It has been truly said that books are our best friends. We see more of them than of any other friends, and even if we get tired of them at times, they are always ready to renew their friendship. People of the world may wonder what we can see to attract us in such books as the Rig-Veda and to keep us faithful to them to the end. But if they tried, they would find that there are few of the great books of the world which are not worth knowing, and that there are many which deserve our friendship, our love, and our lasting gratitude. I shall select these Vedic friends at random, following, however, the guidance of an old grammarian, Yâska, who tells us in what succession the Vedic gods appear on the heavenly stage every day, and particularly in the morning. It is in the morning, when light and life return that the bright beings, the Devas, are seen, and the daily revelation of another world takes place, while the various aspects of the new light are personified in the principal gods of the Veda. The order in which they appear, according to Yâska, is: A_s_vinau, day and night, Ushas, dawn, Sûryâ, wife of the sun, V_ri_shakapâyî, wife of V_ri_shakapi, doubtful, Sara_n_yû, early dawn, Erinys, Savit_ri_, the enlivening sun, Bhaga, the sun before sunrise, Sûrya, the risen sun. We begin with the two A_s_vins whom Yâska places at the head of the daily procession of the Devas, the Bright Ones. Hymn to the A_s_vins, Day and Night. No Vedic gods have been so completely misunderstood as these heavenly twins, and misunderstood by the Brâhmans themselves. Still even these misunderstandings are instructive. The A_s_vins were taken for a pair of horsemen, though it is well known that riders on horseback occur very seldom in the Veda, so that some scholars have wrongly maintained that riding on horseback was altogether unknown in Vedic times. The A_s_vins were taken by native exegetes for old heroes or kings, and why they should have formed part of the Vedic gods who appear in the morning and the evening[15], was never so much as asked. Besides, A_s_vin would be a very strange name for rider, and would much rather convey the meaning of a descendant or connection of A_s_va, or A_s_vâ, i. e. the Horse, or the Mare, one of the many mythological names, as we saw, of the sun and the dawn. Being a couple the A_s_vins were really the oldest representatives of the couple of day and night, travelling always on their ordained path from morning till evening, the same path on which Agni also travels[16] in his character of the light of day. Thus they were very naturally mixed up with many of the daily adventures of the Sun and the Dawn[17]. Dyaus is called the father of the A_s_vins (Rig-Veda X, 61, 4), the Dawn their mother, while under another name, as Sûryâ, she is represented as the daughter of Savit_ri_ and as the beloved of the A_s_vins[18]. Another poet says that the Dawn is born, when the A_s_vins have