The Vedic ritual of the sacrifice of a stallion is balanced by the Vedic myth of a goddess who takes the form of a mare named Saranyu (“Fle...
The Vedic ritual of the sacrifice of a stallion is balanced by the Vedic myth of a goddess who takes the form of a mare named Saranyu (“Fleet”). The Veda wraps the story in a riddle, but here is a brief summary of the plot:
The blacksmith of the gods gave his daughter, Saranyu, in marriage to the Sun, and she gave birth to twins, Yama and Yami. Then the gods concealed the immortal woman from mortals; they put in her place a female of-the-same-kind (savarna), and gave that look-alike to the Sun. Saranyu took the form of a mare; the Sun took the form of a stallion, followed her, and coupled with her. From that were born the twin equine gods called the Ashvins. She abandoned them, too.
As the later Indian tradition attempts to unlock the riddle of Saranyu, it draws upon many deep-seated, often conflicting, ideas about human and divine sexuality and deception. In place of the statement that the gods concealed Saranyu from her husband, later texts blame Saranyu for the separation and speculate on various reasons for her flight from her husband: as the sun, he was too hot for her; as a mortal, he was not fit to...
