Divine twins
The divine twins are a mytheme of Proto-Indo-European religion.[1]
Examples
- Greek Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus and Leda.[2]
- Vedic/Hindu Ashvins, sons of Saranyu, a goddess of the clouds and wife of Surya.
- Hindu Nara-Narayana, the twin-brother avatar of the God Vishnu on earth.
- Lithuanian Ašvieniai, pulling a carriage of Saulė (the Sun) through the sky.[3]
- Latvian Dieva dēli, sons of God: Auseklis (Venus) or Pērkons (Thunder).[4]
- Sicilian Palici; one legend made the Palici the sons of Zeus, or possibly Hephaestus, by Aetna or Thalia, but another claimed that the Palici were the sons of the Sicilian deity Adranus.
- Germanic deities Alcis, a pair of young male brothers worshipped by the Naharvali.
- Italian Romulus and Remus, whose story tells the events that led to the founding of the city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom by Romulus.
- Anglo-Saxon Hengest and Horsa, said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
- Slavic Lada and Lado, female and male personifications of beauty and fertility (sometimes seen as twins, other times as mother and son)
The Yoruba orishas Ibeji and the Haitian vodoun Marassa Jumeaux are similar examples outside the Indo-European realm.
O'Brien (1982) reconstructs a horse goddess with twin offspring, pointing to Gaulish Epona, Irish Macha (the twins reflected in Macha's pair, Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend), Welsh Rhiannon, and Eddaic Freyja in the tale of the construction of the walls of Asgard, seeing a vestige of the birth of hippomorphic twins in Loki in the form of a mare (in place of Freyja) giving birth to eight-legged Sleipnir.[5] The myths surrounding Hengest and Horsa could come from a common source, since they were descendants of Woden and Hengest's name meant "stallion" (in German: Hengst) Shapiro (1982) points to Slavic Volos and Veles, and collects the following comparative properties:
- sons of the sky god
- brothers of the sun maiden
- association with horses
- dual paternity
- saviours at sea
- astral nature
- magic healers
- warriors and providers of divine aid in battle
- divinities of fertility
- association with swans
- divinities of dance
- closeness to human beings
- protectors of the oath
- assisting at birth
- founders of cities
Similar themes
One recurring element in the divine twin theme is that, while identical, one is divine and the other is human. This points to other characters which partially reflect the mytheme, such as:
- Krishna and Arjuna, as Nara-Narayana - a dual incarnation of Vishnu, while not twins but cousins, many of the elements are present
- Achilles and Patroclus - not twins
- First Man and Son of Man, in the Naassene gnosticism.
- The Thracian horseman
- Purusha, the cosmic man - very similar to the gnostic First Man, is a primeval giant that is sacrificed by the gods and from whose body the world is built. He is described as having a thousand heads and a thousand feet. He emanated Viraj, the female creative principle, from which he is reborn in turn after the world was made out of his parts. Purusha was dismembered by the devas—his mind is the Moon, his eyes are the Sun, and his breath is the wind. This reminds of the dismemberment mythos, for example that of Like Viraj-Shakti to Purusha, so does Isis recompose the body of Osiris in order to have his offspring, Horus, who then is Osiris' twin.
Literature
- Steven O'Brien, Dioscuric Elements in Celtic and Germanic Mythology, JIES 10 (1982), 117-136.
- Michael Shapiro, Neglected Evidence of Dioscurism (Divine Twinning) in the Old Slavic Pantheon, JIES 10 (1982), 137-166.
- Donald Ward, The Divine Twins: An Indo-European Myth in Germanic Tradition (1968).
- Brian D. Joseph, “Old English Hengest as an Indo-European Twin Hero.” The Mankind Quarterly 24 (1983), 105-115.
- Olga M. Davidson, “Aspects of Dioscurism in Iranian Kingship: The Case of Lohrasp and Goshtasp in the Shāhnāme of Ferdowsi,” Edebiyāt 1 (1987), 103-115.
- Gregory Nagy, “Patroklos, Concepts of Afterlife, and the Indic Triple Fire” and “Phaethon, Sappho’s Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas: ‘Reading’ the Symbols of Greek Lyric,” in Greek Mythology and Poetics (1990).
- Douglas Frame, Hippota Nestor (2007).
- Douglas Frame, “Achilles and Patroclus as Indo-European Twins: Homer’s Take.”
- Gregory Nagy, “Achilles and Patroklos as models for the twinning of identity."
See also
References
- ↑ Donald Ward, The Divine Twins: An Indo-European Myth in Germanic Tradition (1968)
- ↑ Routledge (2002), "Castor and Polydeuces", Who's Who in Classical Mythology, London: Routledge
- ↑ Hamacher, Duane W. "The Sumerians and Gemini: Sumerian Astronomical Interpretations as Origins of the Divine Horse Twins and Solar Chariots in Indo-European Mythology (Unpublished manuscript)" (PDF). p. 7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-10-31.
- ↑ Vīķe-Freiberga, Vaira (2005). "Saule". In Jones, Lindsay. Encyclopedia of Religion. 12 (2nd ed.). Thomson Gale. pp. 8131–8135.
- ↑ Steven O'Brien, Dioscuric Elements in Celtic and Germanic Mythology, JIES 10 (1982), 117-136.