himself in a treaty with Vr
̇
tra under which the latter may not be killed ‘with
matter dry or wet, rock or wood, thunderbolt or weapon, by day or by night’.
Vr
̇
tra then supposes himself safe, but Indra finds the opportunity to kill him
with foam (neither dry nor wet) at twilight (neither day not night) (MBh.
- 30–8). Lleu Llaw Gyffes in the Mabinogion cannot be killed either inside
or outside a house, either on horseback or on foot. In a Lithuanian tale a
traveller offers to marry a girl if she will come to him ‘neither naked nor
clothed, neither on horse nor on foot nor in a carriage, neither on the road
nor the footpath nor beside the road, at once in summer and winter’. The girl
succeeds in meeting these conditions, and Lleu’s faithless wife in compassing
his death, in each case by identifying actions and entities that (like the
eunuch, the bat, and so on) are ‘neither one thing nor the other’.^84
- 30–8). Lleu Llaw Gyffes in the Mabinogion cannot be killed either inside
Year riddlesPumice-throwing eunuchs and Phrygian hornpipes are hazards to be
encountered only in certain evolved cultures, and we may feel confident that
they did not feature in Indo-European riddles. On the other hand many
riddles in the older traditions refer to universals of human experience such
as the elements and the seasons. This brings us back to the cosmological
questions with which the present chapter began. Riddles on these topics
involve metaphors that imply particular conceptions of how the world works.
The posing and answering of such riddles is not far removed from the
catechistic instruction that in some traditions contributed to the training of
learned priests and poets. ‘The greatest sage is he who knows the meaning of
that which has six naves, twelve axles, twenty-four joints, and three hundred
and sixty spokes’ (MBh. 3. 133. 21).
It does not in fact require a great sage to see that this is the year, represented
as a wheel or a wheeled vehicle. The year is a frequent subject of riddles across
the Indo-European area and beyond, as appears from the detailed survey by
Antti Aarne.^85 They are always based on the numbers of months, days, or
other subdivisions.
Aarne distinguishes four models. The year is represented as (1) a spoked
wheel; (2) a father with twelve children and 360 or 720 grandchildren; (3) a
(^84) For further details see my paper in JIES 32 (2004), 1–9, where I use these stories and the
riddle to explain why Baldr was killed by a blind god with a mistletoe missile, and Odysseus
with the barb of a sting-ray. The offer of marriage to one who comes neither naked nor clothed
(the answer is to come draped in a net) has Indic and German parallels; see Ohlert (1912), 56.
A Gaelic oral version of the story of Diarmaid and Gráinne contains a set of provisos very like
those of the Lithuanian tale: J. G. Campbell, The Fians (London 1891), 52 f.
(^85) Aarne (1918–20), i. 74–178.
370 9. Cosmos and Canon