As to the physical basis of the Aśvins, the language of the Ṛṣis is so vague that they themselves do not seem to have understood what phenomenon these deities represented ... what they actually represented puzzled even the oldest commentators mentioned by Yāska. That scholar remarks that some regarded them (the Aśvins) as Heaven and Earth (as does the S. B.--Satapatha Brahmana), others as Day and Night, others as sun and moon, while the ‘legendary writers’ took them to be ‘two kings, performers of holy acts.’ Yāska’s own opinion is obscure.” [76] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 49. [77] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 53. In contrast to all these vague and often contradictory explanations, the astronomical suggestion made at page 137 may to some appear too matter-of-fact and prosaic. But that a firm and scientific base should underlie mythical and imaginative similes does not in reality detract from their poetic excellence. Indeed, an added fitness, and therefore an added beauty, is to be recognized in the Aswin hymns, when we can think of them as addressed to well-known and beneficent deities presiding over the new year--deities who manifested themselves in the earliest dawn of the new year’s morning under the form of two beautiful and easily to be recognised _stars_, and to whom their worshippers appealed for “protection,” through the unknown dangers of the future year. I give two diagrams to illustrate the fact that the time of the rising of the stars α and β Arietis must necessarily, on such a new year’s festival as above proposed, have taken place in some years before the first intimation of dawn, in others a few minutes before the time of sunrise. It is of course to be borne in mind that the Vedic years were luni-solar. The actual point therefore on the ecliptic at which the conjunction of sun and moon-or new moon-took place, and from which each year was counted, varied in different years to the extent of nearly 30 degrees. The diagram, Plate XII. Figs. 1 and 2, represents the maximum and minimum distance between the rising of the Yoga stars of the Nakshatra Aswinī, and of the sun on the 15th or full-moon’s day of the first month of a luni-solar year; counted from the first conjunction of sun and moon _following_ the sun’s arrival at the “end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.” [Illustration: PLATE XII. The Vedic Aswins and the Indian Calendar. [_To face p. 142._] It will be seen from the diagram that something more than two hours was the longest interval that, according to the presumed method of counting the Vedic year, elapsed between the appearance of α and β Arietis and of the sun above the horizon.