An early Aryan divinity has been stated to be an analogue or even the prototype of Æsculapius. Mr. Faber refers to Captain Wilford as holding that the classical health and life restorer “is the Hindoo ASWICULAPA, or the chief of the race of the horse, and he further intimates that Aswiculapa was very nearly related to the two hero-gods who are evidently the same as Castor and Pollux. These were believed to be the children of the sun and the goddess Devi, the sun at the time of their intercourse having assumed the form of a horse and Devi that of a mare.”[361] He hardly presents the real opinion expressed by the Captain, but, at any rate, what he has to say is not extremely important.[362] [Illustration: FIG. 13.—IMHOTEP.] The ASWI, ASVI, or ASVINS were two, and were possibly the prototypes of the Dioscuri,[363] Castor and Pollux. They were connected with the sun as horses. Taking them to be forms of the Dioscuri, they might be related to the two sons of Æsculapius, Machaon and Podalirius, for these have been regarded as such,—“nothing more than a specific form of the Dioscuri,” to use the words of De Gubernatis.[364] The conception of Chiron may have been in part derived from the Asvins. The Asvins were worshipped from an early period by the Hindus, reference to them being made in the oldest hymns. Cox says of them, “As ushering in the healthful light[365] of the sun, they are like Asclepios and his children, healers and physicians; and their power of restoring the aged to youth re-appears in Medeia, the daughter of the sun.”[366] In the “Rig-Veda” they are characterized as “givers of happiness,”[367] and are said “to be most ready to come to the aid of the destitute.”[368] They were believed to be conversant with all medicaments. THRITA of the Parsis, the TRITA of the Hindus, is a remarkable healing, semi-divine personage, of whom a great deal is said in the “Zend Avesta” and other sacred books of Aryan peoples of the east. According to the “Zend Avesta,” which is from a common source with the “Vedas,” he is the curer of the diseases caused by the great evil spirit, Ahriman. In the “Vedas” he is said to extinguish illness in men as the gods extinguished it in him, and he can grant long life. He drinks Sôma, as did Indra, to acquire strength to kill the demon Vritra. In the Parsi system of religion, Thrita received from the supreme god, Ahura-Mazda,[369] ten thousand healing-plants, which had been growing around the tree of life, the white Hôm,[370] the Sôma of the Hindus. Thrita appears to have been one of the first priests of the personified source of life and health,—“the enlivening, healing, fair, lordly, golden-eyed Hâoma.”[371] The destruction of a great serpent, Azi Dahâka, the most dreadful Drug,[372] created by Angra-Mainyu, himself a serpent, to which diseases were attributed, was one of his fabled feats.