The Arctic Home in the Vedas c13.24.3

c13.24.3

After this period, the sun was lost, or went out of the womb into the land of desolation, there to be shut up as in a wooden case for two months. The sage Atri, therefore, rightly invokes the Ashvins for his deliverance from the box and also for the safe delivery of the child, i.e., himself, from the womb of his mother after ten months. In the Atharva Veda XI, 5, 1, the sun, as a Brahmachârin, is said to move between heaven and earth, and in the 12th verse of the same hymn we are told that "Shouting forth, thundering, red, white he carries a great penis (bṛihach-chhepas) along the earth." If the sun moving between heaven and earth is called bṛihach-chhepas he may well be called Vadhri (eunuch), when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti. But Prof. Max Muller asks us, why he should be called Saptavadhri or a seven-eunuch? The explanation is simple enough. The heaven, the earth and the lower regions are all conceived as divided seven-fold in the Rig-Veda, and, when the ocean or the waters are described as seven-fold (sapta-budhnam arṇavam, VIII, 40, 5;