have the deliverance of the sun maiden to the mother of the abductor, and the fact
that she is forced to perform humiliating tasks or otherwise tormented. He cites
the Ramayana, where Slta is tormented by Ravana's servants; as well as a parallel
Bengali tale of Bhootoom and Boodhu, two disparaged women rescued by a set of
heavenly brothers falling in a boat from the sky. In Germanic tradition, the most
obvious example is Kudrun, who is cruelly tormented by her abductor's mother
and assigned to do the royal laundry. Branwen's enforced servitude as the court
cook at the instigation of her Irish husband is another parallel. We might add to
these the Macha story in which she is forced to race against the king's horses, as
well as Welsh Rhiannon's punishment, in which she is put into public service,
forced to perform the duties of a horse. This motif is likely derived from the
ancient, universal practice of punishing (by ostracism, verbal abuse, or even death)
the mothers of twins, a custom which survived into the modem era.63 Mothers of
twins were assumed to have been unfaithful to their husbands, resulting in the
double birth _ an accusation which is perhaps the foundation of the following
motif.
11. Her chastity is questioned and she is proven innocent in several of the
tales. Note Vivasvant's concern in the Pu~ic versions for Saranyu's chastity, as
63Such a tendency is documented by Harris, Htavmly Twins, 1(}-23.
32
well as the legendary blinding of the poet Stesichoros for "blaspheming" Helen by
saying she was raped by Paris, when the "proper" version (as dictated by immortal
Helen, the implication goes) is that Helen was kept inviolate in Egypt for
Menelaos. SIta is likewise blamed by Rama, but she swears her fidelity to him and
is proven true by an act of Sri Laksmi, In Germanic, Svanhild's chastity is ques-
tioned and, though innocent, she is killed.
12. She is connected with the heavenly/earthly sea. The sun maiden (e.g.,
Indic (Sita), Greek, Baltic, Germanic) is frequently rescued from a place across the
sea, which (depending upon the myth) may have heavenly or earthly aspects.
Another common motif is the sun maiden washing various things - pitchers, clo-
thing, her hair - or even drowning in the sea or in a river, or riding in a boat
upon the sea. Macha's secret identity, which she attempted to hide from Crund-
chu, as the daughter of Sainreth mac Imbath ("Nature of the Sea") reveals this
characteristic in the Celtic world, too.64 Ward also notes a Bengali parallel to this
washing motif, as well as a Romanian variant in which a cruel mother-in-law sends
her to the river to wash wool, and two wanderers (God and S1. Peter, as a dios-
curie pair) appear to help her. 65
13. Husband's status as mortal/immortal is ambiguous. Menelaos is a mor-
tal but is taken off to Elysium; the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite relates the story of
the dawn goddess EOs CHw,), who (here the tables are reversed) abducts a Trojan
boy , Tithonus , whom she loves. She begs Zeus that he be made immortal but
64000 might consider the similar depiction of SIla:as an incarnation of sea-bern ~mi; Rimaylll)a.
7,17,35.
33
forgets to ask that he be given eternal youth - leaving him a curious mixture of
immortal (living forever) and mortal (aging and becoming decrepit).66 In a Welsh
version, the hero Pwyll likewise has an encounter with Arawn, the lord of the
Otherworld, and, though he is mortal, he is privileged to partake of his kingdom.
lndic Vivasvant apparently has both mortal and immortal characteristics; his spe-
cial case is discussed in detail in Chapter 2.
In the following chapters, the majority of these motifs are discussed in three
main groups, for which I have used the convenient subdivisions of Indic mythology
- namely, the myths of the three principal Indic sun maiden figures, because for
the most part they exhibit different combinations of the above-listed motifs.
Occasional areas of overlap (where a particular motif appears in more than one
lndic myth) are clearly indicated in the chapters below.) Using the natural subdivi-
sions of the Indic sun-maiden myths not only allows for treatment of a large num-
ber of motifs in a reasonable number of chapters, it also emphasizes the importance
of the Indic material, which has not yet been fully examined from the perspective
of this myth. The value of this organizational scheme is further confirmed by the
quality of the Indic material, which in many ways contains the fullest treatments of
many features of the original IE myth.
66 In fact, Aphrodite herself takes on a mortal lover, Anchises, and this is the actual. subject of the
Homeric Hymn. Aphrodite appears to have inherited much ~m the IE sun IDJUde~1D Greek, as
Deborah Dickmann Boedecker has clearly shown (Aphrodite s Entry Into Greek Epic, Leiden: E.1.
Brill, 1974); this is discussed in detail below, Chapter 3.
34
I.D. Prior Surveys
A brief history of the prior work on this subject is pertinent here, as the fol-
lowing authors will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
Mannhardt's detailed study Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (1875) brought to
light evidence from Latvian and Lithuanian folk tales and folk songs for a sun
maiden figure, among other elements of a sun-mythology he recognizes as IE in
large part, although he also finds analogues in Egyptian and Polynesian mythology,
which reflect the universal underpinnings of this myth. His research showed that
the myth of the "daughter of the sun", the Baltic sun maiden, shared many features
with Indic, Greek and Slavic versions. He compares her to Vedic Usas, as well as
Greek Helen of Troy, noting broader parallels between their escorts, the divine
twins. Mannhardt's principal contribution to our subject is the adduction of the
Baltic evidence for a sun maiden figure, though his series of lengthy articles under
this title adds much to other areas of the features of IE and universal sun myths as
well.
Harris's 1906 study, The Cult of the Divine Twins, is interesting for the
anthropological angle it takes to the study of dioscuric myths; he compiles
worldwide evidence, tracing their disguised survivals into contemporary Christian
times. Of particular interest is his observation of a modern Greek sun maiden
story in which two brothers, Sisinnius and Sisinnodorus, rescue their sister from a
tower wherein she has shut herself to escape a ghoul who wants to devour her
child; the brethren, riding winged horses, ultimately capture the ghoul hiding on
the seashore.
35
Pisani''? (1928) brought to light the theme of the substitution motif in the
Greek and Indic versions, exploring the parallelism between Helen's substitute
erOWAOV and Indic Saranyii's substitute sava~ll. Pisani examines the Greek texts
containing the stories of Helen's "lowAov and attempts to establish derivational
relationships between them. He then examines the Rgvedic story of Saranyu and
elicits several parallels, not only between the female figures but also between the
Greek and Indic divine twins. Pisani believed that the Saranyu/Helen figure was
originally a dawn goddess and that her look-alike "non pub essere che una rosea
nube"; for only a rosy cloud has the same color and aura of dawn. Pisani even
arrives at a common etymology for Saranyii/Helen, although this must be rejected
due to recent Greek epigraphical evidence. 68
A.H. Krappe's 1930 Mythologie Universelle puts the Indo-European findings
10 a broader setting, demonstrating parallels to several common IE themes in
various other world mythologies. Krappe thus emphasizes that the basic elements
of many myths once considered to be exclusively IE also occur outside the IE
cultural areas - in East Asia, Polynesia, Africa, the Near East, and South
Arnerica.v? Krappe considers such common ideas to be independently generated in
these places,70 with the Indo-Europeans developing their own distinctive tradition,
traceable through the comparative method, from these basic universal notions.
Krappe rightly comments that, within a single historical tradition such as IE, the
67 "Elena e 1'.i&JAov," 476-99.
68 See Chapter2.
69 Krappe, Mylhologie Ilniverselle, 65-72.
70 Krappe, Mylhologie Universel/e. 8(}-81.
36
key to understanding the unusual features of many stories - e.g., the peculiarities
of Dioscuric legends - is to use the proven comparative method (which, as he
noted, prominent scholars of his day were not yet doing, despite its availability).
It is now also necessary, in light of Krappe's own work, to extend this method out-
side the framework of Indo-European into world mythology as a kind of counter-
weight, to help check the accuracy of our definitions of a particular theme or entity
as "Indo-European." As we shall see, Krappe's point is well taken concerning our
subject here, since myths concerning the IE sun maiden and her twin brothers do
find parallels outside the IE parameters. Pointing out a South American Indian
divine twin/maiden myth, Krappe concludes that it is impossible to derive, say, the
Greco- Roman dioscuric myth from an IE source, because this myth is "commune 11
la plupart des races humaines ... [n]ul doute que les Mediterraneens Ie connaissaient
aussi, longtemps avant les premieres invasions indo-europeennes." 71 Neverthe-
less, it is not fallacious to define certain myths as "Indo-European" if they contain
in common an unusual set of motifs which do not appear together as a group out-
side the IE world, and this is surely the case in the distinctive IE divine twin and
sun maiden myths we will encounter here.
The Germanic angles of the IE sun maiden problem were explored by Donald
Ward (1968), whose work (The Divine Twins: An Indo-European Myth in
Germanic Tradition) contains a fine survey of the evidence for the IE Dioscuri in
tandem with their sun maiden. In his search for Germanic dioscuric traditions, he
shows such figures as Kudrun and SvanhiidiSunhilda as evolutions of the IE sun
71 Krappe, Mythologie Ijmversetle, 81.
37
maiden, and several other Germanic princesses and ladies in distress seem also to
reflect the essentials of this myth of the liberation of the sun maiden by twin
brothers. Ward, however, does not discuss Pisani's contribution to the subject and
the parallel substitution themes at work not only in Greek and Indic but also in the
Icelandic tale of Potentiana, which Ward elucidates for other reasons. Neverthe-
less, Ward's study remains to date one of the most complete and informative on
the IE sun maiden myths.
M.L. West (l975) reconsidered Helen's relationship to the Baltic and Indic
sun maidens in light of ritual evidence for a cult of Helen in Sparta, where her
marriage to Menelaos seems to have been celebrated in an annual ritual. West
finds other IE rituals, culled from Mannhardt's work, which may be related:
Mayday rituals including tree-decoration and a springtime ritual wedding-auction
similar to Helen's unusual engagement. West also notes the parallelism of the
Leukippides, two girls (twins?) abducted from their wedding by the Dioscuri; this
was also considered by Harris (1896).

Linda Lee Clader (1976) provides an in-depth analysis of the Greek Helen,
viewing her as a composite figure with IE roots and extensive subsequent influence
from local non-IE Mediterranean goddesses. Clader looks at the IE background of
several of the motifs and provides a survey of epithets used for Helen and an
etymological examination of the name 'ENl"'l. She concludes that several of the
elements involved show non-IE Mediterranean influence. However, based on
evidence accumulated herein, it appears that many of Clader's "non-IE, Mediter-
ranean" features do actually reflect an IE inheritance when all of the motifs
enumerated above are considered.
38
O'Brien (1982) expands upon Ward's work, exploring Celtic examples like
Macha and Rhiannon; he investigates the evidence for an Indo-European horse-
goddess figure. He also investigates two motifs not enumerated above , the
relationship of this figure with builders, and the presence of an unwanted suitor
(e.g., Conchobar).
Grottanelli (1986), like Ward, considers Indic $ita to be related to our IE sun
maiden myth, although he primarily holds to the traditional explanation of $ita as
an agricultural deity; there is no real conflict here, as the boundary between the
two types is frequently hazy, with good reason.72 Grottanelli's study concentrates
on the "blame/praise function" - the accusation of unchastity against the sun
maiden and her subsequent vindication - in the myths of Sita, Helen, Macha, and
others. Because Grottane!li's sources are limited (for example, he does not
examine any alternate versions of the myths of Saranyu, Sita, or Macha, which
contain much valuable information), his conclusions about parallels in the myths
seem at times a bit too far-reaching for the material. Nevertheless, the article
rightly emphasizes one of the main motifs of our sun maiden myth, the accusation
of unchastity.
72 See Wolfgang Pax "Zum RiimBYlU)a" ZDMG90 (1936): 616-625; Pax agrees with P'. YogI.
rDornroschen-Thalia" Festschrift fur W'inhold, 1896, 214ff.) on what IS petbaps an obVIOUS pomt,
that sun-myths and vegetation-myths are closely connected with each other ID myths aboul the
seasons.
39
SUMMARY
There appears to be a clearly defined Indo-European myth about a sun-
maiden, or daughter of the sun, and her marriage, subsequent dis-
appearance/abduction, and rescue by the husband from a far-away place, usually
across a sea. Other more unusual motifs also show up regularly, such as the sub-
stitution of a look-alike female figure during the bride's absence; a questioning of
her chastity; hippomorphosis of the bride, groom, or offspring; an association with
the divine twins (as lover, mother, or sister); and cruel treatment by her step-
mother or another figure. The myth is ostensibly rooted in a solar allegory, des-
cribing the morning sunrise glow as a beautiful maiden readying herself to marry
her husband (usually the sun or the morning star); it describes her quick departure,
the substitution of a look-alike (the evening sunset glow) and the maiden's restora-
tion (the following morning). Although various components of this myth have
long been recognized, the motif list compiled in detail above appears to be the first
comprehensive one; this will be used as a lens through which to focus the material
examined in subsequent chapters.

This study emphasizes the Indic sun-maiden figures, on the hypothesis that
they will illuminate other IE myths. The Indic material is rich enough to deserve
the closest examination, and the three Indic sun maidens who are closely and
individually examined in each of the next three chapters provide an easy organiza-
tional scheme in which to discuss the above-enumerated motifs, since they are
divided fairly neatly among the three Indic figures. This scheme has the additional
advantage of allowing US to draw clear and immediate thematic parallels between
Indic and other IE myths wherever possible, by collecting in one chapter all pas-
40
sages which express the same motifs found in the Indic myths.
41
CHAPTER 2
THE S~ MOTIFS:
DISAPPEARING BRIDES AND SUBSTITUTE FEMALES
Summary:
2.A. Saranya: A Survey
2.B. Disappearing Brides and Substitute Females
2. C. A Question of Chastity
2.D. A Mortal Husband
2. E. Equine Characteristics
As can be seen from Chapter l 's cursory comparison of motifs surrounding
the wedding of the sun maiden - followed by the bride's disappearance, substitu-
tion of another female figure, the bride's return or rescue, and association with
twins - the correspondences between the essential peculiarities of the myths are
very exact, despite differing treatments of the details. This rather extraordinary
correspondence compels a closer examination of the texts and variants of the
myths, for the dual purpose of illuminating confusing elements of the tales by
cross-comparison and attempting by this wider study to evaluate the significance of
this myth.
For several reasons, the most fruitful story to begin with is the Indic sun
maiden Saranyii. The Vedic version is archaic; even though it appears in the com-
paratively late tenth book of the Rg Veda (RV), the text is, by comparison, one of
the earliest versions of the tale, probably on a par, chronologically, with the
Homeric version, if not earlier than it. Versions of the Vedic text, along with
elaborations, appear in numerous later texts: the Brhad Devata, the Nirukta, and
some fourteen of the Puranas. Finally, most importantly, the Vedic version con-
tains all of the intriguing elements enumerated above, and so makes a suitable
42
point of entry into the analysis of the other Indic sun maiden stories and the entire
IE complex of related myths.
2.A. Saranyu: A Survey
The sole Rgvedic account of Saranyu's adventures is told in RV 10.17.1-2:
tvasta duhitre vahatum krnoti

tadam visvam bhuvan~m' ;ameti
yamasya mata paryuhyamana
maho jaya vivasvato nanasa (J)
apagahann amitam martyebhyah

krtvi savamam adadur vivasvate
utasvinav abharad yat tad asld
ajahad u dva mithuna saranytd: (2)
Tvastr holds a wedding for his daughter;

All this world comes together.
The mother of Yama, the wedded wife
of the great Vivasvant, disappeared.
They hid away the immortal one from mortals;

Having created a similar-female (sava17Ja), they gave (her) to
Vivasvant.
And she bore the two Asvins, when this
Had happened, and she left behind two twins: Saranyii.!
I Translations from S811Skril and Greek texts are my own unless otherwise indicated. The rest of
hymn 10.17 contains invocations to Pusan and Sarasvati, Soma and Brhaspsti, all as part of a
funerary invocation. Though the two verses here may seem unrelated to the rest of the hymn, the
connection appears to he Yama, who is connected with death, and therefore the Sar&I)yU story may
he included primarily because it refers 10 his birth. See Oldenherg, J!.gwda Texikritisdu: IUUi
exegetische Noten, (1909; reprint, Lichtenstein: Kraus-Thomson Organization, Ltd., 1970) al
X.I7.
43
The unusual structure of these verses with the subject unnamed until the last
word is perhaps their most striking feature, and this has been the subject of dis-
pute. According to Bloomfield, the ellipses in the verses of the expected clarifying
name "Saranyil" can only be explained if we take these two verses as a
brahmodya-, a riddle intended for priestly competition during the soma sacrifice.s
In such a riddle, the two stanzas would act as a sort of quiz for the brahmins,
giving a list of characteristics of the central figure, which prompts an interlocutor
to respond with the correct answer, "SaTa\IYu." Oldenberg, however, has rejected
this interpretation.J in the belief that such riddle-type formulations are not neces-
sarily linked to brahmanic contests and that certain evidence for brahmodya-
contests is almost nonexistent. The exact nature of the use of these verses is not of
critical importance for our purpose here: it is certainly clear, in any case, that RV
10.17.1-2 refers laconically to a well-known myth whose details would be familiar
to the audience.
Despite the rather cryptic wording of the passage, we can discern the basic
plot of the story. Tvastr, the artificer god, arranges a wedding for his daughter,
who is to marry "the great" Vivasvant, a sun-figure; for this, all beings gather. 4
Sometime after the ceremony (since she is paryuhyamlJnlJ., "led home as a bride")
2See Bloomfield, "Marriage of Saranyu," 173.
3 "Zur Geschichte des Worts brdhman-" (t916); reprint, Kleine Schriften, vol. 2 (Wiesbadeo:
Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1%7): 1136ff.
4Co nding to the RV sa"",li here, a brief AV passage citing this verse offers a puzzling vi
ydti,:"=h Weber (lndische Studien 17: 310ff.), reading as "auseinander stieben", cites as ",~f in
thi s verse 0 a repulsisJVeact of cosmic incest between Tvastr
..
and his daughter. This theme
. .
IS dis-
f
ussed •• Bloomfield ("Marriage of Sarlll)yU," 183) notes, however, VI ya does
c presen IIy, bel ow. no .' . '. throu h "
h thi meaning in the Rg Veda but IS always transiuve, meamng pass g .
no I appear t0 ave s .
44
Saranyu mysteriously disappears, because "they" (presumably the imrnortalsjf
whisk her away from him, keeping this immortal one away from the mortals,
although their motive for this is not immediately transparent. In her place they put
a savarna "a look-alike", "one with similar appearance" (one with the same (sa-)
varna- (appearance, color), which was apparently intended to fool Vivasvant in

Saranyii's absence. We are not informed about Vivasvant's reaction in this pas-
sage, though later texts elaborate on this point. The last clue to the identity of the
subject is that she bore the two Asvins and, "abandonedlleft behind tajahnd) two
twins. II
The term ajahad raises some questions. Grassmann'' lists several meanings
for the verb ha-; its possible uses in our context are; "(I) jem. [A.] verlassen, im
Stiche lassen" and "(6) entlassen, gebaren." Geldner and Bloomfield take the first
option and have Saranyii abandoning her children; Lommel, however, takes the lat-
ter, translating it as "hinterliess," so that she "left [them] behind (for posterity)."
The proper meaning of the verb in this passage hinges upon the interpretation of
another troublesome term, dva mithuna, "two twins," which has variously inter-
preted as "one pair of twins"? as well as "two pairs of twins. "S Oldenberg has
5Sayana' s interpretation.
6 WiJrterbach zam Rigveda (Leipzig: F .A. Brockhaus, IS73), 5, v. 1uJ.
7 E .g., G eIdner ("d'ie Zwei , die ein Paar waren"), tJlking after raska 12,10; see also Delbriiek,
Altindische Syntax, 101, and BlUgmann, Grundriss 2,2, 462.
8 Lik ' BI mfi Id ("Marriage of SaraI,lyU,"173): "She abandoned, you know, two pairs ... ";
I ewise, 00 e 5) "Es hin Ii aI .
"Ved' h Einz.elstudien" ZDMG 99 (1950): 24 , ter ess so ZWel
H erman 1.0 mme I ( isc e 25)"S . Ii di .
"'R 0th("D' ie S ag evonDschemschid,"ZDMG4(1850):4 : aranJu ess eZWC1
P aare...,
Zwillingspaare zuruck."
45
argued convincingly that dVd mithuna most likely refers to two pairs of twins, not
only because mithuna alone would indicate one pair of twins, making the dva
redundant, but also because of the occurrence of a term mithunah trOyal} which
appears to mean "three pairs." (RV 4.45.1).9 Nevertheless, before continuing this
problem of translating ajahad, we must look at yet another problem: Assuming
two sets of twins are intended by dVd mithuna, who are the first set of twins?
We can gather from the passage that before Saranyu bore the Asvins, she had
already become the mother of Yama. Later texts specify what is implied but not
spelled out in the Rgvedic text: that Yama was not born alone but was one of a
pair of twins; his name even means "twin." This pair, in later Indic tradition, is
often understood to be Yama and his twin sister Yami, and with good reason, since
the Rg Veda itself knows of the twins Yama and Yami.!" It is therefore possible
that these are the "twins" meant in our passage. However, from an Indo-European
perspective, there is good reason to understand Yama's original twin as a brother
_ namely, Manu. Evidence to this effect will be discussed below in a more
appropriate context, but in brief, the idea is based on the presence in IE mythology
of a mythic pair of twins simply called "Man" and "Twin" - which is the literal
meaning of the terms manu ("man") and yama ("twin"). Bloomfield notes that
although Yama and Manu are hardly ever associated with each other in the
Samhitas, Brahmanas, or Siitras, there is evidence in the Brahmanas and Srauta
Sutras that they are considered children of the same father, as is shown in their
901denberg, "Nolen,"underX.17.1-2.
10 RV 10.10.
46
patronymics: Manu Vaivasvata, Yama Vaivasvata.U Although this fact, coupled
with the IE evidence for Yama-Manu as twins, may lead one to postulate them as
the original twin children of Saranyii, there simply is not enough evidence in the
brief RV passage to resolve this question of their identity.
Returning to our original problem, if we interpret dv& mithuna as "two (pairs
of) twins," viz., (1) the Asvins and (2) Yama-Yami or Yama-Manu, we are logi-
cally forced to accept here the second meaning of ajahad, "left behind (for
posterity)": it cannot mean "abandoned" because Saranyii only abandoned the
first set, Yama and his twin; she did not abandon the Asvins, who are born sub-
sequent to her disappearance. Even if, on the other hand, as with Geldner, we
interpret the term as signifying "one pair of twins," and we then have the option of
taking ajahad as "abandoned," this is still only true if we look at Yama as a mem-
ber of the first set of twins. Either way, the end result is that Yama and his twin
must be regarded as the first set of twins born to SaraJ.lyii.12
Though the telegraphic nature of the verses creates confusion for us as
readers outside the Vedic frame of reference, for the intended audience this would
surely have been a familiar myth with details recognizeable despite the brief
sketch. Indeed, parallel passages in somewhat later texts flesh out the story for us,
elucidating the Rgvedic passage. Also, as we will soon see, there are other
II "Marriage of Saranyu," 179.
12 Another slightly problematical phrase in RV 10.17.2 is yfJllM asrd, which has been SU~!ected
to various interpretations. Most likely 1M refers to the creallon of the sava~ and Sara9~ •
departure (Geldner, Lommel). Bloomfield contrarily interprets "whatever that was, " refemng to
the transformed creature (the mare) that Sarlil)yUbecame; however, this seems an ~
stretch.
47
important reasons why the story should be remembered: there is a cosmological
significance to the events related here, something that is made apparent by the later
Indic texts as well as other Indo-European sources.
The Saranyii story also appears in the Nirukta, a commentary by Yaska (per-
haps fifth century B.C.) to the Nighantu, a Vedic word-list. Yaska quotes the
Vedic verses cited above in reverse order and then relates an itihasa (traditional
story) associated with them:
tatretihasam acaksate tvasin saranyur vivasvata adityad

yamau mithunau janayancakara I sl1 savaml1m anyam
pratinidhayasvam rapam krtva pradudrava [ sa vivasvl1n
aditya asvam eva rapam krtva tam anusrtya sambabhuva I
tato 'svinau jajnate [ savan;u'lyl1J.!lmanuh I (12.10)
tvasta duhitur vahanam karotutdam viivam bhuvanam

sameamani ca sarvani bhutl1ny abhisamagachanti :
yamasya mata paryuhyamana mahato jayl1 vi vasvato
nanasa I ratrir adityasyadityodaye 'ntardhtyate (12.11)
Here they tell a traditional story: Tvastr's daughter

Saranyil, bore a pair of twins by Vivasvant the Sun
(aditya)13. She, having substituted for herself another
similar-female, assumed the form of a horse and ran
away. Vivasvant the Sun, having also taken the fo~ of a
horse and pursued her, united with her. From this the
Asvins were born; from the similar-female, Manu.
(12.10)
"Tvastr holds a wedding for his daughter." All this world

come;' together and all living beings assemble. The
mother of Yama being married, the wife of the great
Vivasvant, disappeared- The night, [wife] of the sun, dis-
13 H ere, <lor Y-aska , the te rm lIdi"'Q-

OJ'
means_ only "the sun," as opposed to its Vedic designation of a
class of gods descended from the goddess Aditi.
48
appears when the sun rises. (12.11)
From Yaska's explanation the meaning of sava~ is clear: this is another
female figure, one with the same ( sa ) vaT7Jll-, "color, image; appearance." Here,
however, it is Saranyii herself who places the savaf"!lli in her stead, whereas in the
Vedic passage it is the gods who create it and give it to Vivasvant, while hiding the
immortal one (Saranyu) from mortals. But, retreating for a moment back to that
verse, exactly who are the "mortals" to which the RV verse refers? There are two
possibilities: (I) the term refers to mortals in general, earthly eyes from which the
immortal Saranyii is for a time hidden away; or (2) the term is a reference to
Vivasvant, who has several very close connections to mortals and has been thought
to be one of the "mortals" referred to in this verse. 14 The latter view, of course,
nicely fits into the IE scheme, where a sun maiden figure is married to a mortal.
But from Yaska's passage here it might appear that this opposition is abandoned,
since he designates Vivasvant as aditya-, the sun, with the same hippomorphic
propensities as our sun maiden Saranyir. Furthermore, some scholars have con-
sidered Vivasvant to be the sun already in the Rg Veda, as have Hillebrandt and
Jamison.I> a notion which fits in tidily with Yaska's explanation and with later
Puranic stories in which he is explicitly the sun, which one naturally imagines as
an immortal being. If such a solar identity can be postulated as far back as the RV
14 Vivasvant is believed to be the ancestor of the human race (IS 6.5.6.2; SB 3.1.3.4) and is
identified as the first (apparently mortal) sacrificer of Soma (e.g., RV 9.10.5; 9.26;4); Bloomfield
considers him one of the mortals from which SarlI.QyU is bidden away. ("Maniage of SarlI.QyU" ,
171).
15 Hillebrandt, Yedische Myrhologie 2: 343ff.; Stephanie Jamison, The Raveno es Hyenas and the
Wounded Sun (Ithaca: Cornell, 1991) 204-208.
49
verse, we are confronted with a sun figure who has explicit mortal connections _
who is considered the ancestor of the mortal race, and the first one (presumably
mortal) to sacrifice to the gods.!6 The idea of a celestial body begetting the human
species is not a problem in Indic epic tradition, where lineages are also traced to
the sun or the moon.l?
The ambiguity of the Vedic term dvt1 mithuna is clarified by Yaska, who
explicitly attributes to Saranyii a twin birth before her departure and the second
twin-birth, that of the Asvins, subsequently. However, the first set are identified
by the aitihasikas as Yama and Yarni, and here Yaska adds the interesting detail
that the savarna, not Saranyu, was Manu's mother, a conclusion to which he may
have come through consideration of the Vedic terms manu st1va/7li and manu
st1va/7lya.18 Later texts also attribute the birth of a "Manu" to the savarnll, but
this is a second Manu, not the same Manu (manu vaivasvatay as the one originally
born to Saranyii and Vivasvant. Yaska's interpretation concludes with his analysis
of the solar allegory behind myth: "Night, [wife] of the sun, disappears when the
sun rises." For Yaska, Saranyu is simply the antithesis of the sun (the night) and
this explains her departure.

The story next appears in the Brhad Devata, a text from perhaps the fourth
century B.C. attributed to Saunaka. Here is the relevant passage:
16 Likewise Mirtanda and Avestan Gaya MarQ/an are both regarded as the ancestor of man and
both associ";ed with'tlte sun; see below, note 34.
17 E.g., the Mahabharata story of the sun god mating with Kuntl and begetting. son by her; Kunti,
however, does not exhibit the common characteristics of a sun malden figure .. On the Issue of the
mortality of the sun maiden's husband, see below, Section 2.0., for further diSCUSSIon.
18E.g., RV 10.62.8-11; see Bloomfield, "Marriage ofSar~yii," 179.
50
Abhavan mithunam tvastuh saranyus trisirlih saha
sa vai saranyam prayachat svayam eva viv~vate (6:162)
tatah saranyvam jajnate yamayamyau vivasvatah

tau capy ubhau yamliv eva jyrrylif!lS tlibhylif!! tu vai yamah (163)
srstva bhartub paroksan tu sarar;yil~ sadrstm striyam

niksipya mithunam tasyam asva bhutvapacakrame (7: J)
avijnanad vivasvams tu tasyam ajanayan manum

rajarsir abhavat so' pi vivasvlin iva tejasa (2)
sa vijtiaya tv apakrantam saranyum asvarapintm

tvastrtm prati jagamasu vli;1 bhutva salaksanah (3)
saranyas ca vivasvantam viditva hayarupinam

maithunayopacakrtima tam ca tatraruroha sah (4)
tatas tayos tu vegena sukram tad apatad bhuvi

upajighrac ca sa tv asva tac chukram garbhakamyaya (5)
aghratamatrac sukrat tu kumiirau sambabhtivatuh

nasatyas caiva dasras ca yau stutav asvinav iti (6)
Tvastr had twins, Saranyii and Trisiras, He himself gave

Saranyii in marriage to Vivasvant. (6: 162)
Then Yama and Yarni were begotten on Saranyii by Vivasvant.

And these both were twins, and the elder of them was Yama.
(163)
But when her husband was out of sight, Saranyii, having created
a woman of similar appearance and entrusted to her the twins,
transformed herself into a mare and escaped. (7: I)
Vivasvant unaware of this, begot Manu on that (female sub-

stitute); he became a royal seer, like Vivasvant in splendor. (2)
51
But Vivasvant, having become aware that Saranyu had run away
In horse-form, quickly went after the daughter of Tvastr, having
taken on the form of a similar horse. (3)
And Saranyii, discovering Vivasvant in horse-form approached

him for sexual union, and he mounted her there. (4) ,
Then in their haste the semen fell on the ground. The mare
through desire of becoming pregnant, smelled that semen. (5) ,
And from the semen which had been smelled, two youths were
produced: Nasatya and Dasra, who are praised as "Asvins." 19
Several new pieces of information are here. Note first that Saranyii herself is
one of a pair of twins - adding a further fertility aspect to this family given to
twin-births.20 Second, in this version, Saranyii bears a first set of twins, specified
as Yarna and his sister Yarni, which pair she hands over to the care of the sadrstm
striyam ("female of similar appearance", presumably= savama) and then
abandons. Third, in this version Saranyu herself, apparently of her own volition
(as already in the Nirukta), creates the substitute female, whereas in the RV the
gods created it; no reason is given for Saranyu's action here. Fourth, here, as in
the Nirukta, Manu is explicitly declared to be the son of the substitute female, a
point seemingly at odds with the large complex of IE myths which makes him the
19 A.A. Macdonell's translation, The BrfuuI-devatlJ Armbuted to Saunaka, pl. 2, vol. 6 of the Har-
vard Oriental Series (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1904),251-253. SiyllJ)a (introduction
to RV 10.17) relates the same itihasa, with the only additional infortlllllion being that SarllJ)yUwent
to the Kurus; thus, SiyllJ)a shows lmowledge of the Puriil)ic version.
2(}yv~!r himself, though an artificer-god, is widely associated in the l,l.gVeda with ~enetative
powers: he bestows fertility (1.142.10); he is the Creator who makes hus~aod aod WIfe fot each
other (10.10.5); he shapes the form of all creatures (1.188.9); he mullJplies the nexl generallOD
(3.55.19).
52
twin brother of Yama. Fifth, the circumstances under which the Asvins are born
to Saranyii and Vivasvant in horse-form are more fully described.
The second point mentioned above - namely, that Saranyii explicitly bears
twins (here, Yama and Yami) before her departure and places them in the custody
of the sadrstm striyam - spells out what is implied in the Vedic text and clarifies
the role of the sQva7"(li1: she is not only a replacement wife, she is also a substitute
mother to the children Saranyu has already borne. That this feature was part of the
original myth we can reasonably speculate by observing the similar, distinctive role
of the substitute mother in other IE sun maiden myths mentioned previously - like
those of Helen, Rhiannon, Macha, and other figures which contain some form of
this motif. Therefore, the fact that the created female serves as a substitute mother
in this later version is not surprising, and it seems to be a survival of an original
component of the story documented elsewhere in the IE tradition.
The fourth point, that Manu is the son of the substitute, deserves discussion
here, especially because later stories in the Puranas, to be discussed presently,
make Manu a son of Saranyii and, somewhat confusingly, add a second Manu who
is the son of the substitute female. This second Manu is called manu savami be-
cause he is similar in appearance to the first Manu but is actually the son of the
sQvaT7}u. Lommel-! considers this doubling as clearly secondary, pointing out that
such a dual maternity of twins has an analogue in the conflicting tales of the
Asvins , who sometimes are both considered to be the sons of Saranyii and other
times are considered to have been separately born from two mothers, Saranyu and
21 "Vedischc Einze1studicn" ZDMG 99 (1950): 249, 253; reprint, KI.in. Schrijun (Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner, 1978),259,263.
53
the sava1"!U2.22 However, for our purposes here, it seems important to note that
wherever Manu is mentioned, the myths under discussion generally seem to insist
that Manu be born from the savama, or if there is already a Manu born, that the
substitute bear another Manu of her own. The terms manu s&va11Ji and manu
s&va11Jya appear in the Rg Veda (10.62.9,11),23 though neither is mentioned in the
Saranyii verses in 10.17. Although the Bohtlingk-Roth dictionaryv' lists the term
as a patronymic, referring to an unknown man named "Savarna", this idea has
been largely rejected; both terms are generally understood to be simple
metronynics derived from sava11Ja.25 There is a similar term, stimvarani, at RV
8.51.1 which Bloomfield takes as a corruption for s&va11Ji26 but is more likely an
intentional variant, since the word samvarana (literally, "covering") can connote
"disguise", an apt description of the mortal-clad Manu descended from a "look-
alike" (i. e., disguised) mother, the savama. The possibility has also been raised
that the term is to be taken as a separate name from Manu, naming a second person
with the proper name Manu Sa'!lvarQIJU.27 The latter is not an appealing pos-
22This may reflecl the common universal belief that twins have two fathers; see, e.g., Harris,
Heavenly Twins. 7 et passim.
23 The terms also appear in later texis: AV 8.10.24; SB 13.4.3.3; Asvaliiyana Sraulasiilra 10.7.
24 Sanskrit Wonerouch (St. Petersburg: BuchdJUckerei der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissens-
chaften, 1875), s. v. stlva~i; see also Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts 1 (Londoo: Triibner & Co.,
1870),217.
25 See, e.g., M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1899), s.v. savarni, savarnya; A.A. Macdonell and A.B. Keith, vedic Index of Names and Sub-
jects, vol. 2 (1912; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1967), 130,448.
26 "Marriage of Saranyu," 180, n.
27 See Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, 442.
54
sibility, especially in light of a perfectly good metronymic derived from a known
legend of Manu's birth from the sava~.
The question remains, why should there be an innovation? Why would the
early myths want Manu to be born not from Saranyii but from the substitute
female? Perhaps of some relevance is the gods' mysterious desire in the RV pas-
sage "to remove the immortal (Saranyii) from the mortals," if we, like Bloom-
field, take martyebhyah in RV 10.17.2 to specifically designate Vivasvant, Yama
and Yami as mortals, since, as mentioned above, some scholars consider them to
be members of the mortal race. 28 At the very least, despite any cosmic aspects,
Vivasvant and Yama are beings of intimate importance to mortals: Vivasvant,
traditionally the first sacrificer; Yama, lord of the dead; but Manu especially, as
the traditional progenitor of mankind, bears the closest connection to man.29 Per-
haps for the Vedic storyteller, the installation of the substitute female circumvented
the problem of a divine being, Saranyii, giving birth to the progenitor of man,
Manu; it may have been seen as inconsistent for the Original Mortal to be born of
an immortal.V' Of course, this view requires that Yama, who is born of Saranyu
and not of the substitute, be seen in a somewhat different light than Manu; perhaps
28 See below, section 2.D.
29B1oomfield, who emphasizes the mortal/immortal distinction in RV 10.t? .2. Bloomfield ("Mar-
riage of Saranyil, " 171) also argues along such lines when ~e seeo: a double-entendre for .the word
sava~, as having a similar form not only to Sarar;ayU,~ut 1D a.differe~t sense also to ~Ivasvant,
and that form is similar not in its shape but in its mortalIty, unlike the Immortal Sar3l)yu. Olden-
berg, however, rejects this notion of a double-entendre. ("Noten," under X.17)
30 We can be eertain that Manu's birth from the substitute female is ~ secondary ~velopmenl of the
. b . fl b' ned above Yarna and Manu are the Indic representanons of a well-
my th ,SlOce, as ne y men 0 , .' Fi S if . thi bi .
. th eerning primeval twins First Man and irst aco eer, IS su :JeclIS
attested cosmogomc my con '
explored in detail below, under section 2.D.
55
we may excuse this by viewing Yama's role as lord of the dead, which removes
him more from the mortal sphere than Manu.
From here we tum to a closer look at the Puranas, where more detailed ver-
sions of the Saranyii tale appear. The story is mentioned in fourteen versions
altogether, although some are merely genealogical in nature.U As Kirfel

demonstrates, the versions seem to fall into two groups, the first one to be
examined here comprised of the Brahmanda-, Bhavisya-, Brahma-, Markandeya-,
Siva-, Vayu-Puranas and the Harivamsa.V The text selected and translated below
is from the Harivamsal ', which is quite representative of the texts in Kirfel's
Textgruppe I, aside from its occasional vocatives addressing the listener; these
seem never to displace critical material in other versions of the text. Aside from
these, there are a substantial number of variant readings between the different
texts, but they are for the most part of minor significance, except where discussed
below.
In this lengthy passage, the Saranyii character is called Samjna (or Surenui,
and Vivasvant is sometimes also called MtirtaJ}4a.34 As mentioned above, the
31 A. Blau, in "Puranische Streifen' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen/anJischen Gesellschaft 62

(1908): 337-357, provides analysis and comparison of the contents in different versions in an
attempt to reconstruct the original; see also W. Kirfel, Das Parana Poncaloksana (Leaden: E.I.
Brill, 1927), where these texts have been collated.
32Das Purana Pancalaksana, 284-294.
33The critical edition used here is that of P.L. Vaidya, 1IIe Harivamia, 2 vols. (Poena:
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1969).
34Skt. mrta 'dead' + anda 'egg'; the BrahmapuriJ;la (32.34-41) explains !be name as. derived from
his fathe~'s fear that M~a's mother-to-be would kill the egg 10 her womb by her ngorous flSl-
. . tead h bo manatin
. . g brilliance in all directions. Karl Hoffmann bas analyzed the
Ing; IDS e was me.. _ ._ If- ....... _ ... " ...
..
oIder versions m the M'taJ rayanr,
- - K~·~-...
~ • and Tilllmya Samhitas,
... , as well & os !be(he--- 'A._A
~~--- .. h
B ranmana: th t . that Miirtinda was born from Adal1 5 aborted ,eNS nee a ...,...
ere e s ory IS . . th he 1 ould he .~.
egg'), with the abortion induced by Aditi's other sons out of fear at r lSI son w .....
56
Puranic versions attribute to their union three children: Manu, Yama and Yamuna
(=Yaml, Yama's twin sister), with Manu being first-born.t> As the story
develops, several features arise which are of interest. For example, we are given
here the first explanation of our heroine's reason for leaving her husband and
creating a substitute.
sa vai bharya bhagavato martandasya mahatmanah

bhanrrapena natusyad rupayauvanasatint .
samjna nama svatapasa dtpteneha samanvita (2)
adityasya hi tad rupam martandasya svatejasa

gatresu paridagdham vai natikantam ivabhavat (3)
Samjiia, wife of the venerable Martanda, herself amply provided

with beauty and youth, was not satisfied with the form of her
husband, as she was fully endowed with her own heat and bright-
ness. (2)
For this form of the Aditya Martanda was scorched in the limbs
by his own brilliance and was really not very loveable. (3)
Samjna, in these versions, leaves Vivasvant because he is too bright, so
bright that he is himself scorched - no doubt too hot for her as well. This
most powerful and eventually gain power over them. These three texts identify MirtiJ;KJa with
Vivasvant, but Hoffmann takes this identification as secondary. Hoffmann believes that MirtiJ;KJa
and Vivasvant were originally separate figures which became conflated; he draws parallels between
MirtiJ;KJa and Avestan Gaya Mar","" (Pahl. Gayomart) "mortal life," both regarded as the ancestor
of man, and both associated with the sun; Vivasvant (Avestan VivlU)hvant) is considered another
progenitor of man. See Hoffmann, "Mirti¢.a und Gayomart," (1959); reprint, Auft4t1.e zur
lndoiranistik 2 (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1976): 422-438.
35 As one would expect, Man is born before Twin; Yami is apparently a later addition, invented as
Yama's twin (since his name implies one) once Manu's relationship with him had faded into
obscurity.
57
burning-power of Vivasvant is, in the next verse, further described as tejas tu
abhyadhikam tata nityam ... yena 'titapayamasa trlml lokan, "that excessive, con-
tinual brilliance by which he overheated the three worlds" (v. 6). Here, then, we
have the motive for her disappearance and creation of a look-alike substitute.
syamavamam tu tad rapam samjna drstva vivasvatah

asahanti tu svtim. chayam. savamtim
.. nirmame tatah. .
mayamay: tu sti samjna tasyas chaya samutthita (8)
Samjna, having seen the dark-colored form of Vivasvant and
being unable to endure it, then created a shadow (chtiyti), a
fernale-looking-l ike-herself (savaT7Jti); she, Sarnjna, endowed
with magic power, from her the shadow arose.
The term syamavamam rapam, "black/dark-colored form" is echoed in the
Bhavisya and Brahma Puranas but is not well supported in the other texts. The
Brahrnanda Purana instead refers to asahyatejas tad, "that unbearable brilliance."
The Markandeya Purana describes his form as golakara-, "ball-shaped", parallel-
ing a story of Martanda in the Satapatha Brahrnana, which describes Vivasvant's
handicap as his lack of formation, being merely an ugly, undeveloped clump or
ball-shape. Along the same lines, the Siva Purana here uses the term samvartula-,
"rounded-together" "globular." In verse 3 some Harivamsa texts read TTUUJ4ala-

"disk" for martanda-, The Vayu Purana, more ambiguously, describes his form as
satavama-, "having a hundred colors"; this idea is unsupported elsewhere. The
term cited in our text above, SytimnvaT7JO-, seems unlikely for a sun god, and is a
problematical reading in light of the text's preceding reference to Vivasvant's
58
excessive brilliance.36
As the tale continues, the shadow bows reverently before her creator and
asks for instructions, promising to do whatever is bid. Sal]1jiiaorders her to go to
her house and take Sal]1jiia's place.I? charging her specifically to honor Samjna's
children properly, and swearing her to secrecy. Samjna says she will go off to her
father's house. The shadow agrees to the duties and offers a curse upon her own
head should she ever reveal Samjna's purpose.
Tvastr, however, is not happy with Sarnjiia's decision; he rebukes her and
repeatedly orders her to return to her husband. This seems quite contrary to the
Rgvedic story, in which the gods38 actually seem to instigate the heroine's removal
from Vivasvant. In the Puranic case, however, Tvastr's rebukes do no good, and
Samjna, having metamorphosed into a mare, instead takes off for the northernmost
territory of the Kurus, where she grazes.
Back at Samjna's house, the shadow has borne a child to Vivasvant, and
since it looks so much like Vivasvant's (and Samjna's) son Manu, it is called Manu
Savami (here retaining the Vedic name of the look-alike, savama, instead of the
common Puranic term chtIyi'i). Contrary to her promise to Samjna to honor the
existing children, the shadow lavishes excessive affection upon her own son, ignor-
ing Samjha's sons Yama and Manu. Manu was tolerant of the abuse, but it
angered Yarna, and he threatened her with his foot. The substitute mother then
36 Unless we interpret the darkness as sunspots (which H. Scharfe suggests); Vivasvanl is in fact
described as "scorched. "
37 It makes perfect sense, allegorically speaking, for the "shadow" to be able to ,.,main where the
bright sun is.
38Presumably the unspecified "they" in the text.
59
curses him, declaring that his foot should falloff. Terrified, Yama runs to his
father Vivasvant and, having described the developments, begs him to lift the
curse. Vivasvant says he is unable to circumvent it entirely, but he will make it
happen in a roundabout way: instead of the whole foot falling to the earth, worms
will eat some of the flesh from his foot, and they shall fall onto the earth, thus ful-
filling the essence of the curse.
Vivasvant, however, is now suspicious that this woman is not really his wife,
who would never curse her own son. He confronts her on the issue, and when he
threatens her she finally admits everything to him. Vivasvant storms off to
Tvastr' s house to retrieve his real wife, Samjna; Tvastr receives his son-in-law
with great honor. Though not made explicit, one of the issues that seems to con-
cern Vivasvant is whether or not his wife has been faithful to him in her absence;
this is made even clearer in other texts. We have several foreshadowing references
to Samjna's chastity and modesty elsewhere in the tale; e.g., in the Bhavisya
Purana, she is from the outset described as sadhvt pativrata devt "a virtuous lady
faithful to her husband" (2); when she arrives at Tvastr's house, the Harivarnsa
describes her as vndita, "modest" (13); she is anindita, "irreproachable" (15);
TV~!f tells Vivasvant that she is slaghya, "praiseworthy" (32) ; Vivasvant himself
finally sees that she is adhrsyam. sarvabhutlIni1f!l tejasa niyamena "unapproachable
among all creatures through her brilliance and restraint" (32), practicing
39
asceticism, at which point he pursues her.
39Regarding Vivasvant's concern over possible threats to his. wife's chastity, it should be ooted that
the transformation of the female into a four-legged animal pnor to Intercourse rs typIcal of the pat-
tern of another related group of myths: the stories of cosmic incest, e.g., ofPrajiipati and his._ .
daughter (e.g., U~, another sun maiden figure, at Aitareya BriiIunaQa3.33). Although ~apal1
may hold place here for Siirya (Jamison, Ravenous Hy.~, 293), representing another story of
intercourse between the sun and the sun maiden, the illicit nature of that UDIoncontrasts sharply
60
-
With Vivasvant thus reassured of Samjiia's fidelity, Tvastr now tactfully edu-
cates Vivasvant as to the nature of Samjna's problem with him and offers a solu-
tion.
tvastovaca
tavatitejasavistam idam rapam na sobhate
asahantt sma tat samjna vane carati sadvalam (31)
drasta hi tam bhavan adya svlim bharyam subhacarintm

sllighyliJ!l yogabalopetam yogam asthaya gopate (32j
anukulam tu te deva yadi syan mama tan matam

rapam nirvartayamy adya tava kantam arimdama (33)
tato' bhyupagamllt tvasta manandasya vivasvatah

bhramim aropya tat tejah slitayliml1sa{bhlirata] (34)
tato nirbhasitam rupam tejasa samhrtena vai

kantat kantataram drastum adhikam susubh« tada (35)
Tvastr said: "This form of yours, filled with excessive brilliance,

is not handsome. Samjna, not enduring this, is grazing in the
woods. (31)
You will see your wife today, virtuous, praiseworthy, having

4O
achieved yoga-power, having practiced yoga, 0 Shepherd. (32)
with the legitimate marriage of Vivasvant and Sarlll)yU. Allbough there has been speculation lbat
perhaps incest lurks behind the Sarlll)yUtale, and lbat ber visit to her father is not innocent (hence
explaining Vivasvant's concern over her chastity). this has been largely rejected. Against the
notions of We her, Indische Studien 17: 310ff.; A. Kuhn. ·Sarlll)yU - Ep ... ,,;, • KZ 1 (1852): 448;
and Abel Bergaigne, La Religion Vidique (paris: F. Vieweg. 1883).2: 318). Bloomfield ("Mar-
riage of Saranyfi •• 18Iff.) argued convincingly lbat there is an absence of common incest motifs and
the positive presence of legal marriage terminology. Neverlbeless, lbere is conflation of motif.
between the two tales. including spilling of seed on lbe ground (5B 1.7.4.3).
40Blau rejects the second line of verse 32 as an interpolation attempting to make S"",jiii a later-<lay
yogic ascetic, and although he may he correct concerning lbe terminology used (yogaba/opetam
yogam asthaya), it sbould he remembered lbat proving the chastity of lbe runaway bride is an old
element of the story. not only in Indic literature but elsewhere.
61
If my idea is agreeable to you, 0 god, I will bring out your
lovely form, 0 foe-conqueror." (33)
Then, with the acceptance of Martanda Vivasvant Tvastr had

him placed upon the turntables! and cut off his brilliance. (34)
Then the illuminated form, with brilliant rays drawn together,

was lovelier than lovely to see, excellent. (35)
Despite minor variances in terminology, the texts all describe the same event:
Tvastr's mechanical solution to Vivasvant's overbearing brilliance is to cut it off
(satayamasa) in an effort to make his appearance less brilliant and more tolerable
to his wife.42 In all versions this makes his appearance exceedingly handsome
(susubh-), most agreeable (ktinttit kantatara-), still shining, of course, but no
longer to excess, now that his rays are samhrta-, "drawn together." Exactly how
much excess had to be cut away to solve the problem? In the Markandeya-P. , the
quantity of the reduction is spelled out: we are told that Visvakarman (=Tv~tr)
cut away fifteen-sixteenths of his radiance, leaving behind only one-sixteenth, and
this was still more than adequate to give him a lovely, shining form.
Using his yoga-powers, this less-dazzling Vivasvant is able to see his wife
transformed into a mare, grazing far away. He likewise turns himself into a stal-
lion and approaches to mate with her and nuzzles her on the mouth. The text reads
41bhrami- bhram "move round" implies a revolving device, and the fact thai Vivasvant is placed
upoo it in order to' be trimmed makes this some type of mechanicallalbe.
4210 the Viyu P. and BraltnW14a P., his brilliance is "removed" (ttjaslJpahrtaj; the Siva P. has
samvna-, "compressed" or "concealed."
62
maithunaya vivestanttm parapumso vifaflkayt1: "apprehensive that he was a
stranger, she twisted herself away from mating." The text does not give further
details as to how they mated, but we may infer, based on the Brhad Devata pas-
sage, that some semen has spilled on the ground and Samjna sniffs it. Our text
says only that she spits out his semen through her nostrils, and from it were born
the twin Asvins, Nasatya and Dasra. Vivasvant then shows himself in his new ,
lovely form, which now pleases SaJTIjiia, and the story concludes with homage to
Yam a and Manu.
A second group of Puranas, represented chiefly by the Matsya- and Pad ma-
Pura(las43, reflects principle components and much of the detail of the above story,
with a few interesting variations. SaJTIjiia is one of three wives of Vivasvant,
although this does not interfere with the story line, which is virtually identical with
the Harivarnsa version until the curse of the shadow-mother against Yarna. Here,
the shadow declares that Varna's foot will be infested with worms, a fate which, in
the previous version, was Vivasvant's mollification of a stiffer curse. When Yarna
approaches his father for assistance, he offers the perception that this is probably
not his mother. Vivasvant in this case gives him a rooster to eat the worms and
decay, and the text continues with the details of Yarna's self-mortification. When
Vivasvant comes looking for SaIj1jiia, Tvastr says that he has turned her away
(nivarita maya sa) and admits his fear of the sun-god (tvadbhayena divaspate).
TV~1r, the artificer-god, offers to "take away his shine" (apane~iJmi te tejah) by
placing Vivasvant on his "machine" (yantre) which turns out to be a turntable,
.. , Kiirma-, Linga- and Agni- Puri\13S.

43 As well as the Visnu-
63
probably a lathe. Tvastr then "separates" (prthak cakara) some of his rays and
from them builds various cosmic weapons.v' Vivasvant then approaches Sarnjiia in
the form of a stallion, with his great light wrapped up45; in a sequence similar to
the previously cited version, they mate, and the Asvins are born.
Obviously these Puranic versions are much embroidered over the Rgvedic
tale, and how much of the later material can be presumed to be accurate reflections
of the myth behind the abridged Vedic version is a matter of speculation.
Nevertheless, the Puranic elements do flesh out the earlier skeleton in a way that is
coherent and, at the very least intriguing and peculiar; and it should be noted that
there is a fairly high concordance among various Puranic versions of the tale. The
natural question then becomes, can we ascertain in it any purpose or meaning?
This tale has long been the subject of mythological interpretation, most of which
can be dismissed as overenthusiastic reductionism. The quest for an allegorical
interpretation, as we have seen, dates as early as Yaska, who sees in Saranyii's dis-
appearance the story of the night, which vanishes at the rising sun (Vivasvant).46
Ehni followed this interpretation, seeing her as a night-goddess, representing the
end of night. 47 Roth, however, had seen in Saranyu the dark storm cloud which
aI 48 M .
Kuhn support ed th IS view
o •
floated in space at the beginning of time; so. U1r
44n.e discus of Visnu

.. , the trident of Rudra, and Indra's mace.
4SThough mahata tejaslJ CD samllvrtaIJ is in the P2 texts only; Matsya, PI, and ,Viyu Puril;las have
samanvitah, "fully endowed with"; it makes little sense to emphasize V,vasvant s tqas after the
painsTv~!r took to reduce it. See Kirfel, Das PurllfJlJ PailaJlt1Jqana, 298.
46riJtrir adityasyadityodaye 'ntartfhlyate, Nir. 12.11.
47 J. Ehni, Der vedische My thus des Yama (Strassburg: Verlag von X.I. Triibner, 1890): 17.
48 Roth, "Dschemschid," 425. Kuhn, "SaraQyU- Ep.. vti~," 444.
64
saw in her the dark, cool air which is heated and therefore set in motion by the
approach of the rising sun.49
Though none of these attempts to discover an allegorical interpretation has
led to certain success, we are still faced with the important fact that the characters
in the story ostensibly have solar implications, because, at its most basic, this is a
tale about the lessening of the sun's powers. Herman Lommel in 1950 made a
bold attempt to make some sense out of the solar aspects of this story, carefully
examining the Puranic references. 50 Lommel ingeniously derives Samjna
("Understanding", which makes no sense in the context of the story) from Skt.
samdhyn, "twilight," via a false sanskritization of Prakrit samjha. The implica-
tion is that the Puranic writers identified the name Saranyu, lit. "fleeting", with
twilight. Lommel solidifies the case for this meaning by reference to classical and
later Iiterature.A! On this basis he sees S~yu-SaJ]1jiia as twilight - specifically
the morning twilight, which flees from the excessive light and heat of her husband,
the brilliant sun - and her double, mirror-image, the sava~u1 (or chaya,
"shadow") is the evening twilight, which looks exactly like her. Lommel then
takes the tale of Tvastr's lessening of Vivasvant's brilliance literally, as a mythical
explanation of the waning sun at evening twilight.

This view also neatly explains the RV statement we questioned earlier, and in
such an allegorical explanation we can say that Saranyu (the morning twilight) was
49 Muir, Sanskrit Texts,S: 257.
50Lomme1, ·Vedische Einzelstudien.·
51 Likewise, Lommel derives the other name of SllI1qlyii/SllIPjiii, Sart~U, from a false sanskritiza..
lion of Prakrit »sarenu, originating in Sid. SllI1l\lyii.
65
hidden away from mortals (during the day, when the sun crossed the sky); the gods
(in the late afternoon) gave the (setting) sun, Vivasvant, a substitute female, whose
evening-twilight glow was a mirror image of the morning twilight; Vivasvant goes
(presumably at nighttime) to find his real wife, with whom he mates; then the daily
cycle begins again with the wedding of the two, after which she leaves him.
Though Lommel admits that the story cannot be taken as a bald allegory, the
introduction of allegorical elements in attempting to understand the tale at hand is
the first step toward making sense of the details of the myth. In this fashion, many
peculiar details of the myth are clearly explained: thus the invention of a reason
for the flight of the sun maiden from her husband (he is too hot for her); the idea
of the sun's "lessening" as the day declines; an explanation for the substitute-figure
motif (the day's two twilights, which look alike), Carrying this further, when we
consider the astral nature of the Asvins, who appear at morning twilight,52 their
birth upon the reunion of Vivasvant and Saranyii makes sense; this is even more
true if we consider their double appearance at morning and evening in conjunction
with the story of the double maternity (one by Saranyu/Samjna and one by the
savama/chayav. The same reasoning applies if we look at the annual cycle of the
sun and the equinoxes as a sort of annual twilight, with winter corresponding to the
night. 53
52Looking at them, for a moment, as the morning and eveoin~ s.tar, ~ old interpretation oo~n
in the scholarship on the divine twins (see, e.g., Mannhardt, DIe lettischen So~nmythen,
309ff.; Giintert, Der arische WelrkOnigand Heiland 36, n.l.; Ward, DIVlM 1Wi,ns 15; Clade~,
Helen, 49; Nagy, "Phaethon," 172f., n. 94.); the twins are even express~y ldenhfied.as ~ ,
. tar i th Baltic m.rth;ca1 tradition (Ward 65). Whether this ideenficenon IS correct IS
and evemng sarIn e J~ ••.. . •
a larger question; e.g., some Indologists prefer different Vle~lDts regardlDg ,the Mvins. 1M
nature of the Asvins is the subject of an immense scholarly literature, a bnef discussion of which
(insofar as it relates to our topic) is reserved for Chapter 3.
5311 should be mentioned thal in BJbad Devati 2.10,80, SlIfa\IyU is envisioned as part of the
66
For evidence that twilight was considered an event of significant proportions,
we can turn to ritual. Doris Srinivasan points out that the Vedic ritual of
sarruJhyti54, which is continued to this day among the Hindu orthodoxy, is a kind
of solar charm to ensure the daily rising of the sun, which is attacked by demons
who try to devour the sun as it rises. The worshipper must perform certain rites
exactly at the moment of transition from day to night and night to day, to assist the
sun in its struggle. 55 Srinivasan sees this ritual as the reenactment of an ancient
myth in which the devout seek to assist the sun by their prayer, which is under
siege by demons attempting to withhold it from its courses. Though this is not the
myth that is under discussion here, it is important to find that the hour of samdhya
is ritually significant, because it adds fuel to Lornrnel's argument that an allegory
of some kind lies behind the figure of Samjiia (=saf!ldhyti) and her relationship
with an overly bright sun-god.
The designation of Saranyii/Samjiia specifically as a twilight-deity puts her in
the same league as another Indic figure, Vedic Usas, who is a "dawn goddess." It
"sphere" (dsraya-) of Surya, the sun; whether or not Surya is identical with Vivasvant in this text
cannot be ascertained. Saranyu is not listed as one of Surya's three wives (U~, Surya, and
Vrsakapayi) who accompany him on his daily solar journey; in this cosmology, the latter three god-
desses are forms of the celestial Vic, who becomes U~ before sunrise, SOrya at noontime, and
Vr~iikapaYl at sunset. Saranyu, along with Bhaga, Pusan, and V~api, is simply "in his sphere",
as are Yarna, Manu and various other deities. Thus, since the day is apportioned between three
other goddesses, there is no good argument for SaraJ)yUas "twilight" in the Brhed Devata, and the
fact that Surya (here identified as his noontime consort) is labeled as Vivasvant's wife at BrD 7.119
argues further against it.
54Lit. "juncture"; the word refers to the three junctures of the day, dawn, noon and dusk at which
worship is given; the noon juncture is sometimes omitted.
55Doris Srinivasan, "SaJ)ldhya: Myth and Ritual" Indo-Iranian Joumal15 (I973): 161-177.
67
must be remembered that Usas, commonly translated as "dawn", is not the sunrise
itself (which in English is frequently synonymous with "dawn") but is the first
morning light in the sky which precedes (and is clearly distinct from) the sunrise;
once the sun has risen, Usas is gone. This pre-sunrise heavenly light, then, seems
to be the exact equivalent of the morning "twilight" which, according to Lommel,
Saranyii represents. This twilight, in our definition, includes as its finale the bril-
liant, golden and reddish lights in the sky which finally drive away the night right
before the sun appears; the ambiguous, grey, not-day/not-night period we usually
consider to be "twilight" is only the first phase of the process.
The burgeoning morning light, growing until the moment when the sun itself
actually rises is, by contrast to the length of day and night, a swift process; we
have seen above how the disappearance of the sun maiden is characterized as a
hasty one. The allegorical explanation therefore nicely explains the etymology of
Saranyu's name ("fleeting"). Furthermore, U~ herself is described as being
hastened, specifically when Indra frightens the dawn goddess from her cart (anas,
RV 4.30.8ff); she leaps into the sky and her chariot is dashed to pieces. This and
similar passages in the Indra hymns have been taken by Bergaigne to refer to slow,
lengthened dawns which seem to postpone the sunrise. 56 The Latvian songs con-
56 A. Bergaigne, 1A religion vedique, 2: 192-193. H.-P. Schmidt provides supporting evideoce

that the passage refers 10 the leogthening dawns (see his review of L. Renou's Eludes vMiques el
panineennes in WMG 110 (1960): 188-191), and so Dum<\zil's criticism of Bergaigoe 00 this point
is not quite justified. See G. Dum<\zil, My the et epopee, vol, 3, 176-80, and Deesses latines et
mythes vediques (Brussels: Latomus, 1956), 1-43, esp. 32ff. Dumezil believes this Vedic myth
explains a peculiar Roman ritual, the Matralia, held in early June io celebration of the goddess
Mater Matula, wbom be takes as a dawn goddess. Roman women wenllO ber temple at this time
and admitted a slave girl, wbom they theo chased out with blows; during the wbole process they
beld their sister's children in their arms, rather than their own. Dumezil explains the blows driving
out the slave girl by the Vedic story ofIndradriviog out U~,1aking it as solar allegory; be
explains the bolding of the sister's child as echoiog the Vedic myth of U"" carrying forth ~ sun
(as ber son) from ber sister Ram (Night), whom they both suckle (citing RV 1.96.5; see DeelS es
68
tain the same image of the sun maiden tarrying. 57 These references indicate that
the myth of the sun maiden may have a seasonal interpretation as well as a diurnal
one; insofar as they pertain to Usas, such indications are surveyed in the following
chaper.
It remains, then, to survey the entirety of the Indo-European sources to
determine whether there is enough evidence to conclude that the IE sun maiden is
in origin a goddess of the pre-sunrise morning light, the morning twilight or
sunrise-glow. It is these other texts to which we now turn.
2.B. Disappearing Brides and Substitute Females
Clearly, the disappearing-bride theme is conceived of as central to the myth,
which is, at heart, an allegory for the annual "disappearance" of the sun toward
winter, or, alternately, its vanishing at the end of the day. The myths, embroider-
ing the allegory into a love story, present various causes for the sun maiden's dis-
appearance; it may be due to an abduction, a voluntary absence, or some other cir-
cumstance. As discussed above, the reasons for Saranyu's disappearance are in the
Rgvedic material mysterious (e.g., her being "hidden away" by the immortals); the
brief RV passage does not tell whether this was voluntary on her part. In the
Puranic stories she explicitly goes of her own volition, to escape her husband's
excessive brilliance. These explanations contrast with the majority of other IE sun
Latines, 21ff.).
57 See Chapler1, D. 19.
69
maiden figures, who usually disappear as the result of an abduction. 58
In a preliminary summary, we observe the following abduction stories. Indic
Sita, wife of Rama, is abducted by the monster Ravana and taken to the isle of
Lanka. Germanic Kudrun, the wife of Herwig, is abducted by Hartmut and taken
to Normandy. Saranyii, as we have seen, is not abducted but is "removed" (in the
Rg Veda) or removes herself (in later texts). There is in the early Indic literature
no reference to the abduction of Surya, but we have a folk tale from the Motinala
which tells of a Sura), a "daughter of the sun," abducted by one of the Agaria,
primitive iron smelters of central India; the man intends to keep her as his wife.59
Abductions abound as a frequent motif in Celtic (particularly Irish) myth, though
not always in conjunction with sun maiden figures. Nevertheless, several of the
stories outlined in Chapter I seem to be specific derivatives of the IE sun maiden
myth reflected in the Saranyii tale. For example, the Irish goddess Aine is married
to Echdae, a sun-god in horse-form.P" the parallels to Vivasvant, who has the same
traits, are easily observed.P! Among the myths of Aine is one in the district of
58 Abductions, however, are not exclusively found in the mythological domain of sun-maiden
figures, but are also common among agricultural deities, who "vanish" seasonally as the crops dis-
appear at the end of the season. Therefore we restrict our discussion to disappearing maidens who
exhibit additional sun-maiden motifs as outlined above in Chapter I. Even with this restriciton, it
should become clear that many female figures in IE mythology who fit the sun-maiden pattern are
indeed abducted from their husbands, fiances, or family.
59 Verrier Elwin, The Agaric (London: Oxford University Press, 1942~, 100 n.l.; the parallel.was
previously pointed out by Ward, Divine Twins, 62. For the ~ Sura), compare Hind. sQra} .sun,
Saturn," (*sQra-ja) and Ved. sara, Pali-Prakrit sara, "sun";.• t is unclear why a word denotmg son
of the sun" would in Hindi denote the sun itself, whereas WIth the Motinala it clearly means
"daughter of the sun" (from sQra-jIf!).
60 In alternate versions, she is married to Mannanm, the Irish sea gnd; sometimes she is instead his
daughter.
.' . "brightness," the
61Like S~yii, her name may refer to motion: aside from Its pnmary. meam.ng
word also means "swiftness", Royal Irish Academy, D.ctlOnary, s.v. dme.
70
Lissan, Co. Derry, where she is said to have been abducted from her husband at
night by the wee folk and never returned.62 The Irish goddess Etain is also a dis-
appearing maiden: she vanishes from her husband when she undergoes birth as a
mortal and marries an Irish king; her jealous god-husband, Midir, steals her away
from the king in swan-form, the equivalent of an abduction. Another Irish figure,
Dubh Lacha, is abducted by her husband Mongan from the king of Leinster,
although technically the king has a legal right to Dubh Lacha, since she is given
according to the terms of a "friendship without refusal" agreement between the
Leinster king and Mongan. There is also the tale of Dechtire, who was abducted
the night before her wedding by the god Lugh; she later married her fiance
Sualtam mac Roth anyway, and he became the mortal father of the son Dechtire
bore by Lugh,63 much as the Greek Tyndareos became the mortal father of Helen
after her mother was raped by Zeus. In other Irish legends, aside from abductions,
the mysterious disappearance of both Macha and her husband should be mentioned
(occuring, as it does, upon the appearance and threatened "rape" by an outsider);
she leaves a newborn child behind. In Welsh myth, it is not the bride Rhiannon
but her infant son who disappears; the motif seems to be inverted here, since many
other elements are present. Likewise, the Welsh story of Branwen differs in that
her "abduction" (from the safety and love of her brothers) is actually a marriage to
an evil king, from which she must be rescued; despite the deviation, this tale has
the same motif, the disappearance of the bride, who has usually fallen into a dis-
62 Smyth, Irish Mythology, 15.

63 The son was eetan
O<O_-ta
,w h 0 becameknown as the famousIrish heroCuchulainn.
71
tressful situation from which she must be rescued.
In addition to the abduction motif, several of the stories also contain the
additional twist found in the Saranyii story, the creation and substitution of a look-
alike female. The presence of this motif in at least four different IE branches
makes it seem certain that this was an element of the old Indo-European myth, and
we will explore it here in detail.
This curious combination, the abduction of a maiden with the substitution of
a look-alike figure, was the basis of a comparative Greek and Indic study by Vit-
tore Pisani in 1928.64 Pisani pointed out that although the Homeric tales of Helen
of Troy described her abduction by Paris and her removal to Troy, there are in fact
alternate versions of the story in which Helen never really went to Troy but was
magically (by the gods) whisked off to Egypt, while an e,8wAov, a look-alike
female.v> took her place, and it was the e,8wAov and not Helen who was abducted
by an unwitting Paris. The stories of Helen's substitute e,8wAov, Pisani said,
clearly echo the Indic tale of Saranyii and her substitute sava~a, Pisani even went
so far as to find a common etymology between the names 'eAbot and saranyu,
"selena. Such an etymology, however, is not likely, because of the recent dis-
64 "Elena e I'do",).ov," 476-99. This work has been cited only occasionally in recent sun maiden
studies (e.g., Grottanelli, "Yoked Horses," 127ft.); unfortunately, it has been more often over-
looked, despite its interest and value.
65The term SWwMV is cognate with sloo~, "that which is seen; form; shape; figure" and <lOw
"know." Homer uses the term to mean phantom, e.g, Iliad 5: 449-51, where Apollo fashions a
look-alike for the real Aeneas who is spirited out of hattie. In the Odyssey there is a similar use,
e.g., 4:796, where Athena c~es an SiOwMV in the form of Pe~lope'. sister. ~omer also usea the
ei irits
W or d l0 rerer 0 spm or g os
h ts in the underworld in general (in the plural, 11.476, eec.), and to
' . fL--
ifi had th WwM of Heracles which persists in Hsdes after his real 801 .... gone up
speci C S es, e.g., e£ V Cf H rodotos 1 51 where the term "
10 otympos (11:602), or that of Odysseus' mother (11:213). . e ' • u
used of a golden statue of a woman.
72
covery of an early inscribed bronze in Sparta which spells Helen's name with an
initial digamma.w Despite the fact that the common etymology is no longer
tenable, Pisani's investigation of the sources' lor the 8LOWAOV

• story and its Indic
parallels are worthy of further discussion.
Pisani begins with a fragment from the scholiast on Lycophron, who

attributes the original idea of the 8!OWAOV to Hesiod.v?
~PWTOC; 'H<TioooC; ...8p' rijc; 'EAiVl)C; TO 8!OWAOV ...ap~'Ya.'Y8· m,

HPOOOTOC; oe 8! ...8V on ~ l'eV aA~OLvr, •EAiv~ eJL8LV8V apix
IIp,":T8I, TO oe dOWAOV avrijc; <TWi ...A8V<T8V 'AA8~avop,+, i , ~v
TpoLCY.v.
First Hesiod introduced [the story of] Helen's 8!<lwAov, and

Herodotus further said that while the real Helen remained at the
house of Proteus, her 8!OWAOV sailed with Alexander to Troy.
From Plato (Phaedrus 243A) we learn that Stesichoros had originally told a
tale in which Helen was abducted by Paris and taken to Troy, and since the gods
66 Hector W. Calling and Helen Cavanaugh, "Two Inscribed Bronzes from the Menelaion, Sparta, "
153; the inscription (TAl FEAENAI, "to Helen") appears on the handle of a pronged instrument
found at the Menelaion in Sparta. Another inscription on a bronze aryballos is dedicated to
Menelaos. This site is thought to be the famous shrine of Menelaos and Helen referred to relatively
frequently by classical writers (H.W. Catting, "Excavations at the Menelaion, Sparta, 1973-1976"
Archaeological Reportsfor 1976-77, TW. 23, (British Scbool at Athens, 1977): 24. A more
promising etymology for FsMI'OI- is IE »swelena (*swel- V-TW-S); the root ·swel (Vedic svdr, "sun")
shows up in Sarya. See below, Section 4.A.
67 Fr. 358 in Merkelbach and West's edition of Hesiod's fragments ("Fragmenta Selects" in
Hesiodi Opera (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), =fr. 266 Rzach), from the scholiast on Lycophron's
Alexandra 822. There are real doubts concerning Lycophron's attribution of this passage to Hesiod,
particularly since the scholiast also misaltributes the second half of the passage (the notion that the
s<OwXovhas sailed off to Troy with Paris) to Herodotos when in fact this element does DOloccur in
Herodotos, but rather in Euripides' Helen. Scholars recognizing the unreliabitity of the scholiasl
prefer to substitute Stesichoros for Hesiod as the first introducer of the £iowXov, since Stesichoros is
elsewhere primarily associated with the dOWN" story. See J. Lindsay, Helen of Troy (Loudon:
Constable and Co., 1974), 105f.
73
considered this slander (here we might note the insistence on Helen' s chastity),
they blinded Stesichoros until he recanted and told the "correc t" version,
. th e story
of the eLOWAOV:
aVK eaT' eTU/"Oi; AfryO<; O~TO<;'

ovo' e{3Ol<;BV Vl/ua,v evae,,/"o,<;,
ovo' "iceo IIep)'Ol/"Oi Tooiac:
It is not true, this [former] tale;

You never mounted the well-benched ships,
Nor did you ever come to the citadel of Troy.
Upon this revision (the famous 'wA,vCjJoiOl), the story goes, Stesichoros' sight
was restored. The story is cited again by Plato in Republic IX 586c:
wa7rep TO rij<; 'EAeV1/<; eLOWAov V7rO TWV BV TpoiQi EnWixopo<;

<P'I/(Jt )'eveaOOlt 7rep'WltX'l/TOV Cx-yvoiQiTOUCxA'l/OOU<;.
As Stesichoros says, the eLOwAov of Helen was fought for at Troy

through ignorance of the truth ...
for the Greek warriors thought, erroneously, that they were fighting for the real
Helen.
There are several other references to the story, 68 many of which do not add
much for our study, but of interest here is the one recorded by Herodotos regard-
ing Helen's absence from Troy and presence, instead, in Egypt69; Herodotos
68 Pausanias 3.19.11; lsocrates 10.218,d,e; Aristide2.72 and 1.212; Dio.Chry •. 11.178; see
Pisani (1928) for additional references.
69 Book 2: 112-120.
74
claims that he himself interviewed Egyptian priests regarding the matter. They
said that Paris, on his way to Troy with Helen and a substantial amount of stolen
goods?", met with foul weather which drove his ship to Egypt. Some of Paris'
servants departed and fled to the local temple, where they told the whole story to
the priests and the local warden, Thonis. Word was sent to the Egyptian ruler,
Proteus, who, upon hearing of Paris' flagrant disregard for Helen's husband
Menelaos, ordered Paris arrested and brought before him to defend himself. When
it became apparent that Paris was lying to Proteus about how he had obtained
Helen, he was thrown out of the country, forced to leave behind Helen and her
treasure. Proteus promised to keep the woman and the treasure until her husband
returned to fetch them. The Greek forces, meanwhile, had gone off to Troy to
retrieve Helen, but when Menelaos directly confronted the Trojans regarding the
matter, he was told that neither Helen nor the treasure was in Trojan possession,
but both were in Egypt with king Proteus. The Greeks did not at first believe this,
but when Troy finally fell and they entered the walls, they found neither Helen nor
the treasure, and so upon a rumor of their whereabouts Menelaos sailed off to visit
Proteus in Egypt, where Helen and his goods were restored to him. Herodotos
says he is inclined to accept the Egyptian story because, had Helen actually been
present in Troy, King Priam would have certainly handed her over to the Greeks
rather than let their city and people be destroyed by war because of Paris' selfish
desires. The truth is, Herodotos says, the Trojans did not give Helen up because
they did not have her.
70 We are not told whether the 1ro>.N:t <apm xp~paro includes only Helen'. own movable goods,
or also property of Menelao s,
75
Herodotos speculates that Homer may have been familiar with the story,
although he chose to ignore it for the purpose of his epics. In the Homeric ver-
sions, Helen is clearly present at Troy, though she is portrayed throughout as the
blameless victim - indeed, almost the puppet - of the goddess Aphrodite, who
forces an unwilling Helen to make love to Paris, retiring in disgrace from the
battlefield, and yet also puts in Helen's heart a passionate longing for her former
husband. 71 Though Homer's images of Helen clearly place her on the scene at
Troy (who can forget her standing atop the wall with Priam, identifying the Greek
warriors to him?), nevertheless, Homer connects Helen with Egypt in two places.
In the Iliad (6.289ff.) he tells of Paris and Helen's visit to Sidon, supposedly on
their way to Troy, although this is in the direction of Egypt, not Troy, and hardly
a convenient stopping point,72 Likewise, in the Odyssey (4.227-29), mention is
made of certain special drugs given to Helen by an Egyptian woman, wife of
Thon; 73 although it is not stated that this happened in Egypt, it could be a covert
reference to the suppressed erOWAOV story, especially in regard to the name Thon,
which also occurs in Herodotos' reports of the tale. Further, though we are not
told in Homer the specifics of Menelaos and Helen's reunion, in Odyssey 4. 35 Iff. ,
Menelaos, who is entertaining the visiting Telemachos, gives a long description of
his sojourn in Egypt, having been stranded there and unable to get home.
71 Iliad 3: 380-447.
'A).i~?~ 8C{}1;W6'
72 EvlJ' saall OL 'Kt1fNJL
-
'tyays r-. , __ "
WIANVt'flusv,
•
TOj.L70tKt)u",
,.'.~
E:T''X'"~..''
-v'p"a '1'0' .- .....
,,'v , .",
ooo.~.
spyo yvm,((;w El&vCwJl, ·rlr~a~
",
·E),i~. rsp &~'Ya-yBVsrn<cn-£ptca•.
i08M, rOt 01 IIoAOOaI-'KY raps" e,;,,,,,,

73 TOUr Awe; 81r(arqp <Xl: ¢xlpp.aKa I-'7J1'WsYITX,
'K"apcilCOtTL~Alrvrnl1.
76
Although in the Homeric story Helen is presumed to be with Menelaos on the ship
which carried him to Egypt, the mention of Menelaos' visit there might reflect the
alternate tale of the eLowAov taking Helen's place at Troy, and Menelaos' task of
retrieving the real Helen from Egypt. 74 It must be admitted, however, that neither
Herodotos nor Homer discuss outright the element of the eLbwAOV and its sub-
stituted presence at Troy.75
Euripides, however, deals overtly with the story of Helen's eLbwAov deceiv-
mg both Greeks and Trojans at Troy while the real Helen was hidden away at
Proteus' court in Egypt. As his play Helen opens, we find Helen at a point of
crisis, seated at the tomb of Proteus for sanctuary, hoping to avoid being forced to
marry Proteus' son Theoklymenos. In a prologue, Helen describes the substitution
of the eLowAov at the instigation of the goddess Hera:
The three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite,

and Zeus-born, virgin Athene, went one day
to Paris's valley hide-out on Mount Ida
quarreling about their beauty and determined
to have the issue judged. And Aphrodite
offered by beauty - if anything can b.ecalled
beautiful that brings misery - as a bnbe,
and me as a wife, to Paris, and so won.
Paris quitted his mountain herds and came
to Sparta to collect his bride; but then
74 The late annotator Tzetzes attributes the theme of Helen i~ Egypt to Stesichoros and says that it
is Proteus who created Helen's olOwMv and gave it to Pans; It rs thought that Tzetzes was using a
late handbook in which several myths were conflated (Lindsay, Helen, I 23). It IS ~eoerallY
. the ,.. .. , • .. tory derives from these Homenc re,erenoes.
assumed that the Egypt e Iementm OW""'"
75. . thi. th Homeric notion of olOw"" to prevent his Helen of Troy
As LIndsay notes, there rs no ng '~ e. stic treatment of her argues agllinst this (Helen. 122).
from being a phantom, though the poet s reaIi all may he either lJlken as evidence that he
The fact that Herodotus does not mention the olOwMv at. . nsli it
h .:......A or tried to rene ue I .
was unaware of the Stesichoros story or th at e re)O--
77
Hera, disgruntled in defeat, deprived
her rival's solid promise of all substance:
she gave the Trojan prince not the real me
but a living likeness conjured out of air,76
so that believing he possesses me
he possesses only his belief ....
... Yet all those years
the Helen who endured the siege of Troy,
the Helen the Greek spears fought for as a prize,
was me only in name. For I myself
was wrapped in a cloud, hurried through pockets of air
and set down in the palace of Proteus here
by Hermes - proof that Zeus did not forget me;
indeed he chose the most civilized of men
to help me keep my marriage-bed unstained77
But now Helen's chastity is threatened: with her protector Proteus now
dead, his son Theoklymenos wants her. Helen, safe for the moment on the
grounds of Proteus' tomb, wants only to retain her faithfulness to her husband
Menelaos:
which is why I've come,

loyal to my vows to Menelaos,
to the tomb of Proteus as a suppliant
to pray for their preservation. Thus at least,
although my name is vilified through Greece,
my body here remains free from reproach,78
A Greek named Teucer, who had fought at Troy and is now exiled, visits the
7633-35: OlOwU'O· oV. SJ.l·, aA)..' 'oJ.l0.wuau' iJ.lO'Si&lM. SWK""U' ovpa""u ~ul'I/sil1' liTO, IIpt6J.lOU
ropavvov Tate£.
77, _ M '" _ '''''~ (48) Translation from James Michie and Colin Leach, Euripides'
we; (1qJuC'XtJl" svstu>'!' ""'A"'!t • .
Helen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 21-22. EmphasiS added.
78 Translation from Michie and Leach, Euripides' Helen, 23.
78
tomb of Proteus and, once Helen has assured him that she is not the real Helen ,
despite the resemblance, she learns from him the story of ho w M ene 1aos captured
"Helen" from Troy and dragged her off by the hair.Z? She also learns that
Menelaos never returned to Sparta but was lost at sea in a storm. Teucer leaves ,
and Helen turns to a lament and a song that she offers to Persephone. 80 The
chorus advises her to consult the prophetess Theonoe at the palace, and they leave
together to do so.
Menelaos, meanwhile, has been shipwrecked nearby, having lost most of his
crew; he managed to float ashore holding onto the wrecked keel, saving also the
look-alike Helen, the eLowAov, which he believes is the real Helen. Leaving her in
a cave guarded by a few fellow survivors, he makes his way inland to hunt for
provisions, wearing tom sails for clothing. Approaching Proteus' palace,
Menelaos is confronted by an old woman at the door who refuses to allow him (or
7911. 115-116.
80 Persephone is, of course, another abducted maiden, though not a sun maiden. The same theme
occurs in a long choral ode at the end of the play, with Demeter mourning for ber lost daugbter.
These odes bave been thougbt to be unconnected to the play, e.g., by Leacb, wbo says they provide
"little or nothing of substance" and even suggests that Euripides did not craft the long ode to
Demeter specifically for this play, but rather inserted it ready-made from his reservoir: as Leacb
says, "Demeter is ... distressed at the loss ofber daughter. What on earth (or elsewbere) bas this
got to do with Helen?" (Euripides' Helen, 12-13). Despite Leach's objections, the odes can be
seen as relevant if we consider Helen as sbe considers berself: as a wrongfully abducted maiden,
and, moreover, an abducted virtuous maiden, wbo bas (albeit metapborically) been taken off to
Hades by the ugly circumstances of ber plight. Despite the fine-line distinctions drawn in this paper
between sun maidens and agricultural maidens, the abduction theme is an obvious similarity
between the two types of myths, and Euripides could logically bave used one to illustrate the other.
As further evidence of this idea, note Euripides' depiction of Helen when she is snatched away by
Paris: '" /AS XXDep&.6p£1rop.£vavlaw ."b;)ww 'p6&a ."Cr{a]},a Xa>.rio<KoV"" 'A86ra. p.QNn,.'
avap."ciua<; ... (244-46) "He carried me off when I was gathering fresh rose petals in my robe to
take to Athene's brazen shrine" - an image that surely ecboes the capture of Persephone, who by
roost accounts (e.g., the Homeric Hymn to Demeter) was picking flowers in a meadow wben Hades
abducted her. Such an intentional parallel solution would make the play's choral odes meaningful
and poignant, not (as Leach would have it) irrelevant.
79
any Greek) inside the house. In the ensuing altercation, Menelaos learns the
reason why Theoklymenos, lord of the palace, hates Greeks: it is because of
Helen, who is there in the palace and has been there since before the Greeks left
for Troy. Menelaos does not know what to think, and decides to wait for Theok-
lymenos himself.
Helen, having visited the prophetess, now knows that Menelaos is alive and
nearby. On her way back to the sanctuary of Proteus' tomb, she stumbles across
the hidden Menelaos. She is cautious at first, suspecting him to be an agent of the
king, but soon realizes he is her lost husband. Menelaos, very confused by what is
to his mind a second Helen, is informed by her that she never went to Troy at all,
but that a divinely-created phantom likeness went in her place, and it is this look-
alike phantoms! that Menelaos has captured. Menelaos does not believe it until
one of the men who had been guarding the other Helen in the cave arrives and tells
him that she had suddenly disappeared into thin air. Before she vanished, the mes-
senger continues, she declared that she was not the real Helen, and that the real
Helen had never slept with Paris and was innocent of wrongdoing. 82 Menelaos
now realizes that this is true, and that he is finally in the presence of the real
Helen, who is entirely blameless for the events at Troy. The rest of the play is
concerned with their escape from Egypt; the sad undertone of the play, expressed
81 Euripides, in Helen's words, describes the phantom (6i&1M') as "Ki.[~I;..Aix~", an "insubstan-

tial spouse"; the term is loosely translated by Michie and Leach as "shadow, but it should be noted
, . used' the Pu - for the look-a1i1<e du2y4
that this is not a literal parallel to the Sanskrit term 10 J1lI)OS ,
"shadow."
82 It should be mentioned thal this depiction of Helen as blameless is most unusualin the context of
Euripides' other plays, where Helen is dispraised.
80
by Menelaos' servant, is the question of the wasted destruction of Troy: "All that
pain endured for a mere ghost?"83
The above examples contain many bits and pieces of a story of Helen's
eLowAov deceptively taking Helen's place at Troy while the real Helen was safe
elsewhere (in Egypt) and, the point is made, kept chaste and blameless. From the
perspective of classical scholarship, the question of derivation has always been a
critical one, and it is assumed that the story was Stesichoros' (or, if the scholiast
on Lycophron is trustworthy, Hesiod's) invention, unknown to Homer or poets of
his day, and that Euripides simply elaborated upon it in his play. While the latter
may be true, the question of the origin of Stesichoros' story cannot be so easily
dismissed. On the contrary, from the Indo-European perspective, this tale -
wherein the god(s) hide a wife from her husband, create a look-alike non-human
female to substitute in her place (whether she mates with husband or abductor),
and preserve thereby the chastity and blamelessness of the original wife, and in
which the plot is unraveled and husband and wife are happily reunited - such a
tale is suspiciously common with the general IE pattern, especially when we have
other sun maiden features present (the maiden's connections with the divine twins,
with the sun, or with horse-figures, etc.).

With this background on Helen of Troy, we must next consider Wilhelm
84
Printz's contribution: his comparison of Helen and Sita. The Ramayana's tale of
83 The answer to this question as provided by the Cypria (one of a group of posl.H~meric <pica
dealing with Homeric themes, preserved in fragmentary form, and wntten probably In lbe oeventh
or early sixth century B.C.) is that Zeus planned the Trojan War because the earth w,,: ov"'!"""'-
lated {jLupla t/JiiM KaTa X86/'a 1r"Aafo}/oi""" 1rSP[al'llpOnrw, t(J6pu,j (Ja8uoripou .. ~ ~uq,);lbe
Cypria, however, does not mention the story of the si&>>.t,",but merely p~Vldes a wc,ghber, ,
di , , the d . rring the Troiaa War popularly allnbuted only to Helen s
JD'
rvme cause Jor estructJonoccu ~,

beauty. (Cypria, 2).
81
Sita's abduction by Ravana is widely known, but Printz reviews three variant texts
which contain a slightly different story, one that will now seem quite familiar: in
these, it is an illusory, phantom SIta that is abducted, while the real Sita is safe
under the god Agni's protection until her husband Rama conquers the foe, after
which the real SIta is revealed to him. In the Brahmavaivarta Purana, Agni
appears to Rarna and tells him that the time has arrived for Slta's fated abduction ,
but since Agni's mother has entrusted Sua to him, Agni will take her away and in
her place create a shadow85 which will be abducted; Sita will be returned later to
undergo Rama's test of her fidelity, a fire ordeal.86 In the Kiirma Purana, where
Sita is praised as a faithful and model wife, SIta runs to the household fire for
protection when she realizes Ravana is after her; there she appeals to Agni, who,
appearing to her out of the fire, creates an illusionary (milyilmayl-) Sita, which
fools Ravana and is taken off with him to Lanka. The illusionary Sita undergoes
Rania's fire ordeal and is consumed; then Agni reveals the real Sita to Rama, and
at this revelation Rarna is at first confused and in a state of wonder, exactly like
Euripides' Menelaos is depicted.87 A third version of the tale in the Adhyatma-
Ramayana describes how Rama, aware of Ravana's impending attack, advises SIta
84 "Helena und Sita", Festgabe Hermann Jacobi zum 75 Gebunstag (Bonn: Kommissionsverlag
Fritz Klopp, 1926).
85 The Sanskrit term is chilyd. the sameas in the Puranic stories of SOlJIjiii. We are given the
interesting detail that the shadow-5Ila appears before Agni and asks (as does the other chilyd of
Saqliiji) "What shall I do? Conunand me." Agni tells her to practice yoga and says that she will be
reborn as Draupsdi.
86 Prakrtikhaada, adhy. 14.
87 Uttaravibhaga, adhy. 34, v. l07ff.
82
to create a shadow image of herself and then go wait in the house for a year, until
he calls. The shadow-Sita undergoes the fire ordeal, and then Agni returns the true
SIill to Rama, Clearly, these three stories contain the same motifs as in the Helen
material outlined above, as well as, in large part, the Saranyu-Sarnjna material. 88
Returning to the Greek material, there is yet another Greek tale containing
the substitute female motif and combining it (like the Saranyii story) with horse-
progeny: the story of lxion, who, in order to avoid paying bridal gifts, killed his
father-in-law; he was mercifully purified of this crime by Zeus. The ungrateful
lxion , however , then tried to seduce Zeus' wife Hera; Zeus tricked him by sending
a ve<!)/IA'I, a "cloud" shaped exactly like Hera, in her place. As Pindar tells it in
Pythia 2:
... S78t
ve</>eAQI-rapeAi~ OITO
1{tevoo<; 'YAVKV p.efJe-rwv ii,op,<; i:tviJp'
eioo<; 'YCxPinrepoxwvTlhQl -rp87rev OvpOlvioOi
fJryOirept Kpovov' "OIV're OOAov OIVTi;>fJi(101v
Z'Ivo<; -rOlAC,P.OIL, KOIAOV-r~P.0I .
...It was a cloud he lay with, ,

d he in his delusion was given the false loveliness,
: phantom went in the guise of that highes.tdaughter
of Uranian Kronos; a deceit visited upon him
o evil tho mg. 89
by the hands of Zeus, a fair
88 0 late invention in both the Indic and Greek cultures,

Printz believes that the shadow-figure IS a 0 onpri ests attempl;n. to cover up any
,.'
, lated: h thinks it has Its oogm I .....

parallel hut not genetically re ,e vine bei ,who should nol be associated with any ~ch
0
mtnnarion of wrongdoing on the part of a di ose of the motif is the preservation of the WIfe'.
scandal. Indeed, there seems DO doubt that the purpo Nevertheless it remains to be seen wbelher
ch 0 0 th Indi tal and in the other IE stones. " 0 be' 0
astity, ID ese c es inal IE tale. The argument agaIDst.t IDS. COUl-

0
the motif is a late invention or part of the ongi k and Indic literature is that the motif occurs DOl
cidenlallater development, independently, IDg;ermanic and Celtic as well.
only in these two cultural groups, but also ID
89 Richmond Lattimore, trans. The Odes of Piinda r (Chicago' University of Chicago Press,
0
83
Upon this ve¢SA'I/Ixion begat a child named Kentauros , wh0 became the ancestor
of the race of centaurs:
... ocr
L7r1roWl Ma-yv'l/TLoSl1cJtv
8P.SL-yVVT' 8V IIaALov
l1¢VPOIC;, 8K 0' 8-yevoVTO l1TpaTOC;
90lVp.al1TOc;, ix/l-¢oTepolC;
O/l-OIO! TOKSUl1l, Tix /l-aTpo9sv
/l-ev KI1rW, Tix O'fiTBp9s 'lmTPOC; .
... and he coupled

with the Magnesian mares on the spurs of Pelion;
and a weird breed was engendered
in the favor of either parent:
the mare's likeness in the parts below,
and the manlike father above. 90
Not only does the story of Pindar, then, retain our specific motif of the substitute
maiden (since the ve¢SA'I/ is a deceiving look-alike holding the place for an
abducted, or nearly-abducted, female, much like Saranyii's sava~u' or Helen's
SLOWAOV) - it also contains the horse-progeny which we have seen from the
Saranyil myth, where the Indic sun maiden bears the Asvins. Although there is not
much here in the way of a sun maiden myth, the tale seems pertinent to our collec-
tion of myths because of these two distinctive motifs.
The substitute maiden theme is also found In a late Icelandic legend.
Nicanor, the Duke of Bar, has a sister whose beauty is considered the greatest of
1976),49.
90 Lattimore, trans. Odes of Pindar, 49,
84
all women north of Greece; light radiates from her body as from the sun. The
fame of the duke's sister spread far and wide, even to Rome, where the emperor
invites Nicanor and many other nobles to a feast. One of the nobles, a king' s son
named Saulus, becomes jealous of Nicanor, who though only a duke is esteemed
comparable to a king's son; people cannot tell which of the two is greater.
Various contests (a chess game, a tournament) are held to determine the superior
man. The mutual jealousy of Saulus and Nicanor turns violent, and both men are
wounded. When they are healed, the emperor works out a peace agreement
between them, wherein they are to be sworn to each other as brothers. The agree-
ment is to be sealed by the marriage of Nicanor's beautiful sister, Potentiana, to
Saulus.P! Nicanor returns home to Bar and obtains his sister's consent to the wed-
ding, and plans are made for the feast.
Shortly before the wedding, Nicanor receives a visit from Duke Matteus of
Phrygia and his brother; Matteus insists that Potentiana be given to himself as a
bride, or else he will kill Nicanor and destroy his kingdom with a huge army he
has posted outside the city. Nicanor refuses, and secretly sends a letter to Saulus
asking for help. Before Saulus can respond, Nicanor's city is attacked and con-
quered, and he is thrown into the dungeon to starve to death. Potentiana is
abducted by Matteus, who heads home "to Palestine" with her, taking the greater
part of his army and leaving a garrison behind to watch Nicanor's city. A forced
wedding is planned between Matteus and Potentiana.

Meanwhile, Saulus arrives in Bar and recaptures it from the enemy; he sets
91 Ostensibly a sun-name (cf. ON sol); we then have here another tale in which the sun maiden
marries the sun.
85
Nicanor free from the dungeon and the two of them plan the rescue of Potentiana.
They leave on a small ship with twenty men and arrive in Palestine to discover that
the wedding between Matteus and Potentiana is just about to occur. SauJus and
Nicanor dress as musicians and present themselves as talented brothers from
Arabia, there to offer themselves to Malleus for the festivities. Come evening,
they are invited into the bridal chamber to act as valets for the couple. When Mat-
teus asks for wine, he is slipped a drug, and sleeps until the morning. Saulus and
Nicanor reveal themselves to Potentiana, and Nicanor then puts in Potentiana's
place in bed a clay figure in the shape of a woman. They make their getaway and
return safely home. When Malleus wakes up in the morning and discovers the
truth, he is furious and gathers his army against Nicanor again. By the time he
arrives, Potentiana and Saulus are already married, but Malleus intends to abduct
her and marry her once again. Saulus, however, puts an end to this by killing
Malleus in battle, and the two "brothers" and the maiden live full and happy
lives. 92
The clay female figure substituted by Nicanor in the place of his sister, the
bride Potentiana , is of course somewhat different from the Greek and Indic stories
of a divinely-created look-alike, but it serves the same function in the story. Even
. . f th I k alike the accuracy of this parallel is
If, because of non-magical nature 0 e 00 - ,
" h th are several other elements of our

questIOned, It must be remembered t at ere
t genetically related but sworn to be
story also present here: two brothers (here, no
"as brothers" to each other) who are so much alike (so "twin") in their greatness
th ed Late Mtdievallce/Qndic RQ11IJ1IJCn

92 The full text and a translanoe appears in Agnete Lo, .,
(Copenhagen, 1963) 2, 28-56.
86
that contests must be held to distinguish them, must rescue the maiden/bride-to-
be/sister from an abductor, across a sea; the maiden is about to be married and dis-
appears, leaving a substitute in her place.93 The maiden's chastity is not violated
and she is returned to her proper husband.P'
The Celtic myths contain at least two versions of the substitute female story,
with slight variations. The Irish god-hero Mongan was begotten by Manannan mac
Lir upon the wife of Fiachna the Fair, appearing to her in the shape of her hus-
band, so that she "shall not be defiled by it", says Manannan. At the same time
Mongan is born, the wife of Fiachna's attendant also bears a son, Mac an Daimh,
and the two boys are christened together. A third child, female, is born that night
to another warrior, Fiachna the Black; she is named Dubh Lacha ("Black Duck").
Mongan is immediately engaged to Dubh Lacha. Here, then, a trio is born
together: two males born on the same night (if not literally "twins") with their
accompanying sister.
When Mongan is three nights old, he is taken by his father Manannan to the
Land of Promise and kept there until he reaches age twelve. Mongan eventually
(at age sixteen) arrives in Ulster and Dubh Lacha becomes his wife. Mongan bec-
omes king of Ulster and goes off in search of boons (Ir. faighdhe) from the provin-
cial kings of Ireland. In Leinster he is welcomed by the king Brandubh mac
Echach, who possesses fifty white red-eared cows with calves. The Leinster king
93 I thi f th b titute fools Malleus only for a short while until he wakes up in
n s case, 0 course, e su S1 Ii
the morning.
94 The ersatz bride, Hildeburc: whom Kudrun's abductor H::=~=

Germanic example of the substitute malden mollf, although
•
dec" him
='rs
be llDOIher
after Kudrnn i
rescued, with Hartmut's knowledge, and is therefore not an attempllo rve .
87
sees that Mongan adores the cattle and offers to give them to Mongan upon the
condition that he make a "friendship-without-refusal" agreement with him. By this
agreement, Mongan is sworn to give the Leinster king whatever he may desire in
the future. Mongan returns home to Ulster with the cattle, and soon the Leinster
king arrives at his door. Mongan reaffirms his commitment to give the Leinster
king whatever he desires, but when he demands Mongan's own wife Dubh Lacha ,
Mongan is shocked and angry, though he realizes he must keep his word. Dubh
Lacha herself wisely swindles a promise out of the Leinster king not to touch her
for a year, and then she is taken away by him.
Mongan sets out with Mac an Daimh for Leinster, intending to see Dubh
Lacha by a clever trick. Knowing that the Leinster king will be constantly check-
ing with his wizards to determine his whereabouts, Mongan has Mac an Daimh
carry him into Leinster in a shoulder basket95 containing sod from Ireland and sod
from Scotland, so that the wizards will say he has one foot in each country, and the
king wiII not be aware of his approach. Having gained his secret entrance into
Leinster, Mongan ambushes a couple of clerics going to the king's palace and he,
by magical powers, adopts their appearances for himself and Mac an Daimh. In
this guise they arrive in the palace. Under the pretense of hearing Dubh Lacha' s
confession, Mongan is able to see her secretly and make love to her. But he can-
not rightly take her back. He leaves but later decides he must take back his wife
by trick.
Returning to Leinster, Mongan and Mac an Daimh see that a great marriage
feast is being prepared for the wedding of Dubh Lacha to the king. They pass an
95 . "rh fr UiJiJJ a shoulderbaslcet?"

Meyer's conjecturefor guaiJJlgh, pe aps omg ,
88
old hag with a large dog with a twisted rope for a collar; this is the "hag of the
mill" , C uimne.
. M'ongan turns the hag mto
. a beautiful young girl, and her dog
becomes a sleek white lapdog with a silver chain around its neck. The two men
and the transformed pseudo-maiden arrive at the king's palace. Mongan has put a
love charm in the false maiden's cheeks, and the king of Leinster falls in love with
her. Mongan tricks the king into offering to exchange Dubh Lacha for the false
maiden. Mongan and Dubh Lacha make their getaway (together with Mac an
Daimh and his wife, Dubh Lacha's handmaiden), leaving the false maiden with the
king of Leinster, who does not discover the deceit until the next morning:
And when on the morrow the household of the king of Leinster

arose, they saw the cloak of the hag, and the grey tall hag on the
bed of the king of Leinster ... 96
The closing image of the passage is strikingly similar to the post-wedding-
night scene of the Icelandic story where the duke wakes up in bed to find that he
has been tricked, and that a false maiden (in that case, a stiff clay image) has been
substituted for the beautiful abducted maiden he thought would become his wife.
Likewise, the adoption of a disguise used by Mongan and his companion to gain
entrance into Leinster is similar to the Icelandic tale, where the brothers dress as
musicians in order to enter the enemy's fortress. Finally, though it is not part of
the Saranyii story, the rescue of the maiden by twin brothers or their hypostases,
an element of this myth and the Icelandic and Greek ones, is a recurring com-
96 KUDOMeyer, trans., The Voyage of Bran, 84.
89
ponent of other survivals of the myth.??
One other Irish tale must be noted in our discussion of disappearing brides
and substitute females: "The Wooing of Btain", one of the two chief tales of the
so-called Mythological Cycle. Etain, the wife of the god Midir, undergoes a
human birth and becomes married to Eochaid Airem, the king of Ireland. Midir,
the heavenly husband, appears to the king and challenges him to play chess. The
king wins three rounds, and they then playa fourth game with the stakes to be
named by the winner. Midir wins and claims as his prize a kiss from Elain.
Eochaid, angry, bids him to come back in a month to collect it, and when Midir
arrives he is locked out. By magic, he appears in the banqueting hall and whisks
Btain away through the roof of the house; they both take the form of swans as they
flyaway.98 Eochaid and his men set out to recover her, and when they reach the
fairy-mound that is Midir's home, Midir appears and promises to return her to
Eochaid. The next morning, fifty women all looking like Btain appear, and
Eochaid is forced to pick one. The one he chooses turns out not to be the real
Blain but a child that Etain (who was pregnant by him when she departed) has
borne him, making the union between Eochaid and his chosen woman (his own
daughter in the shape of Btain) incestuous. Though this story is perhaps not quite
as dramatically parallel as the above examples, we should emphasize that the point
of the myth is to preserve the "proper" marriage between Etain and her original
97 This is surveyed in greater detail in the next chapter.
98 Swansor other birdsare elsewhere associated with the IE divine twins: Zeus assumes~ form a
swan to visit Leda and beget the Dioskouroi; the Mvins travel WIth golden g~ (/uvrJsa- wild
goose") in RV 4.45.4, which presumably pull their celestial carl; 10 the Latvian songs the Dieva
deli fly like falcons or black crows. See Wsrd, Divine TWin', 24.
90
husband Midir, and that it has been long thought that Etain is essentially a sun
figure. 99
We have seen also that the substitute female can serve as a substitute mother:
In Indic, SaI]1jiUi'sduplicate Chaya is a substitute mother to her children Yarna and
Manu; recall from Chapter I that Macha's boy is given to the king's sister, who
serves as substitute mother, and Rhiannon's son is likewise raised by another
mother. In the case of Macha and Rhiannon, the substitute mothers are benign,
but in the case of the Chaya she fits the "evil stepmother" type. Recall also the
story of Kudrun, who is put under the care of her abductor's mother, Gerlind; this
evil "stepmother" forces her to perform difficult and humiliating tasks.100 In the
Greek tradition of Helen's abduction by Theseus, she is delivered to Theseus'

IOI
mother Aethra, who holds her captive until the Dioskouroi liberate her. There
is also an "evil stepmother" mother motif in the Irish story of the children of Lir,
which contains several other sun maiden motifs. Lir's first wife bears him two sets
of twins, and upon her death, Lir marries her sister Aoife, who becomes jealous of
Lir's children and the attention he pays to them. She tries to have the children
killed, and eventually she takes care of them herself by pushing them into a lake
and turning them into swans. Her treachery is discovered and she is turned into a
demon condemned to wander in the air. 102 Interestingly, the swan-children are at
99 e.g., O'Rahilly, who despite an often over-enthusiastic pursuit of sun deities gives good .
evidence for Etain's case: "her epithet Echraide .. , suggests the speedy horse; ... she lives In a
crystal grianan or sun-house .. , for seven years she moves incesSantly through ~e sky .1iJc; a ~iant
purple fly; and finally, in the shape of a swan, she flies away through the .. r WIth Midlf. (/nlh
History, 293)
101 Herod. Hist. 9.73; Pans. 1.41.4; Plutarch, 31ff. See Ward, Divine Twins. 61.
91
one point approached at sea by two horsemen, foster brothers of Lir's wives, who
want to rescue the children, who are condemned to wander about on the water; it is
easy to see here a reflection, somewhat distorted, of other motifs (rescue by twin
horsemen, crossing of the sea) in the sun maiden myth.
There may be an echo in the Kalevala, a collection of East Finnish (Karel ian)
traditional songs; even though this material is not genetically Indo-European, it has
in some linguistic examples shown IE influence. Vainamoinen and I1marinen, the
two heroes of the epic, pursue the lovely maid of North Farm. One comes court-
ing by sea on a boat, and the other comes on horseback. The maiden is described
as being illuminated by celestial bodies:
It was as if the moon were shining on her brow, the sun

gleaming on her breasts, the Great Bear on her
shoulders, the Pleiades on her back ...
Gold objects hung on her breast, silver ones shone on her
head.t03
Vainamoinen makes a friendly agreement not to drag the girl away by force, and
ultimately the girl becomes betrothed to llmarinen. A large wedding feast is
prepare, d th e t wo are married , and llmarinen takes her home in his sled. Soon,
however, h·IS brid

nels . killed by one of his slaves. In his grief, I1marinen weeps
.
over her for a long time, but then, be'109 am, aster craftsman he conceives a solu-
lion to his sorrows:
. ersity of Chicago Press, (948), 63ft".

102 Myles Dillon, Early Irish Liurature (Chi cago: U mv
I 1h KaIevaJa or Poems of the Kaleva District, compiled
03 Francis Peabody Magoun,Jr., trans., . e . Press 1963)'56, 58.
by Elias Lonnrot. (Cambridge: Harvard Umverstty , .
92
He gathered gold from the sea, silver from the billows...
He took those gold pieces of his, picked out his silver
PieceS...
He th.rust the pieces of gold into the furnace, forced the
pieces of silver into the forge...
Craftsman Ilmarinen himself stirs up the forge,
tned to produce a gold image, a silver bride. t04
llmarinen puts the girl on soft pillows in his bed, bathes himself, and lies next to
her, but finds her quite cold to the touch and, "to be sure, not much at singing, nor
is she very talkative." 105

It must be admitted that important elements of the IE sun maiden story are
absent: the absence of the maiden is due to her death, not her abduction, and the
substitute maiden is meant as consolation for the grieving husband, not as a trick to
fool the abductor. The tale, then, is not a direct parallel. Nevertheless, it deserves
mention because of the inclusion of the unusual substitute maiden motif and the
celestial qualities of the maiden. Furthermore, Ilmarinen himself, an artificer
much in the vein of Vedic Tvastr, is called upon in one of the poems to forge a
new sun and moon ("a gold moon, a silver sun"I06) when they have been hidden
away by magic.
From the detailed stories in Indic, Greek, Germanic, and Celtic, we can see
that the substitute maiden motif, involving the artificial creation of a female figure
104 Magoon, trans., The Kalevala, 256-57.
105 Magoon, trans., The Kalevala, 258. H. Scharfe points out an I~ndiC
of SItii sits nexl to Rima on the throne after the real SIti leaves him or g
.:alle::"I~::'
; ,I I'
tz
P IlCe at
sacrificial rituals requiring the presence of a wife. RiimliYlII)a7.89.4.
106 Magoun, The Kalevala, 324-25.
93
which looks like the abducted bride, and which is substituted for her in her
absence, is a frequent element in the Indo-European sun maiden stories. In a
larger context, past scholars have described the broader parallels in the transfer of
the bride to another person other than the one to whom she was intended - e.g.,
the transfer of Siirya to Soma instead of Asvins in the Rgvedic wedding hymn,
which has been compared to the marriage of the Baltic sun maiden to the moon
instead to her betrothed, the Sons of God. 107 However, the above group of sub-
stitution stories seems to provide a clearer picture of the way the motif must have
worked in the original story. The substitute female is intended as a trick, a device
by which the bride makes her escape. Whether as in Saranyu-Sarnjna's case the
escape is from her husband, or as in the other cases (Helen, Potentiana, Dubh
Lacha, Etain) from an abductor (though we should note here the ambiguity of the
two Irish cases, where the abductor is not the husband but has good legal cause) is
hard to say: certainly for a sun-allegory the Saranyu motive (leaving a too-bright
husband) is convincing; nevertheless, the majority of cases point to abduction by a
non-husband , after which she is returned to her rightful husband. Whatever the
specific scenario behind the motif, it was apparently popular enough to undergo
creative adaptation: like any good story element it seems to occur in a variety of
fashions with a great deal of local color, but it remains a recognizeable element of
the sun maiden story in a number of Indo-European literatures.
94
2.C. Chastity in Question
In the sun maiden stories examined in detail above, a frequent motif is the
questioning of the chastity of the bride or bride-to-be during her absence; she must
then prove her innocence. The substitute female theme seems to be related to this
problem: whether it was invented specifically to provide for the chastity of the
original female figure, or as some further detail of solar allegory (e.g., Lommel's
dawn/ twilight theory), it must be admitted that, intentionally or not, the substitute
figure operates as a device which preserves the bride's chastity. In general, this
seems to be an old element of the story, and the following paragraphs summarize
the evidence to this effect.

As described above, Vivasvant's concern over the chastity of his wife in his
absence is an integral feature of the Indic story. He is angry when he discovers
that Saranyu has tricked him and left a substitute in her place, and storms off to her
father Tvastr's house to see what has happened to her. There are intimations that
Vivasvant's anger may be due to a suspicion of father-daughter incest between
Tvastr and Saranyii, The Puranic texts make an effort to emphasize Samjna's
chastity during her absence: as cited in detail above, there are several foreshadow-
ing references to S3J!1jiia's chastity and modesty throughout the tale, and when
Vivasvant finds her the text makes clear that she is practicing asceticism and quite
blameless.
The same is true for Sitii, who has been abducted by Ravana, and is proven
innocent before her husband Rama. As we have seen above, the alternate versions
of the Ramayana story in which Sitii is replaced by a look-alike phantom have as
their purpose the emphasis on the chastity and blamelessness of Sitii.
Regarding Helen, the alternate Greek stories about her eiOOlAO/lbeing
95
abducted (rather than herself), and her emphatically safe situation at the honorable
Proteus' court clearly have the purpose of preserving Helen's chaste image.
Stesichoros' Palinode has as its main point the chastity of Helen; to hold the
opposite view, as Stesichoros formerly did, brings her divine wrath. Even in
Homer, where Helen is physically present at Troy, she is on the whole presented
as the innocent and blameless victim of the gods. In the Iliad she tries to refuse
Aphrodite'S command that she make love to Paris; it is clear that the goddess
forces her to do so against her wilP08 Even Priam, whose city is besieged by
Greek forces, tells Helen to her face, "You are not to blame... the gods are to
blame." 109 In the Odyssey she is likewise defended, e.g., by Penelope, who says
of Helen that "a god incited her to do a shameful deed; not until then had she con-
sidered in her heart any such reckless conduct (aTT/)." 110 This viewpoint,
however, is unlike later depictions: Hesiod looks at her as a wilful adulteressl U;
Aischylos disparages her in a similar manner. I 12

Nevertheless, there is throughout the classical era a contrary theme emphasiz-
ing the chastity of Helen, e.g., in Euripides' Helen.1l3 Even in versions where
1083: 480-510.
109 3: 164. oU TL /.L0' air,." sua[, 8£oi P6 /lO' arrwi dULl'.
110 23:222-225: ri/'~' ~TO' 'pi~aL 8s", ",POps,ina' "'s,Kiq' nj,~'lirq, au 1fp6q8 .. tii>
t-y<6:r86T0 8VIL"' .. '
''''' •. ... M s' "au "Helen dishonored the
III Catalogue o/Women, 67: w~' 'EAt"'! VOX1"s~,,'" ,a""ov .. "'" .
bed of golden-baited Menelaos. "
112 Cf. the choral ode at ll. 681-781 of the Agamemnon.

113 I' t Menelaos thal her body bas beenkeptchaste fnrhim,
e.g., II. 860ff., where Helen exp 81DS 0 th alive will ever marry Helen, and be will
and II. I O6Off., where Menelaos declares thal no 0 er man
kill her if necessary to prevent this.
96
she is about to suffer punishment for her crime, she is somewhat miraculously
preserved: men (presumably the Achaians) about to stone her drop the stones the
minute they see her face; a variant of the motif occurs in the more famous story of
Menelaos dropping his sword at the sight of Helen's breasts.U'' The image of
immunity from wrongful prosecution parallels that of Sita, who when she is about
to be attacked by her husband disappears by the intercession of the goddess
Laksmt.I l> Despite the insistence on Helen's chastity and immunity, however, we
are indeed confronted with a set of contrary myths about Helen: those of her early
life, in which she was supposedly carried off and raped by Theseus and/or a num-
ber of other men. It has been suggested that the latter stories may be due to con-
flation with local Mediterranean agricultural myths in which the abduction of a

l16
maiden is representative of the absence of vegetation in the winter ; Vogt is
certainly right in his assertion that there is a close connection between agriculture
myths and solar myths. II? It seems quite clear, however, from the evidence above
that Helen has much more in common with sun maidens than with agricultural
deities, and it is probable that the multiple-rape stories of Helen, not being integral
to the IE sun maiden myth, are a separate Greek development, tied to the prol ifera-
tion of agricultural deities in the Mediterranean area.

In Icelandic legend, we have seen the rescue of Potentiana before the con-
summation of her forced marriage to the evil duke Matteus. The rescue occurs
114 In Ibykos and Euripides; see Lindsay, Helen, 120, 126.
115 RiimiiYlU1a 7.97.
116 This is the view of Clader, Helen, 71ft.
117 See Clader, p. 72ft. and Vogt,Festschriftfilr WtinJwlJ, 214ft.
97
-
dramatically, on the very wedding night, so as to emphasize the impending viola-
tion. Potentiana, however, is not accused of unfaithfulness to her husband-to-be ,
but rather is rescued from it. Contrarily, Svanhild of the Scandinavian legend is
falsely acccused of infidelity by her husband, who has her trampled to death by
horses; here is a case where the maiden is not vindicated.
Celtic myth seems to contain no exact parallel in terms of an accusation of
the maiden's infidelity, although fidelity is an issue in the case of Dubh Lacha ,
who craftily extracts a promise from her abductor not to touch her for a year, thus
giving her husband time to rescue her from him, and thus preserve her chastity.
Of course, we have the opposite kind of story in Etain, who not only sleeps with
her "abductor" but bears him a child, whom he accidentally marries: here the old
motif has been lost or adapted to fit the vagaries of the Celtic imagination. Grot-
tanelli points out that although Macha's chastity is not a consideration in the stories
about her, she is asked to prove herself to the king who demands that she race
against his horses, since her husband has declared her a faster runner, and this is
similar in nature (a test of one's quality) to the ordeal which SItii and other sun
maidens undergo.U'' Likewise, Rhiannon is not accused of a breach of chastity,
but of infanticide, for which she (although innocent) must undergo punishment.
Despite variances, it is clear that in at least four branches of Indo-European
we have the presence of this motif, the questioning of the chastity of the sun
maiden in her absence from her husband, and the requirement that she prove her
innocence, even under the threat of death from her husband, in the cases of $itii,
118 Grottanelli, 'Yoked Horses,' 135f.
98
-
Helen, and Svanhild. In the broadest sense, this motif may stem from the common
accusation of infidelity in universal twin myths against the mother (or, in our later
case, sister/friend) of twins based upon the belief that the she must have been
unfaithful since twins were thought to have separate fathers. This generic motif
seems to have become specialized in the IE myths, where the virtue of the
maiden/mother is nearly always proven, unlike the universal myths which usually
find the woman guilty of unchastity.
2.n. A Mortal Husband
Another common motif in the group of tales outlined above is the ambiguous
nature of the husband of the sun maiden. In the myths that categorize the pair, the
sun maiden is generally immortal whereas her husband is mortal, although he has a
few immortal attributes. Although the issue of mortality does not occur in all of
our myths, its presence in some of the Indic, Greek and Celtic stories deserves
attention.
As mentioned briefly above (section 2.A), the question of Vivasvat's nature
has been a controversial one, since he is in some places portrayed as the sun but
elsewhere appears to be a mortal, a terrestrial sacrificer. Since in later Sanskrit

tl9
Vivasvat denotes the sun, many scholars (e.g., Kuhn and Spiegel , Hil-
lebrandtl20, Hopkins,121 and more recently Jamisonl22) have extended this defini-
119Friedrich Spiegel, Die arische Period und ihre Zusrande (Leipzig: Verlag Wilhelm Friedrich,
1887)248ff.
120 Yedische Myrh%gi. (1927;reprint,Hildesheim: Georg OlmsVerlagsbuchhandlung, 1965),
1:18 and 2:343ff.
121 Hopkins, Religions of India, 128,130.
99
-
tion back to the earlier period. Others have proposed different views: the
Bohtlingk-Roth dictionary explains him as the morning sun ("Gott des aufgehenden
Tageslichtes, der Morgensonne"), similar to Macdonell's view of him as the rising
sunl23; Ludwig considers him as "lichten Himmel, hinter welchem erst das Reich
Yamas liegt"124; Bergaine sought to connect him with Agni, who is also regarded
as the sunl25; Ehni though of him as the brightening morning sky ("der lichtwer-
dende Morgenhimmel") or even as the bright sky in general, including the moonlit
sky ("sei es des im Glanz der Sonne strahlenden Tageshimmels oder des vorn
Mondenschein erhellten Nachthimmels." 126 Still others emphasize his mortal
characteristics, e.g., Oldenberg, comparing Avestan Vivarjhvant, the first mortal to
prepare Haorna, considered Vivasvant to be simply the first sacrificer and ancestor
of the human race, not a god of lightl27; Bloomfield128 also emphasized his mortal
nature. Hillebrandt suspects that there may be three uses of the name: one sig-
nifiying the sun (god), another the name of a mythical sacrificer (originally the sun
god, later degraded to a mythical sacrificer), and the third an honorific name for
the ordinary sacrificer.129
122 Ravenous Hyenas, 204ff.
123 Vedic Mythology, 43.
124 Ludwig, Der Rigveda, 3: 333; 5: 392.
125 I, 87.
126 Der vedische My thus des YallUJ,19, 24.
127 Religion des Yeda, 122; ZDMG49, 173; SBE 46:392.
128 "Marriage of Sarlll)yii", 176f.
129 Ved. Myth. 2, 355; cf. 343ff.
100
-
In the story of Saranyu, his solar aspects and superhuman shape-changing
abilities are at the forefront, and it is uncertain whether we must read into this
story other characterizations of Vivasvant as the first sacrificer. Putting aside for a
moment Bloomfield's characterization of him as one of the mortals from whom
Saranyu was hidden away, which is not necessary for the verse to make sense, 130
there is still much to describe Vivasvant as a mortal in the Vedas. As Manu's
father he is believed to be the ancestor of the human race, 131 and is closely con-
nected with human sacrificial ritual, as the first sacrificer of Soma, especially in
the ninth book of the Rg Veda.132 Avestan Vivanhvant has similar connections
with Haoma, and he is likewise regarded in that tradition as a mortal: he is the
first mortal (paoiryiJ mafyiJ) who pressed haoma (Yam a 9.4). As the father of the
race and first sacrificer, he has a special relationship with man that sets him apart
from the gods; much like the Greek Prometheus, whose favoritism towards man in
the institution of sacrifice earned him the tremendous wrath of Zeus,133 Vivas-
vant's involvement with man sets him apart from the heavenly world and ties him
much more closely to man than most divinities. Furthennore, there may not even
be any real contradiction in portraying a sun god as mortal, not only because of his
130 Taking a more general view, thai the verse simply refers to SaraJ;JyU'sbeing bidden from .
earthly (mortal) eyes, as well as fromher hushand; this does not have to Imply thal her husband \S
mortal.
131TS 6.5.6.2; SB 3.1.3.4.
1329.10.5; 9.26.4; 9.99.2, etc.
133 Hesiod, Theogorry,11.507-616.
101
daily cosmic "extinction" at sunset, but also in light of his progeny, who are
explicitly connected with the origin and demise of the human race, Manu (First
Man) and Yama (at least in later times, the god of Death).
All of Saranyu's children seem to be in a similar situation. The Asvins, for
example, are in Indic literature considered deities of lesser stature because of their
close association with mankind.134 Likewise, Manu and Yama also have the
closest connections with man and particularly with the issue of mortality. Manu is
considered as a father of man in the Rg Veda,135 having instituted sacrifice; the
sacrifice that Manu made became the prototype for future offerings. In the Soma
sacrifice, the worshipper asks Soma to flow as it once did for Manu in his
sacrifice; sacrificers offer Soma as Manu once did. 136 We can envision Manu as a
kind of Original Man, from whom humankind descended.
Yama likewise undoubtedly has mortal trappings, though much argument has
arisen over whether Yama was god or man, or whether he represents some celestial
or ethical concept. He has been identified with the setting sun,137 lightning, 138
and the moon ,139·, others hold that he was a mere man, 140 or that he represents an
134 RV 4.1.5; 3.124.12; 7.72.2; SB 4.1.5.1; MBh 12.7590; 12.208. The Mvins were excluded
from the Soma sacrifice (cf. Hillebrandt, Vedische MytMwgie 1, 478). Jamison (Ravenous Hyenas,
65f.) stales that this may be because of the impuritiesinvolvedIn their roles as physicians.
1352.33.13, etc.
136 RV 9.96.12; 4.37.3.
137 Ehni, Der Yedische My thus des Yama, 19-39.
138 Bergaigne, La Religion VediqutI :473.
139 Hil1ebrandt, Vedische Mythowgie, 2: 362ff.

140 . Y . the Rg Veda"Jadunath Sarlw.r CommonoraJion Volume, vol. 2
Heras, "Personality of ama In -
(Hoshiarpur: Punjab University, 1965), 195.
102
et hical
1 concept. 141 Though Yarna IS
. frequently connected with the gods, his mor-
tal ties are the strongest. He is not explicitly called a god but rather is "king" over
the dead.'42 In RV 10.10.4, Yami speaks of Yarna as "the only mortal," and he is
called the first of mortals to die. 143 By this event, he becomes the Lord of the
Dead. Furthermore, the Iranian evidence shows him only as a mortal. 144
Much of the confusion regarding the immortal or mortal nature of Yama and
Manu is understandable. Yarna and Manu, closely connected with humanity and
its origins as the first beings to undergo the changes of mortality, namely, death
and propagation of the species, belong to the legendary and mythical past, an era
somewhere between the immortals and the mortal race, hence the hazy boundary.
By necessity of genealogy, since humanity is not created ex nihilo, they must be
descended from divine parents, even if this fact is mitigated. The effort, then, to
replace Saranyii with the created, non-immortal savar/}ll, who will serve as sub-
stitute mother to both Yarna and Manu, makes good sense and is most clearly
understood in this context.

In order to further understand the roles of Yarna and Manu in this myth, we
must examine their roots in the larger IE context. A wide variety of IE texts -
Iranian, Greek, Russian, German, Scandinavian and Roman - refer to a myth
featuring an original pair of twins narned simply Man (*manu) and Twin
141 E.g., karmasailcaya; see Gadgil, 'Yamaand Yami,"JBBRAS 20 (1944):56ff.
1429 . 113.8, etc.
143 AV 18.3.13.
144 E.g., Yasna 9.4 and Vendidad 2.
103
(*yemo).145 The myth in essence describes how Man sacrifices his Twin and from
his dismembered body creates the physical universe. Manu and Yama do not
appear together in these roles in the Indo-Iranian material, but there are some
traces of the story. Lincoln has attempted to link several myths to the twin
sacrifice story; some of these myths are clearly related to it, whereas some of the
more general myths which he uses to illustrate the idea of the world-creating
original sacrifice seem more tenuously connected. For example, the Rgvedic
Purusa hymn (10.90) has the gods dividing purusa ("man") as a sacrificial victim;
his mouth, breath, eye, thighs, navel, head, and other body parts become various
components and beings of the Indian cosmos. The story has a broad Iranian paral-
lel in the death of the primordial Ox and man, Gayomart, from whose bodies
sprout grains and metals. Furthermore, the Satapatha Brahrnana contains a story of
Manu sacrificing his wife Manavi; although Lincoln assumes that she represents
Yama and is a female twin of Manu, the texts make it clear that she is Ida, the per-
sonified libation, and his daughter as well as his wife, so the story is not a real
reflection of Manu sacrificing his twin.l46 More clearly connected to the original
IE myth of Man sacrificing Twin, however, are three others of Lincoln's
examples, in which the name *yemo in fact occurs. The first is the story of
Spityura's dismemberment of his brother Yima; Yima is clearly the Iranian version
of Vedic Yama. Lincoln considers Spityura to be a reflex of Manu, 147 although
145For a survey, see Lincoln, "The Indo-European Myth of Creation" History of Religions 15
(1975-76): 121-145.
146Lincoln, "Myth of Creation: p. 134, quoting SB 1.1.4.14-17; for Manivi as his daughter and
wife, SB 1.8.7-8 and MaitrS 1.6.13.
147 "Myth of Creation: 135.
104
the dismemberment which occurs is not explicitly a sacrifice. Another parallel
appears in the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the story of the "Beguiling of
Gylfi," in which the giant Ymir is killed, and from his body the earth, sea,
mountains, sky, etc. were made; the story type is more like the stories of purusa
and Gayomart, but the name deriving from *yemo is present. The man- and twin-
words also appear in a couple of Roman versions, as in the Tuisto "Twin" (here
from a different root) and Mannus "Man" of Tacitus' Germania; they even appear
in the familiar names Romulus (who is also Quirinus < (co-) *Yinnus, *Wiros
"Man") and Remus « *yemos, with initial R- as influenced by Roma) and
Romulus). 148
Because of the convincing Indo-European evidence for this myth, we cannot
evaluate the Saranyu material without considering the background of Manu and
Yama, even though they do not appear together as twins in this myth nor in any of
the sun maiden stories currently under examination. Whatever the relationship
between the cosmogonic myth of twin-sacrifice and our sun-maiden myth, at the
very least it seems impossible not to presume Manu and Yama to be the original
twins underlying the story of Sanu:tyu's first set of twins. And, unfortunately,
smce the Yama-Manu story is aside from the Indic material nowhere else
associated with the IE sun maiden, it is difficult to make general statements about
the connections between the two sets of myths.

In the Greek sphere, the male figures surrounding Helen of Troy pose a
similar problem, since they are also described as having both mortal and immortal
148 See loan Puhvel, "Remus el Frater," 300-311.
105
qualities; the sources vary. In the Odyssey, Helen's two brothers, the Dioskouroi,
are described as the sons of Tyndareos and Leda149; elsewhere their divine
parentage, by Zeus upon Leda, or upon the goddess Nemesis, is emphasized. 150
In the Iliad, they are mentioned as having died in the ordinary way, and there is no
hint of deification, lSI but in the Odyssey, the brothers share alternate days of
immortality.152 Slightly different is the Cypria, which mentions that Kastor was
mortal and had death as his destiny, while his brother Polydeukes was immor-
tal. 153
Menelaos is described with a similar ambiguity. Though clearly specified as
a mortal, he receives special privileges since he, being married to Helen, is con-
sidered as son-in-law of Zeus. When he dies, he does not go to Hades with the
rest of mortal shades; he is transported off to Elysium, like one of the immortals.
Euripides' Helen 1666ff. draws us a picture of Menelaos' fate, with Helen:
amp be Kc,/L>/!vr; KClt reMvriavr; {3iop,

/}eor; KeKA~av Wt t:.WIJKOpWP uera
IJ70POWP W,/}i~eLr; ~iLP(c, r' 'ClP8pW7WP 1fC,PCl
e~e(r; W;/}' ~/Lwp",
And one day, when you round the last bend and finish life, you
shall be called a god, and with the Dioskourol you shall share 10
14911:297-301.
ISO E .g., C ypna

. 8.
lSI 3:237ff.
152 11:298-304.
153 Cypria I.
106
libations, and with us you will have the hospitality of men ...
And further:
wi Tii> 1I"AO/Illl'1l MeveAeCjl gewv 1I"o,pOl

J.LOlKo,pWV «arouceiu vijuov Bun J.L0PULJ.L0V ••• (1676-77)
And for wandering Menelaos it is his destiny by [will of] the

gods that he dwell in the Islands of the Blest.
In this, Menelaos was luckier than Tithonos, who fell victim to his divine
lover's poorly defined wish. There are other stories in Greek literature of mor-
tals becoming immortalized (e.g., Ganymede), but the tale of Tithonos is
relevant here because it concerns a sun figure, the dawn goddess Eos CHw<;).
As mentioned above (Section I.e., Motif #13), Eos is in love with the earthly
Tithonos and asks Zeus if he will give Tithonos eternal life; she forgets to ask
also for eternal youth. Tithonos therefore grows old and becomes unappealing
to the goddess, and in his advanced years he is locked up in a private room,
away from view.t54

The story has a parallel in Irish literature. Ossfn (Ossian), the son of
Fionn Mac Cumhail, meets a beautiful maiden on an enchanted horse; she is
Naimh, one of Mananan mac Lir's daughters. Ossin mounts the horse behind
her and they ride off across the sea. They have several children together, but
Ossfn pines for Ireland, so Niamh gives him her horse but warns him not to dis-
mount, because three hundred years have passed in that world. He falls off by
accident and becomes changed from a divine youth into a blind, grey-haired,
withered old man.155
107
What is the purpose of this motif! Its repeated presence in these many
branches of IE myths seems to indicate that it is an important feature of the
myth. We might speculate that the marriage between the divine, immortal sun
maiden and an earthly mortal is connected with the engendering of the human
race (e.g., as in the Saranyii tale, where her children represent the first mor-
tals). It is presumably natural that this myth, depicting as it does the "birth"
and "death" of the sun, is tied to the myth of the origin of the human species.
As the sun appears to be "mortal" in its apparent extinctions, likewise it is by a
similar extinction - namely, death - that humanity is distinguished from the
immortal sphere.
2.E. Equine Characteristics
From the above explorations it will be easily noted that many featured
heroes and heroines have associations with horses and even the ability to
metamorphosize into horse-shape. In the Indic material, we have seen the
metamorphosis of both the sun maiden Saranyu and her husband Vivasvant into
horse-form, and their progeny are the Asvins, who are apparently foals in at
least one aspect of their nature and not simply, as their name literally translates,
horse-possessors. The horse-motif is dominant in Celtic myth among the sun
154 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 11.218-238.
155 Ellis, Dictionary, s.v. Ossfn.
108
maidens discussed above. Macha races against the Icing's horses as if she were
a horse herself, and elsewhere, when she delivers her child, a mare outside the
door simultaneously delivers twin foals. Aine is the wife of a sun-god in horse
form. Rhiannon first appears to Pwyll riding on horseback, and she undergoes
the punishment of serving as packhorse to the local community; likewise, the
disappearance of Rhiannon's child coincides with the disappearance of Teimon's
newborn colt. In the Greek myths, although Helen is not specifically associated
with horses, her brothers the Dioskouroi are famed master horsemen; Euripides
depicts them leading her home in their horse-drawn chariot.156 There is also
shape-changing, although not of an equine nature, in Helen's background: she
was conceived, according to the dominant myth, when Zeus mated with Leda in
the form of a swan. The Baltic sun maiden has horses outside her door; the
Latvian twins which court her are even called the "horses of God." 157 In
Germanic, Svanhild's husband, suspecting her of infidelity, has her tom to
pieces by horses. As in Indic and Baltic myth, there is ample evidence for the
depiction of the Germanic divine twins as horses. 158

It should be noted that the sun maiden myth has also been associated with
another set of myths underlying the Indic horse sacrifice tasvamedhai, a ritual
which has distinctive Celtic para1lels.159 The underlying Celtic myth describes
156 Euripides,Helen 1495.
158 See Ward, Divine Twins, 38f.

159 Joan Puhvel, "vedic aJvamedha and Gaulish IJPOMIlDVOS,· Language 31 (1955),353-354;
reprintedin Analecta lndoeuropaea (t981),4-5.
109
a human king mating with a mare, symbolizing an immortal goddess; its Indic
inversion has a queen mating with a stallion.l60 O'Flaherty's view is that there
is a prototypical myth involving a goddess in the form of a white horse or water
bird who mates with a human king; hippomorphic twins (male and female) are
the result of the union, and from the incestuous mating of brother and sister des-
cend the human race.l61 A detailed survey of the textual material for such a
prototypical IE myth behind the horse sacrifice is, however, lacking; our sun
maiden research may prove to be an element of this larger picture, but the ques-
tion of its role in the horse sacrifice is beyond the scope of this project.
SUMMARY
We have seen in the Indo-European sun maiden myths outlined in this
chapter the clear presence of several motifs: the dramatic disappearance of the
maiden, the substitution of a look-alike female, the questioning of her chastity
during her absence, the issue of her immortality as opposed to her husband's
mortality, and finally, a persistent association with horses. Of these, the sub-
stitution theme is perhaps the most intriguing, not only because it is, from an IE
perspective, relatively unexplored territory, but also because of the question of
the symbolism of this particular detail. Is its presence only a literary device,
solely due, as Printz would have it in the case of Slta, to a late desire to
preserve the reputation of the abducted deity? Or should we speculate with
160 See W. O'F1aherty, "The Indo-European Mare and the King" SlaviCJJHiuosolymilana 5-6
(1981): 23-33.
161 "Indo-European Mare," 23.
110
Lommel that it has some allegorical value - that we have here a story of two
look-alikes, the dawn-twilight and evening-twilight?
To make Lommel's twilight allegory, which works fine for the Jndic
material, extend into all of Indo-European would require evidence that the sun
maiden figures in general are associated, at the very least, with sunset and sun-
rise. This task is the meat of the following chapter. It bears repeating that we
must distinguish the rising sun itself from the brightening sky which precedes it,
as is most clear in the Indic differentiation of the dawn goddess Usas from her
lover, the sun; she "disappears" once he arrives. The post-sunset evening sky,
then, would be her parallel, or "twin," not appearing until the sun has set. Jf
we demarcate "morning twilight" as beginning with the first rays of light and
ending with the appearance of the sun, and "evening twilight" oppositely as
beginning with the sinking of the sun below the horizon and ending with the last
ray of light turning to darkness, we will with Lommel better understand exactly
who and what the IE sun maiden originally was.
111
CHAPTER 3
USAS AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN DAWN GODDESS
Summary:
3.A. Usas: A Survey
3.B. The "Daughter of the Sky"
3. C. The Marriageable Maiden and her Dowry
3.D. Liberation of the Dawn
We now tum to a different subset of the motifs outlined in Chapter I, and
although most of the non-Indio sun maiden figures we will discuss here are familiar
from Chapter 2, the focus of this chapter is the yet-unexplored Vedic Usas. In
contrast to Saranyu, the mythology of Usas does not increase in popularity in the
later works (like the Puranas, which as we have seen contain embroidered versions
of the RV Saranyu material); in fact there is little mention of Usas in the post-
Vedic era.! Nevertheless, Usas, like Saranyii, is the sun's lover, and Usas herself
is explicitly the same pre-dawn sunrise-glow figure we have seen Saranyii to be
allegorically. In examining Usas' case, we have the additional benefit of her many
distinctive ~gvedic epithets, which convey a tangible picture of her in terms of
Vedic cosmology, as will be seen momentari1y. In large part these epithets have
for our purpose a cross-cultural significance, and by comparing epithets of the sun
maiden figures in several IE traditions a further relationship between them can per-
haps be better demonstrated.

Usas has been the focus of numerous studies, both Indic and comparative,
and there surely remains much to be said regarding this striking Vedic deity of the
dawn. It is not the purpose of this chapter, however, to delve into the many com-
1L. Renou, ttudes vediques et p/JlJiniennes, vo!. 3 (paris: E. de Boc<;ard, 1957), 12.
112
plex aspects of U sas but rather to examine specifically those features which seem
to preserve elements of the IE sun maiden, of whom Usas is surely a descendant.
3.A. U~: A Survey
Unlike Saranyu, Usas is unquestionably characterized as a specific type of
sun-deity, a dawn goddess, and so there is no real debate over what natural
phenomenon she represents. She is vibhavart, "brilliant"; bhasvati, "luminous";
dyotana, "shining"; she is both svetytl, "white" and arust, "reddish",2 as are the
various rays of dawn through the clouds; likewise, she is arjunt, "the white one."
Indeed, the name Usas is derived from the verb vas, "shine." She is described as a
beautiful maiden, in which context we may with Kuiper understand the epithets
sanart, "youthfully vital", san/tii, "youthfully vital", san/1iivan and sunhavari,

"rich in youthful vitality."3 She is kind and generous, and sacrificers beseech her
to give them the goods they desire, wealth, progeny, cattle. Usas herself is fre-
quently associated with cows in what is ostensibly a metaphor for the reddish
colors of the clouds at dawn.4 Elsewhere, she is depicted as a mare, like
SaTaJ:lyii.5
2 See Renou, 33.

3Not, as Geldner, "noble" ("edel"); see Gonda, Epi/hets, 97, and Kuiper, "Nwpo.. , XaNc",'
Amsterdam Acad., 1951: 17ff.
4 See, e.g., Renou, 7.
5 Renou, 6.
113
Illustrative of these features are these excerpts from RV 1.92:
eta u tya ~asa~ ketum akrata parve ardhe rajaso bhanum anjate
m~k.rrJvilnaayudhilnlva dhr~nIlv~ prati gav6 'rustr yanti miltara~ (J)
~d apaptann aru~ bhanavo v/thil svayujo aruslr ga ayuksata

akrann u~aso vayunilni purvathil rusantam. bhilnum arustr asisrayur (2)
arcanti nanr apaso na vistibhih samanena y6janena paravatah

isam vahantth sukite sudanave visved aha yajamilnaya sunvatt (3)
adhi pesamsi vapate n.nar ivapoT'Jutevaksa usreva barjaham

jyotir visvasmai bhUvanaya kmvatl gavo na vrajam vy ii~ailvar tamah (4)
•••
atarisma tamasas param asy6~a ucchantt vayunil krnoti
sriy« chando na smayate vibhiltf supratlkil saurnanasayilj1gah (6)
•••
visvani devf bhuvanabhicakryil pratlcf caksur urviya vi bhati
visvam ]lva/!l carase bodhayantl »isvasya vacam avidan rnanily6~ (9)
punah-punar jayamilnil purilrJfsamilna'!l vaT'Jamabhi sumbhamilnil

svaghnlva k.rmUr vija ilminilnd martasya devf jarayanty ayur (J 0)
vyuT'Jvatf div6 antiln abodhy apa svasilra'!l sanutar yuyoti

praminatf rnan~a yugani y6~iljilrasya c~asil vi bhilti (1J)
pasan nil citra subhagil prathilnd sindhur nil ~6da urviya vy asvait
aminatl daivyilni vratani saryasya ceti raSmibhir drsana (12)
usas tac citram a bharasmabhya'!l viljinlvati

y~na tokQm ca tanayam ca dMmahe (13)
Here those Dawns have placed their banner,

They decorate themselves in the eastern part of the ftrmament with rays of
light.
they bring out their weapons like brave men.
The red cows, the mothers, return. (1)
114
At will, the red rays have flown up.
[The Dawns] have yoked the easily-yoked red cows.
The Dawns have placed their path, as before."
The Red Ones have erected their white beam of light. (2)
They sing like industrious women at work

[They come] on a single journey from a distance
Transporting refreshment for the pious (and) liberal,
All the days, for the sacrificer who presses [Soma]. (3)
She puts ornaments on herself, like a dancer

She uncovers her breast like a cow her udder.
Making light for the whole world,
Dawn has opened up the darkness, like cows the cowpen. (4)
* * *
We have crossed over the edge of this darkness.
Dawn, lighting up, makes her way.
For beauty she smiles, like one willing to please, when she shines forth
With a lovely face, she has incited to gladness. (6)
* * *
Viewing all beings, the goddess
Shines forth widely, facing the eye.?
Awakening every living thing to go forth.
She has found8 the word of all the zealous. (9)
6 Or, as Geldner: "vayuna eigentlich Richtsehnur, Reihe, richtige Ordnung, insbes. die
regulierende Zeit, Zeitfolge." Cf. Thieme, Untersuchungen 17: envelopments (of the darkness by
their white shine); Renou, tVP 3.31, distinctive marks.
7 The eye of the sun (cf. Renou, 39), although in his translation he bas "faisant face l (tout)
regard." Cf. Geldner, "(jedem) Auge zugewandt."
8 According to Geldner and Renou, U~ receives and accepts the speech of the poets; although this
may be the sense of vid also in 5.83.10, H.-P. Schmidt points out that in 8.101.16 it rather refers to
finding, inventing the words: WlcovldoJrl vacant
udrriryant1f1l (the Mother of the Rudrss, the
heavenly cow) finding the words, inciting the speech, and that therefore this may also be primarily
meant here, too; or, there may be an intentional ambiguity. Cf. also Oguib6nine, La duss. Usas,
95.
115
Sh~ of ancient times, born again and again,
Shining forth her uniform color
. '
Like a skilled gambler diminishing his stakes
The goddess diminishes the days of man, making him older. (10)
Uncovering the boundaries of the sky,

She IS awakened, she drives away her sister.?
Lessening human lifespans
The maiden shines by the eye of her lover. (11)
Spreading out [her rays] like cattle [let out from the pen], brilliant, beauti-
ful,
Like a river at rush, she has shone forth.
She who does not infringe upon divine commitments,
She appears, showing herself with the rays of the sun. (12)
o Usas, bring to us that excellent [reward],

You who are rich in gifts,
By which we shall establish children and grandchildren. (13)
Also in other hymns she is portrayed erotically. She "reveals herself like a
waterfowl [its chest]" 10, upo adarsi sundhyuvo nil vakso, RV 1.124.4. She is "like
a wife desirous of her husband," jayeva patya wart, 1.124.7, and "bares her
breast," u~&... rintte apsa~, 1.124.7.11 She "puts on makeup like a woman going
to a rendezvous," anji ankle samanag& iva, 1.124.8. She is a woman who "smiles
for beauty, like one who is pleasing," sriye cnando nil smayate, 1.92.6. The
predominant image we have of her is a maiden (y6~1l-)exuding attractiveness and
sexuality.
9 Ratti, the night.

10 On sundhyfl, which Renou translates as "courtesan" and Geldner more conservatively as
"Sundhyiivogel", see Thieme, Kl. Schr- I, 219, who takes sundhy6 from sudh, "to clean (oeeself),
preen (oneself)" and sees the analogy to a waterfowl which, upon leaving the water, flaps its wings
to shake off extraneous water and thereby reveals its chest.
II See Renou, tVP 3: 19,20, 22, 31.
116
The hymns stress that Usas follows and does not violate divine truth in her
duties: rtasya y6~a na minot! dMmahar ahar niskrtamacaranu, "the maiden does
not infringe the institution of truth, when she comes day after day to the rendez-
vous, " 1.123.9. These passages seem to refer both to the regularity of her
appearances and the exact locations in which she arises: rtasya pantham anveti
sadhu prajanatlva na diso minati, "she goes along the path of truth straight; like a
wise one, she does not infringe upon the directions of space," 1.1243. In many of
the hymns to Usas, the worshipers contemplate her eternal nature in regard to their
own mortality (RY 1.113.11):
lyu~ {e ye parvataram apasyan vyucchtintlm usasam martyasah

asmabhir 11nu pratictikryllbhlld 6 ti yanti ye aparlsu pasyan
They have gone, those mortals

Who saw the very first Dawn shining forth.
And now she has come into being to be seen by us.
In the future will come those who will see her.
Although most have taken the occasion of this contemplation to be the daily rising
of the sun _ indeed, many hymns actually specify that diurnal occurrence - there
is one school of opinion that the Usas hymns, being by nature a liturgical collec-
tion as part of the Rg Yeda, are specifically intended to celebrate the annual
"return" of the sun at New Year, i.e., the period beginning with winter solstice.
The most recent exponent of this view (based on the earlier opinions of Ludwig
and Hillebrandt)12 is F.B.I. Kuiper, who argues that the content of many of the
12 Ludwig, Rgveda, N, p. xi, VI, 173a; Hillebrandl, Veti. MylhoWgie. 2: 28ff.
117
hymns (e.g., their persistent invocations for wealth and progeny) is more suitable
for an annual renewal than a daily one.13 Kuiper cites evidence that Usas is con-
sidered to be the first of a long procession, and that the hymns emphasize the end
of a period of darkness - which, though it could refer to the night, seems to refer
to a longer, more important kind of darkness, since it is of some concern to the
worshipper. 14 The hypothesis is controversial and has been rejected by such
Indologists as Keith,IS Foy,16 Oldenberg.!? and Renou18 on the grounds that there
is simply not enough evidence to confirm the New Year theory and that certain
texts specifically refer to a repeated daily sunrise.J? However, the Usas hymns are
not part of the daily Agnihotra sacrifice, but rather part of the annual Soma
sacrifice, which is additional evidence for Kuiper's theory.20 For our purposes,
Kuiper's viewpoint may prove of value when we look at other evidence of annual
ritual celebrations of the sun maiden figure, to determine if in fact there is a
seasonal expression of this myth.

The dawn goddess in the Rg Veda is exceptional among IE sun maiden
13 F.B.J. Kuiper, "The Ancient Aryan VerbalContest," 1114 (1960): 224.
14 Kuiper, "Verbal Conlest," 228ff.
IS A.B. Keith, Religion and Philosophy ofrhe Veda, 121f.
16 Willy Foy, review of Vedische Mythologie, by Alfred Hillebtandl, IF 12 (1901): 37f.
17 Noten at V1I.80.
18 EVP 3: 101.
19 E.g., the expression dive-dive in 1.123.4.

20 id B..J.n~aJi und Indra: Untersuchungen VIr vedischen Mythologie und
See H.-P. Schmi t, !'-Y . 9 ff
Kulturgeschidue (Wiesbaden: Otto HarrassoWllZ, 1968), 1 1 .
118
figures by virtue of the beautiful, abundant, and thoughtful poetry conceived in her
regard by the Vedic poets. Although the word usas has several IE cognates deriv-
ing from "aues-, (ll)us-os- "dawn" - for example, Greek 'Hw" Lat. Aurora,
Welsh gwawr, OHG osttatra, OCS za ustra, Lith. ausra, ausrine, and Latv.
austra, ausma - on the whole, few of these figures (if indeed personified dawn
goddesses are behind all these terms) have survived with enough mythology intact
for us to be able to construct viable parallels with Usas. Of this list, 'Hw, offers
the most material for comparison, as we shall see, but, nevertheless, it will become
clear that many of Usas' characteristics lauded in the Rgvedic hymns are distinctly
present in other IE figures whose names are not etymologically related to usas.
That the survival of the personality, attributes, and even epithets of a mythological
figure can occur without a trace of an etymological connection in name is a com-
mon phenomenon in IE comparative mythology. A solid argument for common
identity can be especially made in cases like ours, where formulaic epithets and
distinctive descriptions are shared cross-culturally, implying the antiquity of such
poetic expressions and the probability of genetic connections.
3.B. The "Daughter of the Sky"

It was long ago observed that certain Indic, Greek and Baltic sun maiden
figures shared one or two common epithets, "Daughter of the Sky" and/or
"Daughter of the Sun, "21 although the issue of whether both epithets apply to the
21 Mannhardt,Die let/i,chen Sonnenrnythen. 92.
119
same figure has been much debated. The latter epithet, Daughter of the Sun,
appears in three traditions, Vedic saryasya duhita, referring to the sun maiden
Surya as the daughter of the sun god Siirya, saules dukterys, referring to the
Lithuanian sun maiden, saules meita referring to the Latvian sun maiden, and
·H)..LOVOV-YCxT7/P referring to Helen's alternate genealogy from Helios.22 The
Rgvedic term saryasya duhiu: is used in contexts which make it clear that Surya is
meant, and this term does not generally in the Rg Veda refer to Usas, who is rather
called diva duhitc, "Daughter of the Sky" or "Daughter of Heaven." Oldenberg
long ago dismissed Hillebrandt's attempt to identify saryasya duhita (=Siirya) with
diva duhita (= Usas), upon the cogent argument that the epithets are distinctive and
never cross-applied.23 Oldenberg is most likely correct in his analysis of the Vedic
picture, where Usas and Siirya are never explicitly equated and have developed
separate and well defined traditions. There is, however, some puzzling overlap
between the two figures; for example, each is associated with the Asvins as the
third member of a triad, although Siirya is their wife (they are her pan, in the dual)
and Usas is their friend (sakha) (4.52.2,3). We must postpone a detailed discus-
sion of Surya for the next chapter, but suffice it to say for the moment that she
exhibits enough common ground with other sun maiden figures to allow us to ques-
tion the supposition by Oldenberg and other scholars that she is in origin entirely
distinct from Usas, and that the "Daughter of the Sun", in IE terms, was a wholly
different entity than the "Daughter of the Sky." Furthermore, it is quite clear that
22Ptolemaeus Cbennus, Hist. Nov. 189, in Photius, Bibliothtka 149; elsewhere she is ~
81r(6rqp.
23 Oldenberg, Noren, at 7.69.4. If U~ bears any distinct relationship 10 the sun in the bymns, it
is as his wife or lover, not as his daughter.
120
many of Usas' attributes and functions are exactly echoed in the Latvian saules
meita, who is not "Daughter of the Sky" but "Daughter of the Sun." For this and
other reasons, Oldenberg's analysis of the distinction between the "Daughter of the
Sun" and the "Daughter of the Sky", though useful for the Vedic material, cannot
be generalized to explain the larger IE picture, which seems to use both epithets to
address a single deity.

First, let us look at the "Daughter of the Sky." The Vedic epithet diva
duhita refers to the sun maiden as daughter of the sky-god (IE *djeus). Cognates
appear in Greek ilLO<; IJtrycXTT/pand Lith. dieva dukryte, the latter term based on a
diminutive of dukra, "daughter"). We leave aside for a moment the Lithuanian
term, and tum to the immediate distinctions between the Indic and Greek terms.
The Vedic genitive divais) refers to the old Indic sky-god Dyaus, a deity whose
importance had faded before other subsequent ~gvedic gods, so much so that the
term dyaus generally means only "sky" in the Rg Veda, and the so term diva
duhita would likely have lost its specificity and have been conceived in Vedic
times only as "Daughter of the Sky. "24 Contrarily, IE *Djeus retained his
centrality in the Greek pantheon as the god Zeus, and the term ilLO<; IJlrycXTT/p
would have referred specifically to a "daughter of Zeus. "25

Another difference is that the Vedic term div6 duhita is used exclusively of
U sas 26 whereas the Greek term ilLOc; 9lYYcXTT/pis used of a number of females.
. ,
24 All major modern translations assume this, e.g., Renou's "fille de ciel" and Geldner's "Tochter
des Himmels. "
25 As Deborah Dickmann Boedeker has pointed out, Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden:
E.]. Brill, 1974): 30.

26 Except for one reference to U~ and her sister Rilii (Night) together as div6 duhilar4 (10.70.6).
121
One might expect that foremost on the Greek list might be the dawn goddess Eos,
since her name is formally cognate with U~as.27 However, curiously, the Greek
epithet is never applied to Eos, Gregory Nagy28 has explained the absence of the
expected epithet for Eos "Daughter of the Sky" by constraints of meter: Nagy
argues convincingly that in Greek meter the formulas 9tryrY.TT/p 11,0<; and 11,0<;
9u-yOtTT/p do not accommodate the name 'Hw<; except in one position, at the
hexameter line end, as a hypothetical 9tryrY.TT/p 11,0<; 'Hw<; , which does not in fact
occur. Nagy speculates that such a combination, having been already restricted to
that final location, was later supplanted by a more popular formula poooorY.KTu'Ao<;
'Hoc, its metrical equivalent. Yet although Eos is never called "Daughter of the
Sky/Daughter of Zeus (*Djeus), she is portrayed in Greek myth as a descendant of
Helios, whose name is cognate with Vedic Siirya; Eos is therefore "Daughter of
the Sun" (9u-yrY.TT/P 'H'ALou), as is Surya's daughter Surya (duhita sQryasya).29
If this is the fate of U sas' s Greek namesake, the question then remains, what
happened to the epithet "Daughter of the Sky(/Zeus)" (11'0<; 9tryrY.TT/p), if it was no
longer in use for the Greek dawn goddess? As mentioned above, the term is
applied in Greek epic to several female figures, being used one time each for
Athena, Artemis, Ate, Persephone, and Helen, its usage in the latter case being
ammunition in Clader's argument that Helen is an IE deity in origin. However,
we are left with the initially puzzling fact that the term 11,0<; 9tryOtTT/p is, in epic,
27 See, for example, R. Schmitt, Dichtung und Dichtersprache, 172.
28 "Phaethon," 137-177.
29 Elsewhere, however, Eos is the sister of Helios (Theogony 371-374).
122
most frequently of all applied to an unexpected (from the IE point of view) deity:
Aphrodite. Nagy points out that her name fits easily into the final position of the
Homeric hexameter , as .:l'w<; 0'tryOlT1/P 'A""

",poOtT1/. 30 Nagy speculates that
Aphrodite is a parallel of Eos not only in epic diction but also in epic theme, since
both deities have affairs with mortal men; in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite,
which is based upon this theme, Aphrodite compares herself to Eos, and in this
context the former is repeatedly called .:llO<; Ov-yaTIJp31 In Nagy's view,
Aphrodite inherited several of the features of the dawn goddess Eos and ultimately
served as a substitute for her. Whereas Vedic Usas is in the Rg Veda called both
the wife (yoJIi) of the sun god Siirya (7.75.5, etc.) and his mother (7.63.3,
7.78.3),32 Nagy sees the Greek picture in certain cases as having split the two
functions between two Greek goddesses, e.g., in the myth of Phaethon, whose
mother is Eos and whose lover is Aphrodite.

The question of the fundamental nature of Aphrodite, who was once thought
to be simply an adaptation of a Near Eastern love goddess, and the question of pos-
30 E.g., Iliad 3: 374.
31 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 81, 107, 191; see Nagy, "Phaethon", 163. Nagy considers the
seduction of a mortal as one of the trademarks of the dawn goddess myth, although such a case can-
not be made for Vedic Usas (see below in this section), and the case for Saranyu is debated, as dis-
cussed in Chapter 2. Nagy further considers the nature of the Vedic epithet diva duhitD as
"ambivalent", since the dawn goddess is beneficent (darkness-<lispelling) but also connected to
animal sacrifice; he compares the usage of the Greek epithet A~ OlJ'YtiTrjp as beneficent in some
contexts (e.g., to describe a goddess as patroness of a bero) and maleficent in others (e.g., Per-
sephone). Clader (Helen, 53) pursues the same idea in regard to Helen. However, Nagy provides
no clear Indio textual evidence for this "maleficent" context of diva duhitD, other than the general
association with animal sacrifice, which need not have that connotation and is difficult to prove for
the Rg Veda.
32 Relationships we can view as naturalistically symbolic, as Nagy points out, if the dawn gives
"birth" to the sun eacb morning, and "mates" with him at night as they disappear together.
123
sible Indo-European influence appears to have been to some degree resolved in an
important work by Deborah Dickmann Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry into Greek
Epic, whose research may explain more fully the Greek fate of the "Daughter of
the Sky." Boedeker first reexamines the evidence for the Near Eastern origin
hypothesis, a view which had been strongly promulgated by L. R. Farnell at the
turn of the century and tentatively supported by Nilsson and other scholars-"; this
derives largely from comments of Greek historians (Herodotos, Pausanias) who
trace Aphrodite's cult on Cyprus to Palestine or Assyria, and from the similarity of
certain portions of Hesiod to the Near Eastern" succession myth," as evidenced in
the Hittite-Human material. The story of Aphrodite, however, is interjected into
the midst of the Greek version of the succession myth and has no Near Eastern
prototype. Boedeker believes that although there are undeniable similarities in cult
and iconography between Aphrodite and certain Near Eastern goddesses (Ishtar or
Astarte, for example), the resemblances have been overestimated and misinter-
preted.34 Boedeker shows that the archaeological evidence rather implies a
Mycenaean connection for Aphrodite at several Cypriote cities, including Paphos,
which was the center of Aphrodite's cult, and leads to the conclusion that
Aphrodite arrived on Cyprus with the Mycenaean Greeks who first landed there. 35
Furthermore, as Boedeker points out, the conservative formulaic language of
epic poetry provides the best evidence for Aphrodite's origins as the IE dawn god-
33 See Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry, I.
34 Aphrodite's Entry, 5f.
35 Boedeker speculates (as had John Chadwick) that the probleodmaliC

~n':. of ~h~~'~~.
from the Linear B tablets (where we have, e.g., Dionysos, a g once so oug t 10 'alJC
in origin) is due 10 the happenstance of the survivals. Aphrodite's Entry, 3.
124
dess. Aside from application of the epithet AIO<;911"(6.1'1)1' to her, Aphrodite is also
called xpvcriT/ "golden." This term36 commonly applies to Aphrodite in Greek

. , who is
epic, and its significance becomes greater in comparison with Vedic Usas
also called hirasyavama- "gold-colored. "37 Aphrodite is xpvcr<+> Kocr!J.'l9iicrc>
"adorned with gold", and her golden (xpucrGlOl) ornaments are a source of wonder
to Anchises-": such descriptions of "golden Aphrodite" recur throughout Greek
epic poetry. We can add here that the Usases (pl.) are likewise described as being
well-ornamented (supesas-, RV 1.88.6)39, like a beautiful maiden adorned (for
marriagew) by her mother (susamklisa miltrml~reva y6~a, 1.123.11), in contexts
which imply that the adornments are the shining lights of dawn. Boedeker notes
that Aphrodite wears a robe "more brilliant than the gleam of fire; the raiment on
her breasts shines like the moon" (1.124.3); a description with clear celestial over-
tones, just as Usas is jy6tir vasana "clothed in light. "41 Furthermore, the epithet
(iie. (from IE *dei-), generally translated as "divine", is shown by Boedeker to have
most likely retained its original meaning "brilliant" in Homer, and though the
36 Admittedly from a Semitic stem, but it appears to have been borrowed early on into the Greek
lexicon, as attested in Linear B. Boedeker, Aphrodite'S Entry, 22.
37 RV 3.61.2, 7.77.2. Boedeker (p. 22) also adduces to this comparison KP'lKOTSTNx; 'R",
"saffron-eolored Dawn.·
38 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 65.
39 Also of naJaosflsa "Night and Dawn" at 1.13.7, 1.142.7; of ~flsan&aa "Dawn and Night"
10.36.1.
40 See Gonda, Epithets in the ~ Veda, re sapiJas-, 102.
41 Boedeker (pp. 72-75) surveys in general the celestial assocations of "bright clothing" in Greek,
as well as Vedic.
125
epithet is applied to several epic females, it is predominantly used of Eos and
Aphrodite.42 Boedeker accepts the root *dei- as the basis of the -uLTrI
' component
of Aphrodite's name, relying on Pisani's IE derivation of her name.43 Another
comparison is to be found in the goddess's mode of travel: Usas rides across the
heavens on her shining chariot.f", so Aphrodite rides heavenward on a chariot
drawn by gold-bridled horses or by swallows, whereas other Greek goddesses
return to Olympus without such transport.F' A particularly distinctive comparison
has been made by Boedeker between Usas opening the two doors of the sky with
light (u~o yad adya bhanuna vi dvarav rnavo divah, RV 1.48.15) and Aphrodite
shutting herself behind the shining doors of her temple to prepare for her lover
(OUpOlt; 'e7ri0'1Ke </>OIe,p6;<;)46 - especially since the terminology used in Greek and
42 By Boedeker's count: In the Iliad, Eos (5 attestations), Aphrodite (4), Theano (I) and Anteia
(1); in the Odyssey, Eos (8), Calypso (3), Aphrodite (2), Charybdis (2), Clytemnestra (I); in the
Homeric Hymns, Selene (3), Coronis (I). Boedecker explains Calypso as another dawn goddess
figure, taking on a mortal lover (Odysseus) and, unlike Eos, offering him eternal youth.
43 Boedeker, 8ff., reviews various etymologies for Aphrodite's name, finally resting on one
developed hy Pisani ("Akmon e Djeus" Archivio glottologico ualiano 24 (1930) 65-73) and to
some degree Maass before him: aq,pO<; + 6117/"bright", from »dei- "shine." Pisani interprets the
first part of her name, aq,p6<;, as "cloud" ,and although this meaning is not attested in Greek
(which apparently rather interprets aq,p6<; as "foam", cf. the folk etymology of her name in Plato,
Grot. 406c, ow Tilp Toli aq,pov "/ip,,n,.), Boedeker supplies a number of references to show that
Aphrodite is typically associated with clouds. A second problem is the Cretan dialect variant
•A<Popoim; because of this, Benveniste maintained that it could not be derived from aq,pO<;, and that
the name •Aq,pooim could not be Indo-European. Boedeker resolves both of these problems by
deriving aq,p6<; from thematic *1Jbhro-, and 'Aq,po-I'Aq,op- from the athematic zero grade of the
root *nbhr- each form a different development from a common root; in this scenario, it would not
be necessary to attribute the meaning "foam" to the form 'Aq,po- I' Aq,op- which then mean "cloud"
as the literary evidence suggests (cf. P&q,i)o,1)' For Boedeker, then, Aphrodite is the "bright cloud"
which arises from the sea at daybreak. One might also compare Boedeker's alternate analysis of
a</>p6<;as "extreme vitality" to Kuiper's interpretation of Vedic s6nrt4 as "(personified) vitality", on
epithet of Usas.
44 Her cantiroratha; RV 3.61.2; cf. 1.49.2, supiiasatn sukJulm rdtham, etc.
45 Iliad 5:357-369; Sappho, Fr. I; see Boedeker, 14, n.2.
126
Indic is etymologically parallel (dvara-:lJvp- and bhanu-:<pfX8LV-). 47 To
Boedeker's comparison of Usas, Eos and Aphrodite opening or closing the shining
doors of their abode - presumably the "gates" of heaven from which the sun rises
and sets - we should add further evidence from the Latvian dainas, wherein the
saules meita opens the doors of heaven for God, who travels across the heavens in
a car drawn by horses:
Lentement, lentement, Dieu

Descendait a cheval de la montagne;
La Fille de Saule ouvrait les portes,
Les mains dans des gants detoilcs.
(Jonval, no. 37)48
Another distinctive epithet of Aphrodite, <p'AOI-'1-'8,5~<; "smile-loving", is
shown by Boedeker to occur in erotic contexts, much as similar images of smiling
Usas do in the Vedic hymns.49 Much as Aphrodite's powers of enticement are
irresistible, Usas is envisioned as a seductress in the Vedic hymns, as mentioned
46 Boedeker, 77. The same phrase describes Eos shutting Tithonos behind the shining doors of her
home at the edges of the earth, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 235.
47 Boedeker, 77.
48 This and subsequent quotations from the Latvian are the translations of Michel Jonval, us
chansons mythologiques lenonnes (paris: Librairie Picart: 1929). Sometimes the songs distinguish
thsee different doors in heaven: one for God, another for the sun, and a third for the moon. Jon-
val, I I.
49 Usas smiles as she reveals her breast like a young wife, sfU!lSmOyanulnll yUvalOJ puniJtdd avrr
vaksamsi kmuse vibhatf RV \.123.10); successive dawns are like beautiful smiling women,
sivdbhir tui
~;.ayamiJdJ,hir, RV 1.79.2b, etc. See Boedeker, 23-25; 32·35.
127
above in Section 3.A. Although Boedeker (p. 68) cites a Rgvedic passage she
believes to show that Usas has a mortal lover (RV 1.30.20: kfu; ta ~alJ kad-
hapriye bhuje marto amartye, which she translates "What mortal must please you,
immortal friend-seeking Usas?"), the verb bhuj means rather "satisfy" in the sense
of providing appropriate sacrifices. Likewise, the following verse which asks, "To
who do you go?" (/WIT! naksase) need only express the sacrificer's fear that perhaps
the dawn goddess will bestow her favors upon someone else instead of himself, and
it need not imply that Usas is coming to him as a lover. The idea that Usas has a
mortal lover is not elsewhere supported in the lndic tradition. Nevertheless, the
connection of the dawn/sun maiden figure to the mortal race is in other tales a
fundamental component of the sun maiden material. Not only is the sun maiden
figure in some instances an abductress, she is, as Chapter 2 has demonstrated, fre-
quently abducted herself, and Aphrodite is no exception: attempting to seduce
Anchises, she invents a story for him, telling how she was whisked away from the
dancing ground by Hermes, to be brought to him as a wife. Boedeker provides an
extensive study of the xopoq; ("dancing ground", which she prefers to take more
literally as "enclosed area" ) as an arena for abduction and rape, finding also con-
nections between the Greek words deriving from IE *gher- (like xop6<;) and its
Vedic cognate hr, both of which are used in solar contextS.50 The dancing ground
does appear to be connected with our myth; Mannhardt had noted in 1875 that both
the Latvian sun maiden and U~ are portrayed as dancers, and that a passage in
51
the Odyssey describes the dancing grounds of Eos.
50 Boedeker, 58, 61, 85·91.
5t Mannhanll, Die lettischen Sonnenmythen, 99f.
128
. ,
Considering the explicitly celestial nature of other sun maidens like Usas
who is called divo-jt: "sky-born" (RV 6.65.1) and divi-jt1, "born in the sky" (RV
7.75.1), we have still to confront the popular classical depiction of Aphrodite as
"sea-born", a view deriving from the Hesiodic depiction of her birth from the
severed genitals of Ouranos floating in the sea. However, this refers only to the
place of her birth, not her parentage: Boedeker draws attention to Aphrodite's cult
title Ovpavia, which among other things clearly suggests a celestial function,52
since the Greek god Ouranos ("sky") is, much like Indic Dyaus, a faded sky god.
Furthermore, Aphrodite'S alternate genealogy lists her parents as Zeus and Dione,
a name derived from the feminine form of Zeus/*Djeus. In both of these lineages,
then, we may have Aphrodite's clearest tie to the IE myth of the sun maiden as a
literal "Daughter of the Sky."

Aphrodite, then, appears to be a development of the Indo-European dawn
goddess/sun maiden, as Boedeker has shown, though by no means the equivalent
of Vedic Usas (or of the IE sun maiden in general, for that matter), since
Aphrodite developed into a distinctive Greek deity. It is clear, however, that she
still reflects various aspects of the dawn goddess, functioning as a hypostasis for
Eos in Greek epic diction and art; however, as Boedeker points out, in epic her
functions are not generally those of a dawn goddess but rather those of a goddess
53
of love and beauty, and specifically as a patroness of the Trojans.
52 As do her alternate titles Aeria and possibly "'App.a. Boedeker presents other evidence for her
celestial nature: Aphrodite also receives sacred offerings together with a number of overtly celestial
gods like Helios, Ens and Selene; according to tradition, she inherited her cult place at Corinth
from Helios (pausanias 2.4.6); and the presence of images in black- and red-figure pottery portray-
ing Aphrodite in scenes typical of Ens, showing that artists conceived of Aphrodite as a figure
similar to the dawn goddess. Aphrodite'S Entry, 14-17.
53 See also Paul Friedrich, TheMeaning of Aphrodite (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
129
But Aphrodite's role as a patron goddess also proves interesting from a com-
parative basis. The invocation of a dawn goddess as a patroness occurs also in the
Vedic material, where Usas is repeatedly invoked to bestow her generosity upon
the sacrificer. Perhaps significantly, nearly two-thirds of the occurrences of the
epithet diva duhittl in the Rgvedic Usas hymns are applied to Usas in contexts of
patronage or in contexts where her generosity is emphasized: 20 out of 28 occur-
rences of the term diva duhittl in the Usas hymns appear in contexts emphasizing
her generosity. The sun maiden's role as patroness may be considered common to
the IE tradition, especially in light of similar Baltic conceptions of the sun maiden
(or sun) as a distributor of gifts.54

Like Eos and Aphrodite, Greek Helen has also been viewed as a reflex of the
IE sun maiden,55 and she has much in common with them and with Vedic U~.
Initially, of course, Helen's intimate associations with Aphrodite must be men-
tioned, since it is Aphrodite who in large part directs Helen's actions and move-
Furthennore, in the Odyssey Helen is herself once called A~

ments.56
IJiryaTT/p.57 Clader suspects that Helen's epithet 'An"'''', which is somewhat
problematic (Helen lives in Sparta in Lake<!aimon,not in Argos, and the notion of
1978):43ff., who supports Boedecker's comparison.

54 See Jonval, Chansons ... ullOnnes, nos. 355,358,359,367,.368,.etc:; the relevance of the sun
id ' d t a! fearure of the Latvian matena!, to this notIon IS discussed 10 detail,
mal en s uowry, a cen r 11
below, section3.C.
55 Clader, Helen, passim.
56 Clader, Helen, 54.
57 4:227; Clader, Helen, 53ff.
130
Helen's Argive sympathies is not supported by contextual evidence), may not refer
to a city at all, but rather to the adjectival derivative of the root involved, ap-yl)(;
« *ap-ypoc;) meaning "bright. "58 The palace of Helen and Menelaos shines like
the sun; its walls are 7:ap.</>av6wvm and it is bright with ~hiKTWP, which is specifi-
cally a sun-word, as Clader has observed. 59 Helen herself wears shining, immor-
tal garments, e. g., the eavoC;, which Clader has shown to be a divine garment
generally used by goddesses, which may make its wearer invisible.P' In her first
appearance in the Odyssey (4.122), she is compared to" Artemis of the golden dis-
taff (ApTep.LOt XPu<TT/AaK,l1''l').61 Helen's attendants Aithre, daughter of Pitteus,
and Klymene both have solar connections. Aithre's name is derived from aLliw,
"bum, light up, "62 and this is also the name of a figure associated with Helen in
Pausanias: Theseus' mother, who receives the abducted Helen from him into her
care. 63 Klyrnene, in Euripides, is the consort of the sun, and the mother of
Phaethon, another solar figure.64 Other versions of Helen's birth from an egg laid
by Leda or Nemesis, or from a daughter of Ocean, have also been thought to have
58 Clader, Helen, 55ff.
60 Clader, Helen, 58f.

61 See Clader, p. 60, on the meaning of '~NJtKtirq as variably "distaff' or "arrow" but most likely
"distaff" in this context.
62 See P. Chantraine,Diclionnaire etymologique de la langue greque (paris: &!ilioDS KJincksieck,
1968) s.v, aillw; cf. ai1ip~,"clear sky."
63 Paus, 5.19.4 ..
64 See Clader, Helen, srr,
131
solar implications.65
Although neither Usas nor Aphrodite are ever called "Daughter of the Sun",
Helen's father is in some late sources considered to be Helios.66 Thus, Helen as
"Daughter of the Sun" (OlY'fc1T1/P 'HAlov) shares an epithet with Surya, who is
explicitly duhittl saryasya in the Rg Veda.67 Helen, then, since she is elsewhere
called !Jol", OlY'fc1T1/P, is described with the two epithets which appear to be
mutually exclusive in the Rg Veda, one being appplied to Usas and the other to
Surya, Likewise we have Eos, who is also "Daughter of the Sun" even though her
name is cognate with Usas, who is rather the "Daughter of the Sky." Therefore
there appears to be Greek evidence that the two epithets originally applied to the
same figure.
The Greek and Indic "Daughter of the Sky" figures, then, share numerous
parallels which link them together as developments of an Indo-European
*dhugh;Jter diuos. Aside from the Indic and Greek traditions, we find mention of a
"Daughter of the Sky" in the Lithuanian dainas: a sun maiden who is saulyte
dievo dukte. As we will see, this Lithuanian designation is important for the over-
all Baltic picture of the sun maiden who is, contrarily, in the Latvian dainas the
68
"Daughter of the Sun." Riidiger Schmitt's concem that the Lithuanian term may
be an accidental and not a true genetic parallel will prove groundless once the

66 Photius, Bibliotheka 149a; Ptolemaeus Chennus. Hist. Nov. 189.
67 The other ties between the two figures,including a comroon etyll1Ologybetween the ....- S/lryll
and 'EM"'I. are explored further in the next chapter.
68 Dichtung und Dichttrsprache in indogemumischer Zeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harnssowitz, 1967):
173.
132
Baltic mythological material is examined closely. This Baltic tradition next
requires our examination, since it provides extensive descriptions of a sun maiden
figure who is both "Daughter of the Sky" and "Daughter of the Sun" and shares
many specific features with the Vedic and Greek figures examined above.
3.e. The Marriageable Maiden and her Dowry
By all accounts, as mentioned above, the sun maiden/dawn goddess is a
young woman of exceptional beauty, and much is made of her seductiveness: Usas
is like a nubile young woman, a willing wife, or even a courtesan; Eos, in what
little myth we have of her, seduces the mortal Tithonus, as well as Orion (Odyssey
5:121), Kleitos (Odyssey 15:250), and Kephalos (Euripides' Hippolytos 454);
Aphrodite's powers are always explicitly sexual. The emphasis on the sun
maiden's sexuality and desirability seems closely tied to other depictions of her as
a maiden ready for marriage. In this context, we can explain the recurring descrip-
tions of the maidens being "adorned." In the Vedic case, for example, as Gonda
has shown,69 the term supdas, "adorned", used to describe Usas (albeit in the
plural, at 1.188.6) most likely refers to adornment specifically for the purpose of
getting married.
The Baltic material is fruitful on this subject, and Latvian dainas provide a
clear picture of the saules meita, the "Daughter of the Sun" , as a maiden ready for
69 Epithets in the J!.g Veda, 102.
133
marriage. She is a virgin, variously a "golden virgin" or "white virgin", dressed
by her mother in green silk clothes with a silver border; she wears a rose-colored
necklace and a gold and silver crown with a pure sparkling diamond.I'' She is a
girl well trained in women's skills, frequently depicted as weaving, carding wool,
milling grain, guarding cattle, or raking hay for the horses."! She washes silk
clothes on an isle in the middle of the sea, with a silver washboard and a golden
beetle. Some of the songs describe the Sons of God preparing her bath, making it
clear that she is being watched by them.72 Several songs describe her bathing,
whether in the sea or a silver bathtub,73 and in places the metaphor for sunset over
the sea is explicit:
La mer grondait, la mer mugissait,

Qu'avait-elle avale?
La Fille de Saule se baignait,
L'anneau d'or roule dans la mer74
70 Jonval, nos. 176,308,309,377.

71 Jonval, 315, 319,387,386,etc.; Haralds Biezais in Die himmlische GOtwfamili. der atten Let-
ten, (Uppsala: A1mqvist & WikseUs, (972):539ff.provides a lengthy discussion of the "himm-
lische Badestube. "
72 A similar bathing scene of Usas occurs in RV 5.80.5: .~a 'ubhra n6 tanv<lvid4n6rdhiva sniltf
drstfye no asthat, "La voici, comme une belle qui a conscience de son corps, qui se baigne debout
pour ansi dire, pour que nous la voyions ... " (Renou's translation, svr
3:81).
73 Jonval, nos. 334, 329, etc.

74 Jonval, 333. Several songs mention the gold ring of the Daughter of the Sun; some expresscon-
cern that it will fait into the Daugava (= the west Dvina, Latvia's principal river; Jonval no. 4(4),
and more generally, the Moon exchanges rings between the Daughter of the Sun and the Sons of
God. Although the verses take this ring as a possession of hers, perhsps part of the dowry (lonval,
no. 368 Vat. 2; no. 373), the solar allegory in this and similar songs is irresistible. Mannhardt (Vi.
lettischen Sonnenmythm, 296)saw this clearly: "Somit konnte der Ring, den Morgens der Him-
metsschmied ihr fertigt, Abends die Gottess6hne (Abendstero und Morgenstern) ihr .bzichen, oder
den dieselben, weno er ihr am Abend beim Waschen ins Wasser gefallen, Morgens wieder heraus-
fischen, m6glicherweise auch niehts anderes sein, als die Sonne. "
134
In one song, the sun maiden has drowned while washing golden pitchers at
sea, continuing the sunset metaphor into evening:
Pourquoi ces chiens de Riga aboyaient-ils,

Se toumant vers la mer?
La Fille de Saule s' est noyee
En lavant les cruches d'or.75
It would seem, then, from these and other similar verses that, at least in part,
the myth of the saules meita is a sunset myth; this is concordant with Mannhardt's
earlier explanation of her as the evening/morning twilight ("Abend- und
Morgendarnmerung"), or we can say perhaps more specifically in English (since
the term "twilight" is ambiguous), the golden/reddish sunrise-glow/sunset-glow,
distinct from the sun disk itself. This also accords with Lommel's naturalistic
interpretation of the Purfu:1icstories of Saranyu examined in the previous chapter.
Biezais, however, has recently expressed concern with the inexactitute of
Mannhardt's comparisons between the Jndic and Baltic material, noting that some
of Mannhardt's connections between the saules meita and the morning/evening
time of day were either misunderstood or even invented by Mannhardt and have no
textual basis.76 Biezais shows that other conclusions Mannhardt made about the
saules meita are erroneously based on passages where the sun itself, the feminine
Saule, and not her daughter, is being discussed; Biezais urges that there is no tex-
75 JODVal, DO. 335.
76 Biezais, Die himmlische GOtteifamilie, 471f.
135
tual basis for equating these two figures.?? Biezais is admirably cautious in his
approach to the texts, and he is correct in his criticisms of Mannhardt, arguing in
the main with Mannhardt's misconstruction of the details in the Latvian texts , as
well as his lack of precision in citing the Sanskrit material (since Mannhardt evi-
dently relied only on Muir's translations). Nevertheless, even Biezais ultimately
comes (on other grounds) to similar conclusions about the Latvian saules meita ,
pointing out that the term meita is a loan word from German (meif) and must
replace some other name for her,?8 Biezais speculates, quite reasonably, that her
original name must have been *AUSIlUl, the Latvian version of Usas both
etymologically and typologically; he finds confirmation of this in the Lithuanian
epithet for the same sun maiden figure, dieva dukryte, "Daughter of the Sky",
which is the exact etymological equivalent of Usas' epithet divo duhiftJ.,?9

If we then view the Baltic sun maiden as a sunrise-glowisunset-glow figure,
like Usas and Eos, since all evidence seems to point in this direction, we must
speculate that in the Latvian songs the morning parallel to the above-cited descrip-
tions of her sinking in the evening would be other songs which encourage the sun
maiden to awaken, to prepare herself, to take a bath, to get dressed, to comb her
hair, etc. These songs usually occur in the context of the marriage of the sun
maiden, and the courtship and wedding of the Daughter of the Sun is the central
issue of the sun maiden stories in the dainas. Many of the songs describe the com-
ing of suitors to court the sun maiden, and advise her to prepare herself:
77 Biezais, Die himmlische GOfw!amilie, 472.
78 Biezais, Die hirnmlische GOtterfamilie, 490. The term means boIb "daughter" and the more
generic term "maid". an ambiguity which Biezais (p. 489) uses to ""?fiWca1Jtbal ~~'~b
. nI lit all "sun maiden" and need not mean speCI
anfs,:!es •
y """g ter 0 we> sun.
meua may 0 y mean er y
136
Leve-toi tOt, Fille de Saule,
Peigne tes longs cheveux:
Derriere la Daugava les chiens aboyent,
de Riga viendront les pretendants.80
Exactly who these suitors are varies from song to song: sometimes it is God, at
other times the son of Menesis (the moon), Perkons (the thunder god) or his son,
the son of the wind, Auseklis (the morning star) or his son, but the sun maiden's
most prominent associations are with the Sons of God (dieva de/i), who are
explicitly her suitors in several of the songs:
La Fille de Saule tissait des ceintures

Assise dans la clarte de la lune.
Les Fils de Dieu etaient ses pretendants
Avec leurs chevaux pornrneles.
Dieu a deux fils,

Pretendants de la Fille de Saule ...
Les coqs d' argent chantent

Au bord de la riviere d'or.
Ils faisaientlever les Fils de Dieu,
81
Pretendants de la Fille de Saule.
Here, then, we have the original IE trio, the sun maiden and her two suitors,
the Sons of God. 82 In several other songs, the pair becomes singularized to
79 GOtterfamilie der allen Letten, 49Of.
80 Jonval DO. 345.
81 Jonval DOS. 412, 413, 405. See also 411, 415.

82 . 'nat Daughterof the Sun is replaced by the Virgin Mary:
In a few Christianized songs, the Vlrgl. M- I T~ Ie matin les Fils de Dieu I Viendront
a
e.g., Jonval DO. 120: "Hate-toi de laver, S810te ar ...
te demander en mariage ."
137
provide an appropriately single companion to the Daughter of the Sun; in other
cases, the Baltic songs freely substitute the plural "Daughters of the Sun" for the
singular saules meita.83 Here, as in other IE traditions, we may detect an aversion

to polyandry. The occurrences of Usas in the plural, however, seem rather to
reflect the multiplicity of dawns, although a case has been made that she, too, was
pluralized to avoid a polyandrism in her association with the twin ASvins.84 The
pluralization of the dawn is for both of these reasons understandable and need not
cause concern that they are different entities than the singular dawn.
The sons of God are depicted in several songs as watching the sun maiden
from afar, or from a hidden place. Through the poppy leaves they watch her
raking hay, combing her hair, and weaving wreaths. Through the oak leaves they
watch her dancing in the shade of a green birch.85 They hold hands with her and
frolic with her; they sit near her with torches while she weaves.86 She rakes hay
for their horses and performs many household tasks.87 Some songs, however, say
that a wrong was committed by one or the other: the Daughter of the Sun breaks
their sword, or they break her crown, or they steal her gold ring, or they overturn
her sled. For this, the "Mother of the Sun" is angry with them.
83 As they also freely change the oumber of the sons of God, the sons of the thunder god Permo,
etc.
84 Nagy, "Phaethoo", 162.
85 Jooval nos. 392-395.
86 Jooval no. 375, 382.
87 Jooval nos. 383-388, etc.
138
Particularly distinctive of the Latvian material is the insertion of this mother-
sun figure into the traditional myth of the "Daughter of the Sun", whereas in the
other IE material the sun is a masculine figure. Two points must be considered in
attempting to understand this innovation. One is that the new female sun figure,
Saule, "Sun", is sometimes merely a variant of her daughter, the sallies meita, and
although in large part she is developed in the Baltic material into a clearly distinct
personality, there are areas of overlap which indicate that the two figures are
closely related, and it seems quite likely that at least some of the verses addressed
to Saule are either later developments of similar verses addressed to the sallies
meita, or verses in which Saule is equated with the sallies meita. For example, in
several songs the daughter sallies meita is advised to prepare hersel f for her
approaching suitors,88 whereas in others it is Saule herself who is encouraged to
prepare herself for her own arriving suitors. 89 That the sun maiden (whether
"Daughter of the Sun" or "Daughter of the Sky") and not the peculiarly Baltic
female sun is the original figure behind these songs is clearly established by the
comparative IE evidence, since the themes contained in the songs (her courtship
and marriage, association with divine twins, crossing the sea, disappearance and
90
rescue, etc.) generally apply to a sun maiden figure in the other IE cultures.
Second, there is a marked tendency in Baltic mythology to create mother-divinities,
e. g., the Mother of the Wind, Mother of the Fog, Mother of the Forest, Mother of
88 Jonval nos. 344-346, etc.
89 Jonval no. 137, etc.

90 See also Jonval, Chansons ... Letlonnes, 13.
139
the Flowers, etc., 91 so it is not too surprising that there should have here
developed a "Mother of the Sun" who would then dovetail with the remainder of
the sun maiden myth. It is also possible that the invention of Saule is a late
development based upon the ambiguity of the Latvian term meita, which, as men- I
I,
tioned above, can mean either "daughter" or "maid." Assuming Biezais' scenario, I'
where Latvian Ausma became referred to first as "Daughter of the Sky" (cf. Lith.
i ;•
dievo dukryte) and then "sun-maid", using the borrowed German term meit-, the
double-entendre in the latter term may have caused her to be understood as a
daughter-figure, requiring the invention of a mother (logically imagined to be the
sun) once the epithet tracing her to father-Sky had faded. The complete dis-
appearance of the "Daughter of the Sky" epithet in Latvian tends to support this
idea.
One emphasized theme in the Latvian material concerns the dowry-chest
which the sun-mother, Saule, brings to the wedding by sled and puts onto the boat:
La Fille de Saule est argenll~e,

Le coffre de sa dot est avec des feuilles d'or ...
Saule... / Elle-meme a hisse Ie coffre d'or de la dot

Dans Ie traineau d'argent.
Saule donna sa fille

En mariage, de I'autre cOtede la mer.
EUe-meme tira Ie coffre d'or
Dans la barque d' argent.92
91 See Jonval, C/JIlnSons... Lenonnes, 15.
92 Jonval, nos. 343 and 357 with vax. I.
140
Along the way, Saule bestows presents to the forests and is praised for her
generosity. She distributes presents to various trees: to the linden she gives a
golden handkerchief, and to the oak a diamond.F' But once Saule has given her
daughter (and the dowry) away, she cries - and cries, and cries, if we are to
believe the repeated emphasis on her distress. She misses her daughter and,
particularly, the dowry:
Saule a donne sa fille

En mariage en Allernagne.
Apres, Saule eut regret
De la dot couteuse de sa fine.
Arnerernent pleure Saule

Sur Ie sommet de la colline,
Comment ne pas pleurer arnerement,
Elle avait regret de sa fille,
Elle avait regret de sa fille,
Regret de la dot etait forge d'or,
Les cadeaux etaient d' argent. 94
The notion of the sun maiden's generous dowry may be behind the concep-
tion of Vedic Usas as a liberal patroness, as documented above in section 3.B.: it
could explain the frequent invocations in the Rg Veda to U sas to bestow her
generosity upon the sacrifIcer, if U~ were imagined to have a large coffer of such
treasures. Likewise, when Helen was abducted, according to tradition she goes
with her treasure. Note that when Paris defends himself against Hektor's charge of
cowardice, he makes it clear that the Greeks and Trojans are not just fighting for
Helen, but for Helen and her treasure:
93 Jonval, nos. 355, 359, 358. Ritual tree decoration as an e"Pression of this myth is discassed
below, Chapter 4.
141
iiAAOV, ILBV Ke'A8Tcrl TpwO/, KO/l -ravTO«; 'AxcrlOV,
T~~80/ ~~A' ~-ro8e'u8O/L B-rl x80vl -rovAv{3oT8IPl1,
o/VTOV 0 8V IL8UU~ KO/l OtP"II</>LAov M8V8Ao/OV
o'ov, OtIL</>' 'EAe'vp KO/I KTT/ILo/UL -ram ILaX8u8crl.
O-r7l:0T8PO, Os' K8 VLK~ap Kp8laawv T8 "{e''''ITO<L,
KT~ILO/8' eAwv 8~ -ravTO< "{vvO/iKa T8 O'KO/O' Ot"{e'u8w'
Now though, if you wish me to fight it out and do battle

make the rest of the Trojans sit down, and all the Achaians,
and set me in the middle with Menelaos the warlike
to fight together for the sake of Helen and all her possessions.
That one of us who wins and is proved stronger, let him
take the possessions fairiy and the woman, and lead her horneward.P''
Helen and her possessions, which would seem to be her dowry (since they are
"her" possessions and not Menelaos'), are inextricably linked in Homer, conveying
the same idea as in the Baltic and Indic traditions that the sun maiden is the posses-
sor of great treasure, received as a dowry, The descriptions of the sun maiden as
"golden" (e.g., Aphrodite as xpvuti"I and Usas as hiranyavama-) mentioned earlier
may also connote the idea of wealth as well as sunlight.

We can see, then, that the notion of the marriageability of the maiden, as
well as her legendary dowry, is an integral component of the Indo-European sun
maiden myth, since common features are to be found in the Baltic, Indic and Greek
myths, Furthermore, the Latvian dainas remind us once again that this wedding of
the sun maiden is not a historical event that occurred in our own time, but a cosmic
event connected with the beginning of the world:
94 Jonval, nos. 368, 367.

95 Iliad 3:67-72, translation by Richmond Lattimore The Iliad, 102 (emphasis added). Cf. also
3:255 (-yo"" Kat Krilpa8'), 3:282, 285 ('EM"'1' ral Krilp.ara).
142
Ce n'etait pas hier Ie jour
au Saule etait fiancee.
Saule etait fiancee
quand la terre etait creee.96
3.0. Liberation of the Dawn
The Latvian sun maiden, like Usas, is a beautiful young maiden, described in ,
;:
•
colorful terms evocative of the sunrise or sunset, and poetry marks her appearance
and/or disappearance. While the appearance of the maiden is heralded with great
joy, as in the case of Usas, her disappearance is a source of dismay, as may be ·,

••
seen in the Latvian songs in which the Sons of God watch her sinking into the sea,
leaving only bubbles on the water surface:
La Fille de Saule traversait la mer,

On ne voyait pas ses cheveux;
Les Fils de Dieu voyaient bien
au e1le fait des bulles dans la mer. 97
They try to rescue her:
La Fille de Saule traversait la mer,

On ne voyait pas Ie bout de ses cheveux;
Les Fils de Dieu portaient sa couronne
Au bout de leur epee.
96 Jonval DO. 135 (with Saute as a hypostasis for her daughter, as described obove).
97 Jonval, Chanson ... Lettonnes. DO. 398.
143
On ne voyait que sa couronne,
Ramez la barque, Fils de Dieu,
Sauvez ]' arne de Saule.98
These disappearances of the sun maiden we assume have been correctly understood
as signifying the disappearance of the sun and the ensuing evening sunset. In the
Baltic case, these more explicit descriptions of the missing sun (presumably at
night) which must be rescued by the Sons of God or divine twins dovetail neatly
with the abduction myths studied in the previous chapter. Almost all of the figures
explored in detail in Chapter 2 suffer disappearances, and it will be recalled that
these disappearances are usually characterized as abductions. During their
absence, most of the figures spend time in a fortress or tower of some sort, usually
as a prisoner; frequently, the site is located across a sea. The saules meita, as just
noted, has gone off across the sea, leaving her mother crying on the shore; she
sinks deep into the sea. Indic Sita is held in Ravana's fortress on the isle of Lanka.
Vivasvant goes looking for his wife Saranyu at her father's palace, although she is
actually gone from there to a meadow. Greek Helen, having crossed the Aegean
with Paris, is essentially a prisoner at Priam's palace at Troy, longing for home.
In the Germanic tradition, Kudrun is abducted by Hartmut and taken to his fortress
in Normandy, across the sea; Potentiana is likewise held captive by Matteus across
the sea, in Phrygia. Turning to the Celtic myths, the same motif survives: Midir
needs to use magical powers to break into the fortress of Eochaid to retrieve his
wife Etain: Dubh Lacha is kept prisoner at the fortress of the Leinster king; Bran-
,
98 Jonval, Chansons ... Lettonnes. DOS. 401-402.
144
wen is forced into slavery at the palace of the Irish king Matholwch.
These tales of the deliverance of the sun maiden, or sun itself, have many
•
later echoes; often cited is the tale recorded by Jerome of Prague among the
Lithuanians, where the signs of the zodiac deliver the (female) sun imprisoned in a
tower.P? Even in myths where the sun figure is not imprisoned in a tower, she is
rescued by divine twins or two men who serve as their hypostases; e.g., in the case
of Svanhild, who is put to death but ultimately revenged by her two brothers.
The identity, cosmologically speaking, of these two brothers, who are in all
cases apparently descendants of the IE divine twins, the sons of God, has been a
matter of voluminous scholarly controversy over the past century. The earliest
comparative studies between the Indic Asvins and the Greek Dioskouroi were sup-
plemented by Mannhardt's early study of the Baltic Sons of God, and he concluded
that they must represent the morning and evening star originally, as they do in
Baltic; Biezais also asserts that their explicit identification as morning and evening
star in the Baltic tradition throws light on the identity of the Asvins and Dios-
lOl
kouroi.lOO Although there are conflicting viewpoints among Indic scholars past
and present,l02 and although there are problems with this view (e. g., the Asvins
99 See Jaan Puhvel, "Indo-European Structure of the Baltic Pantheon," in G.J. Larson et al. (ed.),
Myth in Indo-European Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California. Press,
1974),76-77; reprinled in Analecra Indoeuropaea (l9gl), 226-227; Krappe, MythokJgle
Universelle, 81.
100 Mannhardt, Die lettischen Sonnenmythen, 87; Biezais, Die himmlische G<!lteifamilie, 492 and
passim.
101 Yaska remarked that some considered them to represent Heaven and Earth; othen u Day and
Night, Sun and moon, or two piOUSkings.
102 Oldenberg accepted the rooming/evening star identity; L. Myriantheus (Die Aivins oder uris-
chen Dioskuren (Munich, 1876» and E.W. Hopkins (Religions of IndIa, 82) thought they
represented the half-dark, half-light twilight before dawn; Weber (Ind. Stud. 5, 234) thought they
145
are thought of as a pair, whereas these stars appear at separate times; also, at
certain times the evening star does not appear, etc.), the fact remains that in the
Baltic tradition they are clearly identified as the morning and evening star. There-
fore, although the Asvins may have developed special features in the Indic tradi-
tion, and the Dioskouroi in the Greek, we may hesitantly conjecture that based on
the comparative evidence, they originally shared this common feature with the
..
Baltic tradition and were somehow linked with the morning and evening star, if not
identified with them; the evening star follows her down after sunset, going to
"retrieve" her; the following day, the morning star, appearing before dawn, thus
"rescues" her. The identity of the Sons of God, however, is a complex issue and
one which would require a separate investigation. Whomever these twin deities
represent, they are clearly implicated in the rescue of the sun maiden from her
imprisonment and serve as the heroes of her liberation, being celebrated as such in
many different IE poetic works.

Although both Geldner and Renou have in RV 6.60.2 conceived of Usas as
kidnapped (Geldner, "entfUhrten"; Renou "ravies") , a view which would perhaps
allow us to include Usas among our list of abducted maidens, the adjective Q!ha1J.
nowhere else has the meaning "kidnapped"; its root yah more generally means only
"led" or "carried. "103 Likewise, the myth of Indra (or BrahmaJ:\aspati or
Brhaspati'P') freeing U~ from the vala ("enclosure"), although superficially
represented two stars in the constellation Gemini; Geldner (Vd. Stud. 2, 31) thought that they
derive from Indian saints; Zeller (Die vedischen Zwillingsgoner, 157f.) that they need not represent
a celestial phenomenon at all.
103H._P. Schmidt, BrlUlspati und lndra: Untersuchungen zur vtdischen MytJwlogie und Xu/turges-
chichte (Wiesbaden:' Otto Harrassowitz, 1968), 180 n. 33.
104 10 I fi be' seco_A.~ inttuder into the story, which originally featured Indra; see
e atter gure mg a ~]
146
similar to the liberation of other sun maidens from various fortresses, has really
nothing to do with the sun maiden myth since it deals specifically with the creation
of the world and does not contain any of the other specific earmarks (e.g., central
focus on dawn as a maiden, her marriage, subsequent abduction, rescue by divine
twin figures, etc.) of the story we have been studying.
In sum, the liberation of the sun maiden is an essential part of the myth of
most (though not all) of our sun maiden figures; the graphic evidence of the Lat-
vian saules meita's disappearance below the sea, with the divine twins in hot pur-
suit, clearly shows that this is in essence a rescue that takes place after sunset,
during the night. Upon the evidence presented here that we have a clear allegory
at work behind the sun maiden figure, who in the Indic case is explicitly a dawn
goddess, and who elsewhere is associated with golden colors or brilliant clothing
and described with typical sun imagery, and whose mythology involves her dis-
appearance in general, if not a specific sinking into the sea, we can only conclude
that the rescue of the sun maiden is, in fact, her morning restoration.
SUMMARY
The Vedic dawn goddess Usas has been long understood, and correctly so, as part
of the sun maiden mythic complex, not only because of her clear solar presence as
the personified goddess of the dawn, but also by virtue of her epithets which paral-
lel those of Greek and Baltic sun maiden figures. Foremost among these are
H.-P. Schmidt, BrJwspari und Indra, 238-240.
147
epithets which describe her golden, or reddish, nature, her depiction as a young
maiden ready for marriage and exuding sexual attraction, and descriptions of her
bathing, dressing, and preparing to meet her lover, since the Latvian texts provide
rather exact parallels to the Vedic descriptions of U sas, In the Greek material, the
dawn goddess Eos, Helen of Troy and, perhaps surprisingly, Aphrodite display
features which parallel those of Usas and the Latvian saules meita. All of these ...
figures, with the exception of Eos, are associated with the divine twins, and in the
cases of Helen, Aphrodite and Eos there seems to be a reference to the motif
studied in detail in Chapter 2, the mating of the immortal sun maiden with a mortal
man, usually one whom she abducts or who abducts her; as we have seen
previously, this myth seems tied to the creation of the human race, and hence the
celebration of the celestial beauty of this first maiden and primordial bride-to-be.
Despite Biezais' insistence on separating the songs describing the sun from
those describing her daughter, since texts sometimes refer to the female sun figure,
Saule, and not the saules meita, on the whole the Baltic myths retain enough of the
sun maiden motifs, so evident from other IE stories, for us to be able to assume
that the sun maiden was the original figure, and that the female sun Saule was a
secondary development which eclipsed the IE masculine sun deity underlying
figures like Siirya and Helios.

Examined here in detail is the emphasis in the Latvian texts on the dowry, or
treasures in general, of the sun maiden, for which reason she is accredited with
great generosity: this may explain the role of the dawn goddess as a patroness or
as a great giver of gifts, which also occurs in the Vedic texts. All of the U~
148
hymns are implorations for her generosity, and this feature is predominant in her
mythology. The Baltic sun maiden is shown to be the recipient of a great dowry
(the size of which is emphasized by her mother's regret over losing it to her
departing daughter, as many songs tell). The Greek evidence also supports this,
since in Homer the expedition to Troy is expressly concerned not only with the res-
cue of Helen, but Helen and her "treasure" or "property" (KriiWX).
Two epithets, "Daughter of the Sky" and "Daughter of the Sun", which have
clearly distinct references in Vedic (the former signifying Usas and the latter,
Siirya) are shown to be both applicable to the broader picture of the IE sun maiden,
since the Latvian typological parallel to Usas, the "Daughter of the Sky" in the Rg
Veda, is called saules meita, "Daughter of the Sun." Biezais may be correct in his
speculation that Latvian Ausma, "Dawn", may underly the saules meita, since the
latter term is based upon a loan word from German and must replace some earlier
name. The name Ausma, however, appears nowhere in the Latvian texts, and it
may be simpler to assume a literal meaning of saules meita and its consequential
implication that the sun maiden can also be known as "Daughter of the Sun."
Furthermore, Greek Helen of Troy is known as both 'HlI.Lov8lY'(Ct.TT/P and ~,~
81Y'(Ct.TTJP, showing a confusion between the two epithets. Likewise, Vedic Surya,
Daughter of the Sun, shares certain features with Usas that may imply there is
some overlap between the two figures, even though their epithets are distinct in the
Rg Veda.
The abduction and disappearance of the sun maiden, explored in detail in
Chapter 2, is reintegrated here with stories of her rescue; usually she is liberated
from a fortress, having been imprisoned there by her abductor, across a sea.
149
Nearly all the abduction stories cited in Chapter 2 fit this pattern of internment, but
it cannot be said to apply to the mythology of Usas, who is never abducted;
likewise, the tale of her enclosure in the vala is a different and unrelated cos-
mogonic myth. It is clear from the texts examined that the disappearances of the
sun maiden represent her entry into an enclosure of some kind, which we may take
as the netherworld, through which the sun passes at night.105 The process must
allegorically signify sunset and ensuing darkness - especially in the Baltic case,
where she graphically sinks into the water - and the subsequent liberation of the
sun maiden clearly represents morning sunrise.

If we can then rely on these conclusions as evidence that the Indo-Europeans
had such a sunrise-glow/sunset-glow goddess, distinct from the sun, who was con-
ceived of as her fiance, lover, or husband, and further, as established in the
previous chapter, that she is thought of as the mother of the human race, we can
see the importance of this myth and can better explain its persistence.
105 Kuiper, F.B.I. "The Bliss of Asa" III 8 (1960): 110ff.
150
it
CHAPfER4
SfJRVA AND THE WEDDING OF THE SUN MAIDEN
Summary:
4.A. Sarya: the "Daughter of the Sun' as a Sun Maiden
4. B. The Sun Maiden's Wedding as Ritual Prototype
4. C. The Wedding: a May Day/New Year Celebration?
4. A. Siirya: the "Daughter of the Sun" as a Sun Maiden
We have seen in Chapter 3 that the Vedic sun maiden Surya is in many ways
clearly distinguished from Usas, and therefore also. one might think, other IE
dawn-goddess analogues. For example, the epithet "Daughter of the Sun" (duhit&
sQryasya) applies to Surya in the RV, whereas Usas is in contradistinction con-

tinually called "Daughter of the Sky" (div6 duhita), and some scholars have read
an emphatic distinction of character on account of their differing genealogies.)
Furthermore, Siirya shows none of the traditional associations with the dawn or
with the sunset glow that we have seen to pervade the imagery of Usas, the Latvian
saules meita, Greek Eos or Aphrodite.

While it is true that in the Rg Veda, Siirya as duhit& saryasya is largely a dis-
tinct entity from Usas, the dawn, there remain, however, several reasons why
Siirya must be considered a descendant of the IE sun maiden group, beyond her
indisputably solar nature, which according to our defmitions is not alone enough to
I E.g., Oldenberg believed that the Daughtet of the Sky was, ~legori~ly. the Dawn, but . ked
whether the Daughter of the Sun might not be the sun Itself (DieReligIOn des Veda, :1 J); B,eu1S,
from a comparative perspective, agreed (Die hirnmllSl:heGiineifanulit. 489); conttartly, Hil-
lebrandt, Yed. Myth. I: 18, 43, and Btoomfield ("Marriage of SanQyU", 186) who equate the two.
The apparently intentional differentiation between the two figureshas been dl~ obove at sec-
tion J.B.
151
qualify her as an IE sun maiden figure. First, certain other IE sun maiden figures
are also called "Daughter of the Sun", as is shown by the Latvian name saules
meita2 and the genealogy of Eos (and occasionally that of Helen) as 91r(Ct."TT/P
·H>-'iov.3 Second, there is the etymological connection between the names Surya,
Saule, and also the name Helen, which cannot be overlooked in assessing Surya's
origins. The IE root *swel "bum" is clearly behind Surya/Surya (cf. Vedic svar),
as well as Saule, ''HAW" and even ·EAill1/. The etymology of the latter name,
Helen, has always been questionable and has triggered a number of conjectures:
Gregoire thought it related to Latin Venus, and derived it from FevivO' , with A
arising, awkwardly, from v; more recently, Clader thought it to derive from "wel,
"twist." However, the name must now, in light of Catling's discovery of an
inscribed bronze at the Spartan Menelaion spelling Helen's name with a digamma
(TAl FEAENAI) shows that her name must derive from (u)FeA-, IE *swelenl1
4
(*swel-V-no-s), as Curtius and Mannhardt had speculated over a century ago.
There may even be a few literary traces of the missing digamma, as Gregoire
noted, though these are not altogether convincing.5 Clader's rejection of Curtius''
2 Even if one accepts Biezais' literal interpretation of saules meita as "sun maid", this figure is
nevertheless consistently portrayed throughout the dainas as the daughter of Soule, the sun.
3 See section 3.B., note 22.

4 G. Curtius, GrurukUge der griechischen Erymologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1879) s.v. Helena;
Mannhardt, Dielemschen Sonnenmylhen, 310. Similarly, J. Pokorny, Indogermanzsches
etymologisches Wlirlerbuch (Bern, 1959), 1045. see Catling, "Two Inscribed Bronzes from the
Menelaion, Sparta," Kadmos 15 (1976): 145-157, esp. 149ff. The Inscnplloo dates to the 6th
centusy B.C.
5G " "L'~ I" d nom d'Helene " Bullelin de la classe des tatres el des sciences
regoire, " .r.tyDlO
" ogre5 uv 32 (Brussels: ' Palais des AcadelDl.es, 1946), 262; Cat!"108, "T wo
mora Ies et po Imques ser. , .
J ., H "
Inscribed Bronzes, " 155, cp. also 1560.41 for a list of suspiCIOUS omenc passages.
6 Clader, Helen, p. 63ff.
152
and her speculations regarding the name Helen, although ingenious, must be
rejected based on the comparative evidence. With *swel "bum" as the root , we
have not only an etymological connection for Helen to the sun maiden myth, to
which she belongs typologically, we also have an easy explanation of eAeV1J/ii>..oV1J
"torch" and 'E>"BV1J as a name for SI. Elmo's fire. In conclusion, the names Siirya
and Helen must, in light of the evidence at hand, be cognate, and both of them are
sun maidens by their very names.
A third reason for including Siirya among our sun maiden figures is that she
IS, like them, consistently depicted with the Indic divine twins, the Asvins, form-
ing the triad typical of our sun maiden figure, comparable to Helen and the Dios-
kouroi, or the saules meita and the Sons of God. For this and other reasons, she •
f:" I
I
was even identified with U~ by Hillebrandt and Bloomfield; more recently by
Jamison," Since the Asvins are first and foremost deities of the early morning,
Surya's constant association with them puts her in the same camp as the dawn god-
dess Usas, despite the lack of explicit dawn imagery in Surya's mythology.
Fourth, the Indic use of the myth of Siirya's wedding as a prototype for the
Indic wedding ceremony may explain the large collection of Latvian songs
celebrating the mythic wedding of the "Daughter of the Sun"; Mannhardt and
Schroeder speculated, probably correctly, that the songs served as the basis for
Latvian wedding ritual, much like their Indian counterpart;

there is also Slavic
9
evidence for similar practices8 and some conjecture regarding a Greek parallel.
7 Ravenous Hyenas. 294; their identification is implied in her_ac~ of Siirya as ~ father of

U~ and her attribution ofRV 1.117.13 to U~ instead of Surya, to whom the verse is usually
thought to apply.
8 Piprek Slawische Brautwerbungs- und HochzeitsgeoriJUche(Stuttgart: Strecker & Sclmider.
1914).66; Krauss. Sine und Brauch derSiJds/aVen. Vienna (1885) 351.
153
The establishment of wedding ceremonies which incorporate references to the
mythic wedding of the sun maiden is a distinctive feature, and its appearance in
multiple cultures indicates the centrality of the myth.
4.B. The Sun Maiden's Wedding as Ritual Prototype
We have already mentioned the Asvins' close associations with Surya in
several Rgvedic passages; they are sometimes explicitly her husbands (pan, RV
4.43.6, 1.119.5). Also significant is the use of marriage terminology connecting
Surya with the Asvins, especially as "Daughter of the Sun." The epithet duhita
stayasya frequently occurs in contexts where Siirya is said to have mounted the
wagon of the Asvins. to She is said to have "chosen" them, apparently in a kind of
svaya'!lvara.ll This act is spousal in nature; the bride's mounting of the
bridegroom's ear signals the beginning of her new life under her husband's roof,
not only in this myth but in general practice, and this act, formalized as ritual,
occurs as a significant part of the typical bridal procession.
The Asvins, however, are not consistently Siirya's husbands in the Rg Veda:
9 See below, section 4.B.

to 1.34.5; 1.116.17; 1.117.13; 1.118.5; 4.43.2; 6.63.5. Biezais, Die himmlische GOtterjamilie,
488.
II Pischel, Yed. Stud., 20f.; Geldner,Rig Veda, a11.184, n.3•.
154
elsewhere she is the spouse of Soma, who is clearly the moon in that contextl2; she
is also considered to be given to Pusan by the gods.13 This ambiguity in the
identity of the sun maiden's husband is not surprising when considered in light of
the varying husbands in other sun maiden myths, where the Latvian saules meita,
Helen, Eos and Aphrodite are described as having married or at least had sexual
relations with several different gods or men. For example, the Latvian saules
meita, who in some songs is considered to have as joint suitors the "Sons of God,"
is elsewhere said to have been courted by Menesis/Meness (the Moon), the son of
the Moon, Perkons, the son of Perkons, Auseklis, or the son of Auseklis.I'' Some
songs even contain variant verses, one naming Menesis and the other Auseklis,
with the remainder of the verse identical. 15 Similarly, Saule herself as a young
girl is variously said to have married the Moon, God, and the Son of God.
Helen's reputation as 7revToi).,.sKTpOC;, "five-husbanded", is a comparable
phenomenon, despite the fact that the Dioskouroi are not in Greek tradition her
husbands but her brothers. Although having multiple husbands (whether sequen-
tial, or varying according to textual traditions) is not necessarily polyandry, as is
the case of her distinctive polyandrous relationship with the divine twins, there is a
remarkable consistency in the tales regarding her associations with more than one
1210.85.
13 RV 6.58.4.
14 J aI Ch lett a nes 14' Schroeder, Arische Religion, 402; Biezais, Die hinunlische
onv, ansons.), n , , . .
~" ... .1. 495-499 The same theme survives, apparently borrowed from Latvian myth, in
uutte'Jatnl
. It,
sdi . wb . . fl· rdi
Salme (whose name is a corruption 0 sau es meua, IIC(X) ng to
toman tr 11100, ere
Es
S hroed 425-6) has three suitors, the Moon, the Sun, and the ••young man of the star, the laI-
c er, p. ·1 " 73
ter becoming her husband. See pujwel, "Filles du Scleil, .
15 E.g., Jonval DO. 346.
155
celestial figure as spouse. The reasons for this variance are, however, unclear,
except for the probability that the story originally stressed the maiden's multiple
suitors, one of whom became her husband, the chosen one varying from tale to
tale.
The Rgvedic "Wedding Hymn" (RV 10.85), the siirytIsakta, contains
references to the story of Siirya's wedding to the god Soma, the deified plant who
later has clear associations with the moon. The 47-verse Vedic hymn contains des-
criptions of Surya's mythical wedding to Soma; it also contains verses which are
ritualistic, serving as the basis for the human wedding ceremony, as is evident not
only from later Grhyasutra texts on the subject but also from the insertion into the
RV hymn of several expressly ritualistic verses in the otherwise mythological set-
ting of the hymn. The length of the hymn prohibits translation here, but its salient
features may be summarized as follows.

The beginning of the hymn describes Soma in three aspects, as a plant which
is pressed to create an intoxicating beverage, as an elixir of the gods which gives
them mighty powers, and as a personification of the moon, which is thought to be
drained of and filled with Soma as it passes through its monthly cycle. It is Soma
in his celestial aspect which concerns us here, since his marriage to the sun maiden
directly parallels the Latvian situation, where the saules meita is married to
Menesis, the moon.

Siirya herself is described as a bride, in ritualistic ~gvedic metaphor: her
accoutrements are not merely physical, but are the powers of perception and cos-
mic entitiesl6. various metres are personified as her attendants, and her dress is
,
16 E.g., v. 7: dttir a upaMrhalJDl!' c01qur a abhy Mjana1fl / dyfJur bhllmii) Jr.6fD asId ydd 6:)>IU
sarya pati,!, "Thought was the pillOW, sight was the Ointment. Heaven and eatth were the_
156
g&thayll pariskrtam "adorned by songs" (v. 6). We are told that Surya consented
to the union (v, 9); her father Savitr sends off the wedding procession. 17 The next
several verses describe the chariot in which she rides through the hea Yens, 10
. a
long path across the sky (v. II), as she travels to her husband and his house
(v. 12, 10). The section ends with praise to Soma as the moon , w h 0 appo rtiIOns to
the gods their share, and stretches out the long span of (mortal) life; Siirya is then
urged to mount the "world of immortality", the chariot driven by the Asvins
(v. 26), which will take her to her new life with her husband and his family.
One might question why are the Asvins still her charioteers, despite not
having won her as husbands in this hymn, and why their role as her suitors is
emphasized in the beginning of the hymn. Indeed, v. 14 mentions the story of
them arriving at the wedding, apparently sent as proxy wooers on behalf of
Soma,I8 and asking the gods for Surya for themselves, and says that the gods
granted this, in reference to another version (as mentioned above) in which they
chest, when Surya went to her husbaod"; cp. AV 14.1.6. Similar cosmic descriptions appear in RV
10.85.8,10, II, 12.
17 Savitt here stands in Surya's stead; since Savitr is the impeller of both the rising sun and the set-
ting sun, he is, in a sense, an even more appropriate father figure for Suryi as the pre~seIposl-
sunset twilight glow. It should also be noted that Prajapati is her father in the Aitareya Brihrnal)a
passage (4.7) which describes the race of the Mvins for her haod; in the same verse she is also
called Surya Savitri with no sense of contradiction. AiB. 18.1 says that Savitr gave SiJryi to Soma,
whether she was (his own daughter or) Prajiipati's; cf, Keith, Ripeda Bnlltmaf!lU: The Aitartya
and Kausttaki BnlltmafJDSofrhe Rig Veda (1920; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971),444
n. 2. The identification of SiJrya and U!35, both considered daughters of Prajiipati (who is
apparently Surya here), is clear; see also Jamison, RaveM'" Hye1lQj,207.
18 As is customary in later times; proxies for the groom would negotiate the marriage co_ with
the bride's family for him. C.K. Chatterjee, Srudits in the Rilts and Riruab of Hind" Marriage
(Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandhar, 1978), 82f.
157
become her husbands. Th ough thoIS mig
izht seem an unexplainable feature in a hymn
purporting, on the surface, to celebrate Siiryli's wedding to their competitor,
Soma, their continued presence becomes clear in light of the ritual nature of this
text and the Indo-European background of the myth. The "celestial wedding" of
the sun maiden, who, as we have seen elsewhere, is the pre-dawn glow, neces-
sarily involves the divine twins, because they are, as we have seen, the original
husbands of the old myth (as the verse in question remembers), 19 although in this
Vedic hymn (as in the Baltic parallel) the Moon was thought to be a more
appropriate prototypical husband. A natural reason for this, of course, is the
avoidance of a polyandric prototype once the myth was adopted as a prototype for
human wedding ritual, and the pairing of sun maiden and moon as the bridal
couple must have quite naturally evolved from the more arcane original story of
her pairing with the moming/evening stars.

Though these initial verses contain large patches of mythical material relating
to Siiryli, the Asvins, and other deities, the long passage is not exclusively mythical
but contains clear ritualistic instructions, which become more pronounced as the
hymn continues. Verse 13 mentions SavitT sending off Siiryli's wedding proces-
sion, then abruptly changes from the mythico-historical description to give instruc-
tions as to the appropriate time to slaughter the cattle (when the sun is in a
particular position) and to bring (the bride) home when it reaches another position.
It is clear that this is not part of the pseudo-historical tale but a direct instruction to
celebrants using the wedding hymn. Such instructiveness continues beginning with
19 Cf. Geldner, Rg Veda, 3: 269, n, 14: "Die ASvin sind wspriinglich die Freiwerber; sie
bewerben sicb aber dann selbst um die Siiry" so dass dec aus dec ASvllIsagebekannle ZUg (5,74,5;
1,116,17) mit hereinspiell ."
158
verse 20, where we must understand, based both on internal evidence and on sub-
stantial evidence in the Grhyasutras, that this hymn is the ritual basis of the early
Indic wedding ceremony, and that an earthly bride is playing the role of, and being
addressed as, Siirya.20 As Siirya, she is instructed to mount the chariot (v. 20)
which will take her to her new home, and that this refers to the human bride's
ritual mounting of a cart of some kind is evidenced by the fact that nearly all
writers on the Grhyasiitras state that the bride should be carried off in such a con-
veyance, with this ~gvedic verse (20) being recited upon the deed.21 This cart
which the bride mounts is hiranyavamam "gold-colored"22, ostensibly intended to
symbolize the heavenly chariot which draws the sun maiden across the sky. 23 The
hymn continues with a plea to Visvavasu, a Gandharva who possesses girls before
their marriage, to leave the girl alone, now that she is married, and to look
elsewhere for another maiden (v. 21-22). The bride is freed "from the snare of
Varuna" in which her father has bound her: the ritual associated with this verse is
the unbraiding or loosening of the girl's hair, signifying the loosening of her bonds
to her parents (v. 24).24 The next verse transfers the bond to her husband. The
20 E. Haas, "Die Heira!hsgebriiuche der alten Inder, nach den Grihyasii1ra," Indische Studien, v. 5
(Berlin: Ferd. Dummler's Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1862), 273; Goldner, Rigveda, 3: 267 n.\.; L.
Alsdorf, "Bemerkungen zum Siiryiisiikta." ZDMG III (1961): 492. The word Siirya is later used
to mean simply "bride." Vis\lu P. 4,12,12., Geldner, Rig Veda, at 10.85 n.2.
21 Chatterjee, Hindu Marriage, 182f.
22 Apparently "painted gold", as O'flaherty, The Rig Veda (Middl_x: Penguin Books, 1981),
269.
23 Haas, "Heira!hsgebrauche," 274.

24 See W k -n. 8's/ory oifHUf1I/JIIMarriage (New York: Allerton Book Company, 1922)
eslermarc ,we I • dish lied h . metimes with the
2:465 on the universal custom of the bride appearing WIth I eve alf, so
groom loosening it.
159
bride is then ordered to leave on the prepared chariot , with PUsan
. and th e A'~Vlns
.
taking her to her new home, just as the celestial maiden Surya is carried on her
long journey; the bride is ordered to be the mistress of the new house (v. 26-27).
The hy mn con timues WIth

. reference made to the circling of the fire (Agni),25
and Agni is even represented as one of the girl's earlier "husbands"; we are told
that Soma first possessed the girl, then the Gandharva, then Agni, then her mortal
husband; the inclusion of the latter verifying that the text describes a human wed-
diing ntua!.
. 26 In this. context, the human bride is called Surya (v. 38). In conclu-
sion, the gods are invoked to bestow progeny and long life upon them, and the
27
hymn ends with advice and blessings for the couple.
25 Westermarck (History of Human Marriage, 2: 514) sees a survival of this in later IE customs
such as the circling of the Swedish bridal procession three times round a bridal stone outside the'
church, the circling of a southern Slavic bride three times around the church itself, or that of the
modem Greek bride thrice round the altar.
26 The idea that Soma and Agni gods first "possess" adolescent women before their marriage also
appears in Vasistha (28.5). Adolescent "intercourse" with the gods is probably an explanation for
the appearance of the signs of puberty. See Schmidt, H.-P., "The Affliction of Apilii" ~gveda
8.91)" Some Women's Rites and Rights in the Veda (poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute, 1987), 22f. Jamison, Ravenous Hyenas, 171. P. Thieme. "Jungfrauengatte" uitsdrrijr
jar vergleichende SprachJorschung 78: 200 (= 1971: 465).
27 Two other central features of the Indio wedding as prescribed in Grhyasiitra texts. absent here.
are the bride's taking of a prenuptual sacred bath. and the gazing at the pole star; these should be
mentioned in our context because the bride's sacred bath on the morning of the wedding appears in
several other IE wedding rituals, e.g., Baltic, Slavic. Greek. Parsee. etc., and the fact that stargaz-
ing is included in the ritual (said to make the bride as "constant" as the pole star) again ties the wed-
ding ritual to celestial events. A few texts - not a majority - mention making the bride look at or
worship the sun (e.g., Ap.G.S. 9.9. ChatleJjee, HindMMarriage, 52f. and 175f. The presence of
any of these rituals in Rgvedic times. however, remains speculative. schroeder (HodrzeiUbriludre
der Esten, 78f.) found a parallel between another custom mentioned in the Grhyasiitras, the bride's
treading on a mill stone, and a similar Estonian custom he thought derived from III IE prototype.
The bride and groom's mutual hand-grasping and the taking of seven sacred steps are also con-
sidered central features of the ancient Indian wedding, but no trace of these features appears in the
sun maiden myth; the former custom appears in many non-IE cultures, though the latter see?",
peculiarly Indian. Other features. like the transfer of fire to the new. housebuld,. burnt offcnngs.
strewing of grain upon the bride or couple, crossing the threshold WIthout stepp,ng on ,t, and the
sitting of the bride upon an snimaI skin are common In several IE cultureS.
160
Two points must be emphasised in this brief analysis of RV 10.85. First ,
Siirya is clearly a sun maiden figure analogous to the others which we have
studied. Like them, she is described as a celestial maiden, accompanied by
luminaries on her journey across the sky, where she will meet her husband , the
moon, exactly parallel to the Latvian story. The divine twins (here, the Asvins)
are closely associated with this myth, and though she does not marry them in the
actual "wedding hymn", she is considered their wife elsewhere in the Vedic tradi-
tion, exactly as is the Latvian saules meita. Like other sun maidens, the central
focus of her myth is her wedding.

Second, another wedding ritual cited in the Grhaysiitra texts has been con-
nected with the sun in a different way: this concerns the anointing or bathing of the
bride with water poured over her through a yoke hole. This ceremony probably
takes place after the bride arrives at her new home.28 The groom kindles a fire in
the stable and the two circumambulate a cart. He places the bride below the left
yoke-hole, pulls out the pin, places a piece of gold in it, and pours water on the
bride through the hole.29 The commentator Haradatta (14th-15th century A.D.)
connected this ritual with the ~gvedic story of Apala (RV 8.91), whose body was
made bright and shining like the sun when Indra poured water over her through the
yoke holes of his chariot, in order to cure her of a skin condition. H.-P.
Schmidt30 has made a convincing case for the skin disease being acne and the
28 Chatterjee, Hindu Marriage, 106.
29 MinGS 1.10.5-7; ApaGS 4.8.; KiilhGS 25.8 and KauS. 76.1-14"
30 "The Affliction of Apiila," 16ff.
161
hymn in general to concern Indra's facilitation of her pubescence. Similarly, then,
the marriage ritual contains a bridal bath with water poured through a yoke hole,
specifically over a piece of gold (a color symbolic of the sun,3t describing, e.g.,
the cart in which the bride, as "Siirya", has traveled); perhaps this purificatory
water rite is also connected with the bride's role as Surya, making the human bride
pure and sunl ike.
Furthermore, despite the later associations of Surya with the noontime sun,32
the wedding hymn may present some evidence of her origin as the dawn/sunset
figure we have seen elsewhere to be the original sun maiden. Several ancient
authorities indicate that the sunset hour is a significant part of the wedding ritual.
The Manava Grhya Siitra says that the couple should arrive at the village at sunset,
and that the bride should be made to enter the house at the time of evening
twilight. 33 The Kathaka Grhya Sutra prescribes that the couple should arrive at the
village when the sun's rays are visible on the trees but not below, clearly at
sunset. 34 Paraskara describes another sunset ritual, wherein the groom shows the
35
bride the pole star after sunset while reciting certain mantras. Baudhayana says
31 See, e.g., S.A. Dange, Sexual Symbolismjrom the Vedic Ritual (Delhi: Ajanta PublicatioDS: .
1979), 44, regarding the blessing of the bride by "sun-fluid" and the nature of the sun as the "divine
seeder" in this ritual.
32 E.g., the Br Devati (2.8,9) views Siiryii and U~ as different manifestatioDSof the.same
had
deity, who appears as U~ before sunrise and Siiryii alDlldday; their evemng counterpart IS
V~akapiiyl.
33 MinGS 1.14.1.
34 Kii!hGS 27.3; Chatterjee 150.
35 ParGS 1.8.19. See Chatterjee, Hindu Marriage, 204.
162
that the verse containing the word nilalohitam "dark blue-red" is to be spoken at
twilight36; Bloomfield discusses the use of the term in magical practices and com-
ments that the blue-red twilight sky might be at the root of the meaning of the
term.37 In this context we should also note the presence of red-geld colors in the
RV's description of the decoration of the "golden" (presumably gold-painted)
bridal cart with red Kirnsuka flowers (RV 10.85.20): the bride, here called Siirya,
mounts the earthly analogue of the celestial Siirya's chariot, colored golden and
red, colors typical of dawn goddesses like Usas and Eos. Finally, one text of the
Rarnayana says that PUsan married Sandhya, "twilight", and as mentioned above.
38
Pusan is seen once in the RV as the spouse of Surya.
The fortunate preservation of these archaic Indic rituals allows us to see
clearly that in the Indic tradition the wedding of the "daughter of the sun," Surya,
was seen as the archetypal wedding, and that therefore the human bride was
imagined to be the embodiment of the sun maiden figure. The reliance upon this
mythic basis for the most significant ritual in human life shows its paramount
importance. With the connection between myth and ritual so clear in the Indic
case, and with the knowledge that the myth is not exclusively Indic but Indo-
European, one must next ask whether the myth has any ritual connections to wed-
ding ceremony elsewhere in the broad IE spectrum.
36 BaudhGS 1.8.
37 SBE 42: 395.

. f Go . aI 5 25 27' -"" ... after HopIcilll, Ep~
38 RV 6.58.4. The RiimiyaJ10 textIS thai 0 neslO. .., ~-
Mythology. 83.
163
Both Mannhardt and Schroeder, looking at the enormous collection of Lat-
vian dainas celebrating the wedding of the sun maiden to various figures, con-
cluded that these songs were actually sung or recited at human weddings as part of
the marriage ritual, and that the bride herself was celebrated as the personification
of the saules meita, much as the Indic bride was "Surya" in the ritual uses of the
lndic suryllsukta.39 Schroeder argues that the songs were originally used at a sum-
mer solstice celebration, which he believed was regarded symbolically as the time
of the sun's wedding.40 He cites as well Slavic parallels in the Russian belief that ....
on 51. John's day the sun goes to meet her fiance, the moon, and in a south Slavic
song about the wedding of a (masculine) sun with a (feminine) morning-star, and
points to evidence that these references occur in marriage songs sung at actual wed-
dings.41 Piprek cites a similar Belorussian custom, where wedding songs celebrate
the wedding of the Moon's son to the Dawn's daughter.42 Schroeder believes that
the connection between these myths and the wedding ritual probably goes back to
Indo- European times.43

Bound up with these ideas, however, are other far more speculative notions,
in which Schroeder maintains that goddesses like Greek Hera and Roman Juno are
39 Mannhardl Feld- und Waldkulte II (Berlin: Borntrager, 1905), xx. Schroeder, Arische
,
Religion, 398 et passim.
eboreoe
40 Schroeder views the sun maiden as the early morning sun ('die JUDge,.neug So.... ·), not
as the rosy glow preceding or foUowing it. Arische Religion, 399 eI psssnn.
lt und Brauch der SildsUwen, (Vieona: Alfred
41 Schroeder, Arisdu Religion, 398; Krauss, Si e
Holder, 1885), 351.
. ebrIJ ch (Stuttgart· Strecker &
42 Johannes Piprek, sIawische Brautwerbungs- und H0ch4etug u e .
Schroder, 1914), 66.
43 Arische Religion, 424.
164
also sun maiden figures, marrying a "Lichtgott" (Zeus/Jupiter), and that their role
as patron goddesses of marriage is evidence to this effect. Thus he views the
heavenly sacred marriage, the hieros gamos of the gods, as essentially the same
event as the sun maiden's wedding. It is easy to understand the researcher's desire
to link these two celestial wedding myths. The marriage of Zeus and Hera is in
fact widely celebrated and even recreated in Greek ritual.44 Nevertheless,
Schroeder has gone too far here in the comparison, blurring the boundaries of two
separate myths. Hera and Juno are not, by our definitions, sun maiden figures,
and their myths contain little of the features specific to our myth (portrayal as
maidens, associations with dawn, characteristic appearances with the divine twins,
etc.). Likewise, Zeus/Jupiter is a complex figure, and not a purely IE creation,
despite his IE name; we can at least say that he is not the typical husband of the
sun maiden figure, who usually marries the Asvins, a sun figure, or the moon.
At the bottom of the problem of multiple heavenly weddings, however, is a
simple solution, to be found in the observation that in religious polytheistic
societies, the celebration of a wedding among the gods is a natural and common
idea, and the development of a heavenly wedding myth as a prototype for human
weddings is an entirely logical feature of myth, which in large part seeks to explain
" . al IS as well as human social institutions. This explains the
th e cosmos origin even
45
... . fh nl weddl'ngmyths worldwide, as Biezais has noted. There
pro Iiteranon 0 eave y-
44 ' ' ' ' arations and as the patroness of married woman, but
Not only IS HeralOvoked 10 wedding prep ifi ial < tivsl 00 Euboea and -~:
her marri
er mamage .' sacn C1 res
'···ed at the annual "1985)
10 Zeus IS even UDl~ l32f
Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard Umver>lly Press, .
45 Die himmlische GiJlterjamilie, 526.
165
is no need to reduce all heavenly wedding myths to a single story; the occurrence
of two different celestial wedding myths in a single tradition does not require us to
equate the deities involved when there is no other reason to identify them. In our
case, we have been examining a clearly defined sun maiden figure, whose wedding
is a central focus of her mythology; the presence of other heavenly weddings
which do not involve this figure is almost to be expected in these complex
mythologies and is not a disturbing problem.

If Hera's fabled wedding does not serve as a Greek parallel to the sun
maiden's wedding stories in Indic and Baltic myth, it does not mean we are left
high and dry in the Hellenic realm. Like Surya and the sautes meita, Helen had
many different suitors and even a number of husbands, from the legitimate
Menelaos to the illegitimate Paris; she is also said to have been the wife of
Deiphobos or Achilles46, and other tales emphasize her abduction by Theseus, who
47
wanted mainly a marital connection with the Dioskouroi. Indeed, a sizeable
fragment of Hesiod's Catalogue a/Women treats the wooing of Helen, and lists her
many suitors;48 Agamemnon woos on his brother's behalf, as a traditional proxy,
in the same role as the Asvins suing on Soma's behalf in the suryasUkta. Here,
then, is the stereotypical sun maiden bride with many suitors, variously said to
have married one or the other or all of them, though Helen's case differs from the
Indic and Baltic cases in that she is never the bride, but only the sister, of the
divine twins. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that one of the rare depictions
46 The latter being a Crotooian tradition; Pans. 3.t9.
47 Paus. 1.41.
48 Rzach, fro 94-96.
166
of Helen's wedding shows the bridal couple in a chariot accompanied by the divine
twins49; the parallel to Vedic Siirya, carried to her husband on a chariot driven by
the Asvins, is inescapable.
Finally, there is some evidence that Helen is connected with girls' initiation
rites before marriage50 and that part of her cult at Sparta involved the ritual
reenactment of her wedding, possibly as a seasonal event. Mannhardt, Kaibel, and
West speculate that Theokritos' Idyll 18, an epithalamion celebrating Helen's mar-
riage to Menelaos, has such a ritual as its aition.i) The poem's setting is the nup-
tial chamber into which Helen and Menelaos have just retreated, and twelve
maidens sing a song in front of the chamber teasing Menelaos as being possibly
sleepy or drunk52; it then describes his fortunate marriage and the beauty of Helen.
Helen is expressly compared to the dawn, as golden and rosy:
•Aw<; o,VTBA"Aoura Ka"Aov oui</>avB 7:POlfW7:0V,

1I"OTVLa Nv~, TO TB AeVKOV eap XBtJl&WO<;o,ViVTCX;'
c;,& Kat Cxxpvlfia 'E"Aiva &B</>aipd iv CxJltv.
1I"l.Bipt;x JlB-ya"Aa (iT' o,viOpaJlB KOlfJlO<;o,pOVPt;x
ij Ka1l"Cf' KvpapLlflfO<;, ij apJlC1TL 8Blflfa"Ao<; 17:11"0<;,
c;,OB Kat CxPOOOXpw<; 'EAiva AaKBOaiJlovL KOlfJlO<;'
49 On a dinos at Smyrna; see Lindsay, Helen, 121.

., . aI d and as the probable focus of the Spartan
50 As the &xL''':w dance leader at the girls festiv shrine ...... ial cberi_.. Lindsay Helen
r-r- . id rode to her ne on "r~-- \/\OJ. , •
festival Helenaia, during whicb DI81 eDS
212f.
f. Geo Kaibel -Tboo!crits EAENH&
51 Mannbardt,
Wald- und Fe/dkulte 2: 22 , ~ est -immottal Helen: 5, 17 n.5.
ErnSAAAMION, - Hennes 27 (1892): 249-259, W ,
. . al bamber is also known in Slavicculture;see Piprek.
52 The singing of songs outside the bod c e 107
Slawische BrautwerlJungs- und Hochzel/SgebrIJuch, .
167
Fair, Lady.Night, is the face that rising Dawn discloses, or
radiant spnng with winter ends; and so amongst us did
golden Helen shine. As some tall cypress adorns the fertile
field. or. garden wherein it springs, or Thessalian steed the
chanot II draws, so rosy Helen adorns Lacedaimon.53
The poem goes on to describe the maidens' promise to weave a garland and hang it
in Helen's honor upon a plane tree, and pour a libation of oil over its trunk , and
engrave on it a sign telling passers-by to worship the tree, which is sacred to Helen
(rJe{3ev !J." ·EAe.a<; <pvro. 8L!J.l.)54 West has seen in this evidence of a tree cult of
Helen, who is associated elsewhere with plane trees and was worshipped on
Rhodes under the title Helen Dendritis, "Helen of the Tree"; there is even a story
that she hanged herself on a tree there, apparently intended to explain a cult prac-
tice of hanging her image on a treeS5 Clader has collected evidence of a Helen
cult at Sparta, Rhodes, Kenchreai, Chios and elsewhere, but the specifics of the
cult are uncertain, except that it apparently has broad connections with fertility. 56
Some of West's conclusions, however, regarding a seasonal wedding celebra-
tion of Helen's marriage must be regarded with care. We have no hard evidence
to back up his statements that "the wedding of the goddess Helen was celebrated in
spring or early summer by garlanding a tree" or that "the girls of Sparta used to
get up early in the morning to pick the flowers for the garlands they were to hang
53 Translation of A.S.F. Gow, 1heocritus, Edited with a Transmtion and Commentary. (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952)at Idyll t8,
54 Thook. 18:43-48,
55 Pans. 3.19. See West, "ImmortalHelen," 5. Westco~ this with the widespnad custom
of hanging things on the Maypole/Maytree ("ImmortalHelen, 12).
56 Clader, Helen, 69ff.
168
on Helen's tree"57 - there is only the poetic depiction of Theokritos, which West,
after Mannhardt and Kaibel, assumes to infer such a ritual practice. Clader,
likewise, after surveying Greek festivals which might have been associated with
Helen, cannot point with certainty to any festival, springtime or otherwise, specifi-
cally associated with Helen; even the mysterious Helenephoria, mentioned only by
Pollux, does not give any details of the ritual, nor does he mention its season.58
Nevertheless, springtime tree decoration, like that described in Theokritos, is a
verifiable European ritual, one that is very ancient. Below we consider further the
notion of such rituals as expressions of the sun maiden's wedding.
4.C. The Wedding: a May Day/New Year Celebration?
We encountered above in section 3.A. Kuiper's idea that the Vedic hymns to
Usas were the product of an annual winter solstice celebration of the first dawn of
the New Year. West similarly posits an annual ritual celebration of Helen's mar-
. d . araIl I to various May Day rituals and he concludes that if there

nage, rawmg pes '
was such an annual celebration, it appears to have been in spring or at the begin-
. . f the Latvian dainas as evidence:
mng of summer. He cites one 0
Today the Sun is moving

Warmer than on other days.
57 West, "Immortal Helen," 12.
58 Clader, Helen, 65-80.
169
Today they are taking the Sun's Daughter
From the Daugava to Germany.59
West interprets the fact that the sun is "warmer than on other days" to mean that
the day of the sun maiden's wedding must be the beginning of summer. Whether
or not one accepts this as an accurate interpretation of the Latvian verse, it is
certainly true that there is extensive ritual evidence for sun celebrations occurring
on or around May Day throughout the Indo-European culture. Mannhardt col-
lected extensive evidence for ritual tree decoration at that time of year throughout
northern and eastern Europe; trees were decorated with silver and gold ornaments,
garlands, and pieces of cloth. 60 Surely the Latvian song describing Saule distribut-
ing gifts to the trees6l has a ritual echo in this historical custom. West believes
that Helen's tree ritual, of which unfortunately there are the barest literary traces,
is also associated with this practice. He also reminds us that Easter is the old
Germanic Eostre, goddess of the Dawn: here we do have an undeniable connec-
tion between our daily sunrise maiden and a seasonal celebration.

Jean Haudry sees a logical relationship between the daily and seasonal dawn
myths. He contrasts such seasonal "New Year" celebrations with those like the
Roman Saturnalia, which is a festival at the end of autumn, and the Celtic Samain,
celebrated the first of November. 62 Haudry emphasizes the natural correspondence

ie
of sunrise/sunset myths with their annual counterparts ("l'homolog entre jour,
59 Westtakesthis fromWard's translationof lonval356,in Divine Twins, 66.
60 Wald- und Feldkul/t. 1: 155f.
61 See section3.e.
62 lean Haudry, La religion cosmique des Indo-Europe,ns (Milan: ~. 1981) 65-61.
170
annee et cycle cosmique").63 As he also notes, the dates of winter vary according
to latitude, and at some of the regions closer to the poles the "night of winter" is
not metaphor but reality, as nights get very long. The first dawn after winter sol-
stice marks a dramatic reversal in the year's declining light, exactly as in the daily
process. The subsequent arrival of spring is cause for further celebration of the
increasing light. 64
There is, then, no serious problem in connecting our sunrise maiden with an
annual celebration of the onset of springtime. In Greek custom, the month
raWihLWV (January-February) was generally chosen for weddings, showing this
post-winter-solstice time as the marriage season.65 Furthermore, as mentioned
above, the Vedic wedding hymn discussed above contains a prescribed time for
marriage ceremonies; the cows are to be killed "on the Aghas" (when the moon is
in this constellation) and the bride is to be carried away "on the Phalgunis" (two
constellations which follow the previous one); this period is between mid-January
and mid-March. The Ramayar)a describes marriage as being performed on the
Uttara Phalguni (in mid-March), of which constellation Bhaga is the deity, and
there is a similar reference in the Mahabharata (Adiparva 8.16); Hopkins noted
that this constellation is especially suitable for weddings since Bhaga represents the
66
procreative powers of the sun.
63 La religion cosmlque, 69; cf. also 288.
64 The IE word for "spring" is "the arrival ofligbL" »wesr, *wer; cf. lap, LIl. ver. See HJwdry,
La religion cosmique. 269.

65 W.l. Woodhouse's article on GreekMarriage, s.v., "Marriage" in E1U)'cUJpedia o!Religwn IlIId
Ethics, (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926).
66 E.W. Hopkins, Epic Mythology, 84.
171
Because the bride is personifyimg the dawn, about to meet her lover and hus-
band, the rising sun , it is most natural that the spnngnme

. . season be prescribed for
her wedding, and this appears to explain the proliferation of weddings at spring-
time throughout the IE culture.
SUMMARY
The Vedic sun maiden Surya, "Daughter of the Sun", is yet another vestige
of the Indo-European sun maiden figure, our fourth in the Indic realm in addition
to Saranyu, Usas, and Sita; the presence of multiple descendants of this figure
shows the strength with which this myth captured the Vedic imagination. Aside
from her mythological ties to the Vedic divine twins, the Asvins, a trait typical of
sun maiden figures, like Greek Helen and the Dioskouroi, Surya's name is even
cognate with Greek Helen's, both being based upon the IE root "swel.
It is clear from the Indic evidence that the wedding of the sun maiden Surya
was envisioned as the prototype for human weddings, and that the bride in such a
ceremony was called upon as the personification of Surya. In her imitation of the
sun maiden, the human bride was called upon to mount a "golden" cart and travel
to her new home, just like the sun maiden is said in myth to have mounted the
chariot of her husband and traveled across the sky. The golden cart is decorated
with red flowers, perhaps signifying the same dawn-colors of red and gold we have
seen to be common of the sun maiden figures usas and Bos, discussed in Chapter
172
3. There are also several specific rituals to be performed at sunset, which support
the connection between Surya , whom the bride IS

. persomif ymg,
. and the rosy-
colored sky.
There may also be evidence that the Latvian dainas, so many of which treat
the wedding of the sun maiden, were actually sung at wedding ceremonies, and we
may have there a parallel to the Indic use of the myth as a prototype, though this is
speculative. Schroeder, Piprek, and Krauss cite similar uses of sun maiden wed-
ding myths among Slavic peoples. In the Greek arena, Theokritos' Idyll 18, which
purports to be the song sung by a group of maidens before the door of Helen and
Menelaos' nuptial chamber, has been taken by Mannhardt, Kaibel and West to
imply a cult wherein Helen's wedding was celebrated ritually; there is, however,
no specific evidence that this ever involved a human bride personifying the sun
maiden Helen, as in the Indie tradition.

West and Kuiper have held that behind the myth of the sun maiden figure
there is an annual solar celebration, celebrated at springtime/the beginning of sum-
mer (West) or at the winter solstice/New Year (Kuiper). The Indic and Greek
marriage seasons may reflect this, since they occur in January-February, after the
winter solstice, which heralds the onset of spring. Haudry, concurring with
Kuiper, considers it natural that the daily cycles of the sun should have seasonal
analogues. Just as the sunrise maiden whom we have examined in the preceding
pages is beautiful, golden or rosy figure whose appearance is a dramatic event,
likewise is the first dawn of the new year something to be anticipated and
celebrated after the long nights of winter.
173
CONCLUSION
There is abundant evidence for a distinctive Indo-European sunrise/sunset
myth which describes the wedding of a "sun maiden" figure, known variously as
the "Daughter of the Sun" or the "Daughter of the Sky." The IE background of
this figure has been known since the early studies of Mannhardt, who compared
the Latvian saules meita to certain broad themes in the Vedic mythology of Siirya
and Usas as well as Greek Helen of Troy. Several recent studies (Ward, Nagy,
Boedeker, Biezais, Clader, Grottanelli) have proposed solid Germanic, Greek, and
Celtic evidence for such a figure. Building upon their research, in this work the
Indic textual evidence has been examined in detail, particularly the myths of
Saranyu, Usas, and Surya, with the conclusion that, despite their differences, all
three Indic figures are indeed developments of an original IE twilight goddess, the
personification of the rosy glow in the sky preceding sunrise and following sunset.
The Greek parallels to this myth, in the figures of Helen of Troy, Aphrodite, and
the dawn goddess Eos have also been reexamined here, showing them clearly to be
reflexes of the same IE myth. In addition, the Germanic and Celtic evidence for
this figure has been collected and sifted here, with the conclusion that in these
traditions there is also substantial textual evidence for the same sun maiden figure,
including some previously unobserved Celtic parallels. The striking similarities in
the mythology of all of these figures make it certain that they are genetically
related, and not independent developments of a universal myth, especially since
this particular combination of unusual features does not appear to occur outside the
IE area.
The features of the myth have been outlined as follows. The sun maiden is
174
portrayed as a beautiful maiden who is courted b y seve ral suitors,
sui One of the
suitors succeeds (his id en titI y vanes

. from version
. to version) and she is married off
in a grand wedding. The maiden, however, suddenly disappears (often due to a
kidnapping); she must be rescued, and she is eventually restored to her husband.
There is some question as to her chastity during her absence from her husband, but
she is proven innocent. Frequently she, her husband, or her children (who may be
twins) are associated with horses, or even take horse form; this is apparently tied
to solar imagery of the horse-drawn chariot of the sun. There are three variants of
her myth: one in which she marries a sun figure, possibly a mortal; a second in
which she marries the moon; and a third in which she marries the divine twins
,
who apparently represent the morning and evening star (the latter identification
,
although contested in the case of the Vedic ASvins, is well supported in the
remainder of the IE divine twin material). The story of her marriage to the divine
twins seems to be the oldest version of the myth, since traces of it show up even in
versions where the sun maiden marries another figure (with, e.g., the twins
appearing as the groom's best men, or the groom as one of a pair of brothers
which displays characteristics of the divine twins).

Vedic mythology offers a rich resource for the study of this myth, since it
contains a proliferation of sun figures, three of them sun maidens. However,
certain Vedic distinctions, like that between "Daughter of the Sky" (U~) and
"Daughter of the Sun" (Siirya), which seem clearly maintained within the Vedic
tradition cannot be extended into the older IE tradition, where both epithets are
,
applied to the sun maiden figure, as the comparative evidence shows.
The "substitute maiden" motif is shown to be a common and probably
archaic feature of the myth; it is here examined closely in both the Indic and Greek
175
traditions, elaborating upon the previous work done by Pisani which correlated the
..
stories of Saranyu's savarna ("look-alike") and Helen's ~'Q"'''ov.
0·" The Puramc
- . ver-
sions of Saranyii's tale, in which a shadow (chliyli) takes her place, are also con-
sidered as further evidence of the dominance of the motif. The work of Printz
regarding similar illusionary substitutes for Sita is shown to add other valuable
Indic parallels. New examples of this motif are adduced in the Icelandic story of
Potentiana and in the Celtic tales of Dubh Lacha and Etain. Though in the Puranic
versions of the Saranyu tale the reason for the substitution is that the sun maiden
cannot tolerate the heat of her sun-husband (a tidy allegorical explanation for the
fleeting morning sunrise glow/twilight), in the remainder of the IE versions the
purpose of the subtitution motif rather appears to be the preservation of the chastity
of the sun maiden figure. The differing purpose is attributable to the presence of
different husbands in the variants: where she is married not to the sun but to the
divine twins, the "escaping the heat" motive becomes irrelevant. Lommel's
explanation that the substitute figure is an allegory for the evening twilight, which
looks like the morning twilight and which takes the dawn's place with her husband
at sunset, is accepted.
In sum, the comparative evidence, with much gleaned from the Indic
material, has established with reasonable certainty the following features of the
myth:
1. that it is a myth about the reddish morning twilight glow, personified

• e. f the myth is the substitution of
as a beautiful maiden, and that a persIstent reamre 0
Ih ent1yexplained as the "mirror"
a look-alike female, a motif that Lamme as cog
176
. seen most clearly in
evening twilight sky, which looks just like the dawn• ThiIS IS
.
the stories of Saranyii/S amjna,
.- - were
h the sun malden
. ("sunrise glow") disappears
because the sun, her husband, becomes too hot for her (as he rises into full
daylight); her look-alike takes her place in the evening; at day's end the sun's bril-
l"lance IS
. cut off; finally, the cycle repeats, as the sunrise glow reappears with her
husband the next morning.
2. that the wedding of the sun maiden is indeed a central feature of the
myth, as shown by the predominance of depictions of her as a maiden ready for
marriage (Usas) or in fact as a bride (Surya). This feature is also emphasized in
the Baltic, Greek, and Germanic traditions.
3. that the myth, with its emphasis on the celestial wedding, may have
served in Indo-European culture as the prototype for human wedding ceremony;
this is without doubt the case in the Indic texts, where the bride takes on the per-
sona of (and is in fact called) "Siirya." A case can be made for parallel usages of
the sun maiden myth among Baltic and Slavic people; at the very least, songs
regarding the celestial wedding were traditionally sung at weddings. The use of
the myth in human wedding ritual is witness to its centrality in IE cosmology.
4. that the myth has an annual counterpart in seasonal celebrations of the
renewed, brightening sun of spring; the fIrst day after winter solstice is quite
literally the "dawn" of the New Year, and the analogy to daily sunrise, and there-
fore the sun maiden myth, is entirely natural.
177
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1993 Sun Maidens Wedding An Indo European Surise Sunset Myth (Steets)

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORmA

The Sun Maiden's Wedding:

An Indo-European Sunrise/Sunset Myth

A microfi 1 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

The Sun Maiden's Wedding:

An Indo-European Sunrise/Sunset Myth

Hanns-Peter Schmidt, Committee Cbair

University of California, Los Angeles

CHAPTER I DRAMATIS PERSONAE: THE INDO-EUROPEAN

I.A. Universal Sun Maidens and Divine Twins 8

CHAPTER 2 THE SARA~YD MOTIFS: DISAPPEARING BRIDES

2.A. Saranyu: A Survey 43

CHAPTER 3 USAS AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN

3.A. U~as: A Survey 113

l CHAPTER 4 SURYA. AND THE WEDDING OF THE SUN MAIDEN 151

4.A. Surya: the "Daughter of the Sun"

AgniP Agni Purana

HOS Harvard Oriental Series

I am greatly indebted to my teacher through these many years, Harms-Peter

benefited from this association. I also wish to convey my sincere gratitude to

Department for their helpful comments. The students of the Indo-European

I am indebted to my friend Mona Merideth Reddick for her continual interest in

less to say, the responsibility for any errors is my own.

My parents and family have provided much long-distance encouragement over my

has made all the difference to me.

October 2, 1954 Born, Warwick, Rhode Island

1977 B.A., Classics

1978 Colaisde Gaidhlig (Gaelic College)

\984-199\ Teaching Assistant (Teaching Fellow, 199\)

1986 Research Assistant

1986-1987 Hortense Fishbaugh Memorial Scholarship

1989-\990 Departmental Fellowship

1989-1993 Research Assistant

1990 C. Phil., Indo-European Studies

1991-1992 Mabel Wilson Richards Foundation Scholarship

An Indo-European Sunrise/Sunset Myth

Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies

University of California, Los Angeles, 1993

Professor Harms-Peter Schmidt, Chair

developments of a universal myth. Furthermore, an examination of ritual evidence

("Daughter of the Sun" or "Daughter of the Sky") in Indo-European (IE) mythol-

examined. The sun maiden is an integral component of a well documented IE

from that perspective, as an incidental accompaniment to the more striking parallel

maiden herself proves to be an intriguing and worthy subject for independent

more widespread than has heretofore been presumed.

and an accompanying sun maiden, which led nineteenth-century researchers to

postulate an underlying Indo-European myth. I Attention was first focused on fea-

I Wilhelm Mannhardt, "Die lettischen Sonnenmythen," Zeitschriftftlr Ethnologie 7 (1875): 73-104,

("Daughter of the Sun" or "Daughter of the Sky") in Indo-European (IE) mythol-

examined. The sun maiden is an integral component of a well documented IE

from that perspective, as an incidental accompaniment to the more striking parallel

maiden herself proves to be an intriguing and worthy subject for independent

more widespread than has heretofore been presumed.

and an accompanying sun maiden, which led nineteenth-century researchers to

postulate an underlying Indo-European myth. 1 Attention was first focused on fea-

1Wilhelm Mannhardl, "Die lettischen Sonnenmythen," 'kitschriftfilr Emnologie 7 (1875): 73-104,

Despite these universal features, however, extraordinary parallels of specific details

as she is frequently called, "Daughter of the Sun" - appears to have been an

parallel closely those of their celestial counterparts. Prominent features of the

have the hippomorphic features or affiliations with horses frequently emblematic of

In contrast to the voluminous bibliography of scholarly works on the divine

the subject of only a few studies. In 1875, Wilhelm Mannhardt, in a seminal

4Mannhardt, "Die lettiscben Sonnenmythen."