that the animal–sun–bird sequence was repeated in reverse on the lost half of
the diadem.^38
Among the many crudely decorated spindle-whorls from Troy II there
are some on which the swastika symbol seems to be associated with a
many-legged animal.^39 The many legs (six to ten) were perhaps a mythical
expression of speed and stamina. Slovak and Russian folklore tells of an eight-
legged horse that draws the sun, and although he has no apparent solar
associations we think also of Odin’s famous eight-legged steed Sleipnir.
A god is not a wheel, as someone recently observed, and a god is not a
horse. So with the horse pulling the wheel, what becomes of the Sun-god? He
is provided for by making the wheel into a chariot –– initially a one-wheeled
chariot.
saptá yuñjanti rátham ékacakram; | éko ás ́vo vahati saptána ̄ma ̄.
trina ́ ̄bhi cakrám, ajáram, anarvám
̇, | yátrema ̄ vís ́ ́va ̄ bhúvana ́ ̄dhi tasthúh
̇.
Seven yoke the one-wheeled car; one horse with seven names draws it.
Three-naved is the wheel, unageing, unstoppable, on which all these creatures stand.
(RV 1. 164. 2 = AV 13. 3. 18)Indian art of the first century to the second shows Su ̄ rya riding his
one-wheeled chariot, now drawn by four horses.^40 The solar vehicle must be
the model for the one-wheeled, golden chariot, drawn by immortal white
horses, that Mithra rides in the Avestan hymn to him, even if he is not yet
identified with the Sun.^41
The number of horses varies. Su ̄ rya’s (or Savitr
̇
’s) are often mentioned in
the plural. Sometimes they are two (RV 1. 35. 3), or seven (1. 50. 8 f.; 4. 13. 3;
- 9; 7. 60. 3), seven or a hundred (AV 13. 2. 6 f.), even a thousand (RV 5.
- 1); in other places the number is indefinite (1. 115. 4; 4. 45. 6; 5. 29. 5; 7.
- 1; 10. 37. 3, 49. 7; AV 13. 1. 24, al.).
In the Avesta the Sun has the formulaic epithet ‘possessing swift horses’
(Y. 3. 13, Yt. 6. 0, 1, 4, 10. 90, etc., hvarə aurvat
̃
.aspəm). At Hasanlu in north-
west Iran, a site associated with early Aryan migrations, a gold bowl of the
twelfth to eleventh century was found with mythological scenes in which
the Weather-god in a bull-chariot is followed by solar and lunar deities in
(^38) Illustrated in Emily Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago 1964), 53 f.; Goodison
(as n. 27), 16 and fig. 27.
(^39) See Heinrich Schliemann, Ilios (London 1880), figs. 1872, 1947, 1991.
(^40) Sukumari Bhattacharji, The Indian Theogony (Cambridge 1970), 226.
(^41) Yt. 10. 125, 136; see Gershevitch (1959), 35 f., 281 f., 330 f. The Irish saint Aed mac Bricc
(aed=‘fire’) rode through the air in a one-wheeled chariot: Acta sanctorum Hibern. ex cod.
Salmant., ed. C. de Smedt–J. de Backer (Edinburgh 1888), 337, 339, 352, 354, 358; O’Rahilly
(1946), 472.
- Sun and Daughter 205