Divine twins
The Divine Twins are youthful horsemen, either gods or demigods, who serve as rescuers and healers in Proto-Indo-European mythology.
Like other figures found in Indo-European myths, the Divine Twins are not directly attested by archaeological or written materials, but scholars of comparative mythology and Indo-European studies generally agree on the motif they have reconstructed by way of the comparative method.
Name
Although the Proto-Indo-European name of the Divine Twins cannot be reconstructed with certainty based on the available linguistic evidence, the most frequent epithets associated with the two brothers in liturgic and poetic traditions are the "Youthful" and the "Sons" of the Sky-God.Two well-accepted descendants of the Divine Twins, the Vedic Aśvins and the Lithuanian Ašvieniai, are linguistic cognates ultimately deriving from the Proto-Indo-European word for the horse, *h₁éḱwos. They are related to Sanskrit áśva and Avestan aspā, and to Old Lithuanian ašva, all sharing the meaning of "mare".
Role
Represented as young men rescuing mortals from peril in battle or at sea, the Divine Twins rode the steeds that pull the sun across the sky and were sometimes depicted as horses themselves. They shared a sister, the Dawn, also the daughter of the Sky-God. The two brothers are generally portrayed as healers and helpers, travelling in miraculous vehicles in order to save shipwrecked mortals. They are often differentiated: one is represented as a physically strong and aggressive warrior, while the other is seen as a healer who rather gives attention to domestic duties, agrarian pursuits, or romantic adventures.In the Vedic, Greek and Baltic traditions, the Divine Twins similarly appear as the personifications of the morning and evening star. They are depicted as the lovers or the companions of a solar female deity, preferably the Sun's daughter but sometimes also the Dawn. In the majority of stories when they appear, the Divine Twins rescue the Dawn from a watery peril, a theme that emerged from their role as the solar steeds.
At night, the horses of the sun returned to the east in a golden boat, where they traversed the sea to bring back the Sun into the sky each morning. During the day, they crossed the nocturnal sky in pursuit of their consort, the morning star. In what seems to be a later addition confined to Europe, they were said to take a rest at the end of the day on the "Isles of the Blessed", a land seating in the western sea which possessed magic apple orchards. By the Bronze Age, the Divine Twins were also represented as the coachmen of the horse-driven solar chariots.
Evidence
Three Indo-European traditions attest the mytheme of equestrian twins, all associated with the dawn or the sun's daughter. Although their names do not form a complete group of cognates, they nonetheless share a similar epithet leading to a possible ancestral name, either the sons or grandsons of the sky-god Dyēus.- *diwós suhₓnū́, or *diwós népoth₁e,
- *Vedic: the Divó nápātā, the "sons of Dyaús", the sky-god, always referred to in dual in the Rigveda, without individual names,
- * Lithuanian: the Dievo sūneliai, the "sons of Dievas", pulling the carriage of Saulė through the sky,
- *Latvian: the Dieva dēli, the "sons of Dievs", the sky-god,
- * Greek: the Diós-kouroi, the "boys of Zeus", the sky-god.
- **Paelignian: the Ioviois Pvclois and Ioveis Pvcles, interpreted as a calque of the Greek theonym Diós-kouroi.
- Celtic:the "Dioskouroi", said by Timaeus to be venerated by Atlantic Celts above all other gods, with an ancient tradition of the Dioskouroi having visited them from across the Ocean,
- Anglo-Saxon: Hengist and Horsa, said to have come by the sea in response to a plea from the beleaguered British king Vortigern; descendants of Odin, their names mean Stallion and Horse,
- Germanic: the Alcis, a pair of young brothers worshipped by the Naharvali tribe, compared by Tacitus to Castor and Pollux,
- Baltic: Ūsiņš or Ūsinis, a Baltic god in the dainas associated with horses and light/sun, and possibly one of the sons of Dievs.
- Welsh: Brân and Manawydan.
- Greek: Amphion and Zethus, another pair of twins fathered by Zeus and Antiope; the legendary founders of Thebes, they are called "Dioskouroi, riders of white horses" by Euripedes in his play The Phoenician Women ; in keeping with the theme of distinction between the twins, Amphion was said to be the more contemplative, sensitive one, whereas Zethus was more masculine and tied to physical pursuits, like hunting and cattle-breeding.
- Vedic: another possible reflexes are Nakula and Sahadeva of Vedic religion and literature. Mothered by Princess Madri, who summoned the Aśvins themselves in a prayer to beget her sons, the twins are two of the five Pandava brothers, married to the same woman, Draupadi. In the Mahabharata epic, Nakula is described in terms of his exceptional beauty, warriorship and martial prowess, while Sahadeva is depicted as patient, wise, intelligent and a "learned man". Nakula takes great interest in Virata's horses, and his brother Sahadeva become Virata's cowherd.
- Rome/Greece: Polish historian Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak has suggested that the Sicilian deites, the Palici, a pair of twins fathered by Zeus, may derive from the divine twins.
- Slavic:
- *Lel and Polel: first mentioned by Maciej Miechowita in 1519. Presented as Polish equivalents of Castor and Pollux, sons of the goddess Łada and an unknown male god. In 1969, on the Fischerinsel island, where the cult center of the Slavic tribe of Veleti was located, an idol was found, depicting two male figures joined with their heads. Scholars believe it may represent Lel and Polel. Lelek in Russian dialect means "strong youth".
- *Waligóra and Wyrwidąb – hero twins in Polish legends. During childbirth, their mother died in the forest, and wild animals took care of the twins. Waligóra was taken care of by a she-wolf and Wyrwidąb by a she-bear, which fed them with their own milk. Together, they defeated the dragon who tormented the kingdom, for which the grateful king gave each of them half of the kingdom and one of his two daughters as a wife. The sons of Krak: Krak II and Lech II also appear in Polish legends as the killers of the Wawel dragon.
Legacy
Scholars have proposed that, in Myceanean times, there might have been a worship of twin deities, based on the presence of pairs of brothers or male twins in Attica and Boeotia.
The most prevalent functions associated with the twins in later myths are magic healers and physicians, sailors and saviours at sea, warriors and providers of divine aid in battle, controllers of weather and keepers of the wind, assistants at birth with a connection to fertility, divinities of dance, protectors of the oath, and founders of cities, sometimes related to swans.
Scholarship suggests that the mytheme of twins has echoes in the medieval legend of Amicus and Amelius, and in Belarrussian folklore, with Saints George and Nicholas - both being paired up together, their having an association with horses and their dual nature as healers.
Literary approaches to the mytheme of the Indo-European Divine Twins can be found in Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion, by Arthur Bernard Cook. The British scholar posits that some versions of The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird, collected from Greek and Albanian sources, contain some remnants of Helen and her brothers, the Dioskouroi, in the characters of the wonder-children with astronomical motifs on their bodies. The idea is reiterated in Angelo de Gubernatis's Zoological Mythology, Vol. 1. The Italian scholar analyses the twins in a variant of The Boys with the Golden Stars format as the "Açvinau" of Vedic lore.