In early societies, a few people own almost everything, and the majority get by on their left-overs. The observation that the many are cheated by the few was made with brutal accuracy by Vedic thinkers 3,000 years ago: ‘The warlord eats, the people are his food.’¹ A peasant expressed the same idea in Ancient Greece when he described his lords as ‘gift-eaters’,² and in a brief moment of radicalism, the great warlord Akhilleus denounces his overlord Agamemnōn as a ‘people-eater’.³ The early cattle-raising societies of Greece and India were dominated by ranchers who acquired such large herds that they could exercise political and military power, and they used this power to acquire even larger herds of cattle. This is what Vedic priests pray for, this is what Greek warriors fight for. Successful chieftains employed priest-poets to make sense of their new world order. The priest-poets explain the universe, and they reassure everyone that their society is in harmony with that ultimate reality.
There will inevitably be some tension between the warlords and the men who create stories to justify their power and perform rituals to sanctify it. The priest-poets may decide that they are the ones who legitimize the chieftains, and that they should take precedence over them. They may even be so bold as to claim that they owe allegiance to no earthly king, that they serve God alone. This is what the Vedic Brahmins do when they say, during the coronation ceremony, ‘Soma is the king of us Brahmins’.⁴
In reality, however, they are completely dependent on the chieftains for their livelihood. A lofty Vedic hymn, in which the poet communicates directly with the gods, will ultimately come back to earth and end with some humble verses ‘praising the gift’ (dānastuti), thanking the warlord for whatever wages he sees fit to grant his loyal priest and poet. In Vedic India, the brahmins may have performed the elaborate coronation ritual (rājasūya), but of course they did not decide which man they should crown; they merely attended as his employees. Even in modern England, the Archbishop of York may crown the monarch, but he must walk behind all the members of the royal family in the Order of Precedence.⁵ The relationship between warlord and priest is equally clear in East Africa. The Nuer ranchers felt they could safely dispense with the priestly elite altogether, so they seceded from the Dinkas to form their own nation of cattle-owning warlords.⁶ This was, indeed, an extreme measure, but one that reveals who holds the real power in such societies. When Viśvāmitra expressed misgivings about the Bharatas overthrowing the Pūrus, his warlord Sudās lost no time in replacing him with the more malleable Vasiṣṭha.⁷ Priest-poets work with the kings and for the kings. The real division in society is not between the leaders and their apologists, but rather between this elite and those whose lives are ruled by what they do and say.
Ordinary people are those whose cattle may be raided with impunity, or those who never had any in the first place. They are not a separate race with a different language and culture, as nineteenth-century scholars used to think. They are simply people who are locked into a different social category – dasyus and vaiśyas in India, peasants and Helots in Greece, clients and provincials in Rome, Dinkas in east Africa. It is the arbitrary categories of their superiors that determine whether they are alien or fully human, not their language, culture, or ‘race’.
Cowboys and farmhands belong to this great underclass. The stories told by priest-poets in such a society will explain why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, how the gods give us cattle and milk, why chieftains are powerful and priest-poets can see the gods, and why cowboys must work hard and accept their lot. When the cowboys learn to ride in the fourth millennium BC, this new technique is associated with a pair of horse gods, but since horse-riding is a low-class activity, these gods are of low status, like the cowboys themselves. In India, the lowly horse gods receive a simple offering of hot milk, boiled on a cowboy campfire; they were not originally honoured at the great sacrifices of soma to the gods of the kings and Brahmins. In Greece, the horse gods are worshipped at a picnic shared with their humble devotees; the gods that rule Olumpos are honoured at great animal-sacrifices.
When chariots are invented at the start of the second millennium BC, the speed of wheeled transport increases tenfold, and the chieftains who alone can afford these new racing-cars become even more powerful and dangerous than they had been before. The priest-poets tactfully alter their stories, and proclaim that every god drives a chariot. This new age of racing gods and kings is the one in which we first hear of the horse gods in India. The Aśvins follow the new trend and drive a chariot themselves, a special three-wheeler, and they also participate in the soma-sacrifices. Their old cowboy drink of hot milk is now incorporated into the soma-sacrifice, as an optional and secret element, and they themselves are finally deemed worthy of a cup of soma. The stories told about them make it clear that they are new-comers, and that they are only accepted into the world of soma-drinking gods with considerable reservations.
Finally, in the first millennium BC, riding becomes the sport of kings. In India, the ideal of the chariot-driving god or goddess is now a fixed element of their mythical heritage, and there is no change in the divine image of the Aśvins. In Greece, most of the gods and goddesses retain their chariots, but the Dioskouroi were always horse-riders. They had been ignored by the epic tradition and had never been provided with chariots; in the sixth century BC, their horse riding is suddenly declared to be elegant and fashionable. The Dioskouroi continue to ride horses, and they still prefer picnics over sacrifices, but throughout Greece and Italy, prosperous horsemen now worship them, as well as the ordinary people who always, quite literally, swore by them.
The image of the horse gods and their favourite goddess changes considerably over time, and it also differs dramatically according to its location, just as the Indo-European languages differ greatly from each other. Even though the creativity of the various linguistic traditions is remarkable, even though the horse gods may travel across the land of India and the seas of Greece,⁸ the survival of some common themes can still be discerned behind all this variety.
In both India and Greece, the horse gods are young. They are always sons and boys, because they never achieve the completely independent and mature status of a priest like Agni or a king like Indra;⁹ they are always restricted to the marginal status of men who are necessary to society, but never quite join it as full and equal participants. They devote themselves to serving others, because they are the divine representatives of a group of people whose sole purpose is to serve. They are accepted with great reluctance by the other gods, and they are especially close to the human race. In fact, they are half-way between divine and human, just as their mortal counterparts, the young and the poor, straddle the world of men and beasts. They live with the sun goddess, as her lovers or as her step-brothers, but they have to fight for this privilege. In India, the Aśvins steal her from Soma; in Greece, they take her from Nemesis, and adopt her as their sister. She belongs to a higher world.
The traditional themes of this story are rather simple ones. The horse gods are born, they get married, they help out. They are not involved in any great events of cosmic significance. Nor are they involved in any act of rebellion against the other gods, for their main goal is to try to fit in. They intervene only to soften the rigour of the powerful gods. So their story does not offer the majority who live at the bottom of society any hope of escaping from their lot. It was, after all, a story told by priests and poets who enjoyed a leisure that was denied to most people. And yet it may, perhaps, have given ordinary people some sort of consolation to know that the story of their lives would not be completely unparalleled in the world of the gods, that the Aśvins and the Dioskouroi were their gods too.