Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/183
right direction. An unusually unsympathetic sceptic will not find it hard to rest his feet upon some projecting ledge of doubt, and all history cries out that we must not try to dislodge sceptics by violence. Every middle-aged student of Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology recalls the time when even the most complex myths were blandly explained as nature processes; nothing in that line could be too fanciful and far-fetched to find adherents. No cock might crow in a fairy-tale without becoming party to an involved and profound sun-myth. We have all sobered much; there is now, perhaps, too much insistence upon the element of uncertainty which goes with the term "probable," no matter how closely the probable may approach certainty.
Tho two Açvins, the Dioscuri, are translucent gods. They harbor some phenomenon of morning light as one part of their dual character. The other is probably the corresponding phenomenon at eve. But just what this duality is we were unable to say.[1] It is something to have limited this brilliant Indo-European myth so far, and to find behind it reason rather than idle fancy. The god Varuna, as we have seen, belongs also to this class; for better or for worse interpretation will turn to some phenomenon
- ↑ See above, p. 116.