wins immortality for the gods, length of life for man, and raises the Ṛbhus (the divine artificers) to immortality. In the usual exaggeration of the poet it is declared that Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Aryaman, and Rudra cannot resist the will and independent rule of Sūrya. He is closely connected with Pūṣan and Bhaga, and one verse (III. lxii. 10),
"May we attain that excellent glory of Savitṛ the god:
So may he stimulate our prayers,"[1]
has become the most famous in Vedic literature and is used to preface all Vedic study. Once he is called Prajāpati, "Lord of Offspring," or of the world; yet it seems undoubted that he is not a mere abstract god in origin, but the active power of the sun elevated into a separate deity.
Pūṣan, the "Nourisher," is also, it would seem, allied in origin to Savitṛ. His personality is indistinct: he wears braided hair (like Rudra) and a beard; and in addition to a spear he carries an awl or a goad. His car is not drawn by horses, as one would expect, but by goats; and his food is gruel. His connexion with pastoral life is shown by his epithets. He loses no cattle, but directs them; he saves and smooths the clothing of sheep; and he is also the deliverer, the guardian of the way, who removes the wolf and the robber from the path. Accordingly it is he who conducts the dead to the fathers, just as Agni and Savitṛ take them to where the righteous have gone; and he fares along the path of heaven and earth between the two abodes. Like Sūrya and Agni he woos his mother and his sister, and receives from the gods the sun-maiden in marriage, whence in the wedding-rite he is asked to take the hand of the bride and lead her away and bless her. He is often invoked with Soma and Indra, but most frequently with Bhaga and Viṣṇu. He is called glowing and once bears the name Agohya ("Not to be Concealed"), which is elsewhere Savitṛ's epithet. He is also the "Prosperer" par excellence and may well represent the sun in its aspect as beneficent to the flocks and herds
- ↑ R. T. H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rigveda, ii. 87.
