tree with twelve branches, each supporting numbers of birds’ nests with eggs
in them; or (4) a grand edifice with twelve rooms, etc. The last two models
cannot be traced back further than the first millennium and seem to be
less ancient than the first two, though the tree version enjoys a wide
diffusion.^86
The wheel model is well established in Vedic India. ‘Twelve spokes, one
wheel, three naves –– who understands this? In it are fixed three hundred and
sixty like dowels that do not wobble’ (RV 1. 164. 48, cf. AV 10. 8. 4 f., MBh.
- 64 f., 150, 169, 173). The underlying concept is that the year revolves like
a wheel, returning to the same point. The same ancient idea is presupposed in
the Greek epic formula περιπλομνων or περιτελλομνων $νιαυτ;ν, ‘as
the years revolved’. Euripides speaks of the ‘wheel’ or ‘circle’ (κ3κλο) of the
year (Hel. 112, Phoen. 477, al.).
In RV 1. 164. 11 f. the wheel image is combined with that of father and
sons: on the twelve-spoked wheel stand the 720 sons in pairs, and they call it
their father. In a Greek riddle ascribed to the sage Cleobulus of Lindos the
year is a father with twelve sons, each of whom has thirty pale-skinned and
thirty dark daughters, making a total of 720 grandchildren.^87 This genetic
imagery is clearly archaic; we have seen that brothers and sisters were a
traditional element of the metaphorical thesaurus. In another Greek riddle
Day and Night are represented as two sisters, each of whom is also the mother
and daughter of the other.^88 This again is very much in line with Vedic
imagery: we saw in Chapter 5 that Dawn and Night are often called sisters in
the Rigveda, and that Dawn is ‘born’ daily. I quoted the Latvian riddle: ‘Two
sisters who are at odds; one appears, the other runs away; one is white, the
other black’.
In the ‘Vedic’ hymn in MBh. 1. 3. 60–70, at stanza 64, we again find the
year-wheel, here with 720 spokes. But in the preceding stanza a quite different
image is used, that of the Dawns as cows: ‘Those three hundred and sixty
milking cows give birth to one calf, and yield milk for it’. (The calf is the first
dawn of the next year.) This is not presented as a riddle, but it might well have
been. The lines in the Odyssey about the cattle of the Sun (12. 129–31),
- 64 f., 150, 169, 173). The underlying concept is that the year revolves like
πτw βο;ν qγλαι,το ́ σα δ, ο!;ν π.εα καλα ́,
πεντ κοντα δ, aκαστα,γο ́ νο δ, ο1 γνεται α1τ;ν,
ο1δ ποτε φθιν3θουσι,θεα? δ, $π? ποιμνε ε!σν,(^86) Aarne, 140–5, argues for its origin in the Persian–Arabic sphere.
(^87) Diog. Laert. 1. 91 =Anth. Pal. 14. 101. For later versions of this riddle (French, Slavonic,
modern Greek) see Aarne (1918–20), i. 102, 160–6.
(^88) Theodectes, TrGF 72 F 4 =Anth. Pal. 14. 40; cf. ibid. 41. For a similar riddle found in Latin
(mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me), German, and Latvian the solution is given as ‘ice
and water’, but ‘day and night’ was presumably the original answer; cf. Ohlert (1912), 54 f.
- Cosmos and Canon 371