concerning a divine figure Tuisto who grew out of the earth to become the
father of Mannus, the ancestor of all the Germans. Tuisto’s name is under-
stood to mean ‘twin’ or ‘hermaphrodite’.^52 The assumption that he was
bisexual and able to fertilize himself explains how he was able to beget
Mannus on his own.
Another figure called Twin plays a role in Indo-Iranian myth as the first
mortal man or the first king. This is the Vedic Yama, the Avestan Yima, a
name considered to be cognate with Ymir.^53 He is the son of the solar deity
Vivasvat or Vı ̄vahvant. Some accounts give him a sister, also called Twin
(Yamı ̄, RV 10. 10; Yimeh in Pahlavi sources), with whom he has incest, or at
least she pleads with him to do so. She is evidently a secondary figure, and it is
shrewdly surmised that originally the myth featured not a pair but a single
androgynous creature capable of procreation by himself.^54
Yima, after a blessed reign on earth, lost his majesty and was sawn in two by
a certain Spityura (Yt. 19. 46),^55 though there is no record of what became of
the halves. In India it is not Yama but another primal man, Purusha, who
suffers an analogous fate; púrus
̇
a- is another word meaning ‘man’. According
to the famous hymn RV 10. 90 he was sacrificed by the gods and the cosmos
was made out of him, the heaven from his head, the air from his navel, the
earth from his legs, and so forth.
Some scholars regard the legend of Romulus and Remus as another relic of
the Indo-European cosmogonic myth. Remus, it is claimed, was originally
*Yemós ‘Twin’, the same as Yama, Yima, and Ymir, and the initial was changed
for alliterative purposes. He was after all a twin. His killing had been essential
to the foundation of the world, and the myth was transferred to the founda-
tion of Rome. It is also pointed out that according to one tradition Romulus
himself was killed by the senators and his body cut into pieces and disposed
of secretly.^56 The senators here would, I suppose, correspond to the gods in
the original myth who sacrificed the giant or proto-human.^57
(^52) Güntert (1923), 324–6, cf. 334 f.
(^53) Cf. Güntert (1923), 336–8; de Vries (1956), ii. 363 f.; Ernout–Meillet (1959), s.v. geminus;
Meid (1991), 20 f. On Yama cf. Macdonell (1898), 171–4; Oldenberg (1917), 280 f.; Oberlies
(1998), 386–90.
(^54) Güntert (1923), 320–2.
(^55) Yt. 19. 46. Scholars say that Spityura was a brother of Yima, but I do not know the source
for this.
(^56) Dion. Hal. Ant. 2. 56. 3 f.; Livy 1. 16. 4; Plut. Rom. 27. 6; W. Burkert, Historia 11 (1962),
356–76; J. Puhvel, History of Religions 15 (1975), 146–57; B. Lincoln, ibid. 137–9; id. (1986),
42–5; Oberlies (1998), 389 f.
(^57) In the reconstruction of Puhvel and others the Twin is slaughtered by his brother, as Remus
is by Romulus and Yima by Spityura (if he was a brother). As I see it, he originally had no
brother.
- Cosmos and Canon 357