Thy radiant beams beneficent
  Like herds of cattle now appear;
  Aurora fills the wide expanse.

  With light hast thou the dark removed,
  Filling (the world), O brilliant one. 
  Aurora, help us as thou us’st.

  With rays thou stretchest through the heaven
  And through the fair wide space between,
  O Dawn, with thy refulgent light.

It was seen that Savitar (P[=u]shan) is the rising and setting sun.  So, antithetic to Dawn, stands the Abendroth with her sister, Night.  This last, generally, as in the hymn just translated, is lauded only in connection with Dawn, and for herself alone gets but one hymn, and that is not in a family-book.  She is to be regarded, therefore, less as a goddess of the pantheon than as a quasi-goddess, the result of a poet’s meditative imagination, rather than one of the folk’s primitive objects of adoration; somewhat as the English poets personify “Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause, ye ocean-waves ... ye woods, that listen to the night-bird’s singing, O ye loud waves, and O ye forests high, and O ye clouds that far above me soared; thou rising sun, thou blue rejoicing sky!”—­and as in Greek poetry, that which before has been conceived of vaguely as divine suddenly is invested with a divine personality.  The later poet exalts these aspects of nature, and endows those that were before only half recognized with a little special praise.  So, whereas Night was divine at first merely as the sister of divine Dawn, in the tenth book one poet thus gives her praise: 

  HYMN TO NIGHT (X. 127).

  Night, shining goddess, comes, who now
  Looks out afar with many eyes,
  And putteth all her beauties on.

  Immortal shining goddess, she
  The depths and heights alike hath filled,
  And drives with light the dark away.

  To me she comes, adorned well,
  A darkness black now sightly made;
  Pay then thy debt, O Dawn, and go.[100]

  The bright one coming put aside
  Her sister Dawn (the sunset light),
  And lo! the darkness hastes away.

  So (kind art thou) to us; at whose
  Appearing we retire to rest,
  As birds fly homeward to the tree.

  To rest are come the throngs of men;
  To rest, the beasts; to rest, the birds;
  And e’en the greedy eagles rest.

  Keep off the she-wolf and the wolf,
  Keep off the thief, O billowy Night,
  Be thou to us a saviour now.

  To thee, O Night, as ’twere an herd,
  To a conqueror (brought), bring I an hymn
  Daughter of Heaven, accept (the gift).[101]

THE ACVINS.

The Acvins who are, as was said above, the ‘Horsemen,’ parallel to the Greek Dioskouroi, are twins, sons of Dyaus, husbands, perhaps brothers of the Dawn.  They have been variously ‘interpreted,’ yet in point of fact one knows no more now what was the original conception of the twain than was known before Occidental scholars began to study them.[102] Even the ancients made mere guesses:  the Acvins came before the Dawn, and are so-called because they ride on horses (acva, equos) they represent either Heaven and Earth, or Day and Night, or Sun and Moon, or two earthly kings—­such is the unsatisfactory information given by the Hindus themselves.[103]