DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

90 THE TVASTRA MYTH [4.2
open while between them the Sun-godhas half-emerged from the
mountain.
Perhaps the most important of these common myths which may
be collated with the seals is that of India’s decapitation of the threeheaded
son of Tavstr. The feat is described in RV. 10.8 by the ‘ son’
himself, though he is supposed to have been killed. This son Tvastra
appears, nevertheless, as one of the earliest UpaniSadic teachers. His ‘
killing’ left an indelible mark upon brahmin myth, as the first case of
a king’s decapitation of his own fire-priest, a dangerous precedent.
The three heads became three varieties of partridges, of which at least
two have left brahmin clgn-names behind them. This legend 4 gains in
significance with the discovery of a three-faced god on Indus seals (fig.
18) ; the three faces make it certain that he is a lunar deity like the later
Siva who bears the crescent moon as his crest. Remarkably enough, the
myth occurs also in the Avesta, though Indra drops out, as
transformed into a demon (daeva earlier, ‘ god’) by the Zoroastrian
reform and mentioned as a demon elsewhere by the Avesta. The threeheaded
opponent beheaded there is Azi Dahaka, the Zohak of the
shah Nameh; he too survived the decapitation to tempt the prophet
Zoroaster. The killer of Azi Dahaka was the hero Thraetona Athvya,
born in the‘four-cornered varena’ (which Parsis take to be the modern
Gilan south of the Caspian, but which should rather mean) the ‘ land
of the rectangular Vars’, hence Khorezm, from which the Aryan waves
started. Zohak is described as with two snakes’ heads sprouting from
his shoulders, to each of which a human being had to be fed daily ; Asi
is the same as the Sanskrit ahi, snake. A god with human head but a
supplementary snake’s head coming out of each shoulder is found in
the Mesopotamian seals, as Nin-gis-zi-da in the older and Tispak in
the later periods. Thus there is depicted a clash of cults. The killer is
not Thraetona Athvya in India but Trita Aptya accompanied by Indra.
Fig. 18. Three-faced
god on Indus seals.