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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s3: § 3. Sūrya, Savitṛ, and Pūṣan

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s3

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§ 3. Sūrya, Savitṛ, and Pūṣan

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In Sūrya we have the sun-god⁴ in his simplest and most direct form, and ten hymns of the Rigveda are devoted to him. His natural character is very obvious in all that is told of him: he is the eye of the sky or of Varuṇa and Mitra: he is far-seeing, the spy of the whole world who looks on the deeds of men and rouses them to action. He is an Āditya, but is also distinguished from the Ādityas. Like other gods he is a son of Dyaus. In the Puruṣasūkta he is made to be born from the eye of Puruṣa, and by an inversion of this idea the eye of the dead man is said to go to the sun. A late and absurd legend of the Atharvaveda makes the sun as Divākara born from the demon Vṛtra.

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⁴ For the Indo-European sun-god see L. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 3 ff.

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Many gods stand in close connexion with Sūrya: from the lap of the dawns he shines forth, and he is also the husband of Dawn: Pūṣan is his messenger, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman make his path; Indra, Viṣṇu, Soma, Dhātṛ, and the Aṅgirases all are said to create him or produce him.

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The chief feat of Sūrya is his shining for the world, for gods, and men:

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he smites away the darkness and triumphs over the powers of darkness and witches; he prolongs the lives of men and drives away sickness, disease, and evil dreams. He is also the divine priest of the gods, and is entreated on his rising to declare men sinless before Mitra and Varuṇa. When invoked with Indra he becomes a slayer of Vṛtra. But another myth tells that Indra defeated him and stole his wheel, a fairly obvious allusion to the obscuration of the sun by the thunderstorm.

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The chariot of the sun is drawn by a single horse, Etaça, or by seven horses, or seven mares, or by an indefinite number of either. But the more primitive view that the sun himself is a steed is found in one passage,¹ where he is said to be the white and brilliant steed brought by Uṣas. But he is also a flying bird,² or an eagle, and a mottled bull.³ He is also, however, a gem of the sky,⁴ the variegated stone set in the midst of heaven, a brilliant weapon obscured by Mitra and Varuṇa with cloud and rain, the felly of Mitra and Varuṇa, a brilliant car, or a wheel. In the ritual the horse and the wheel appear as sun fetishes.

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¹ RV. vii. 77. 3.

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² RV. i. 191. 9.

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³ RV. v. 47. 3.

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⁴ RV. vii. 63. 4.

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While Sūrya represents the concrete aspect of the sun, Savitṛ, the stimulator or instigator, seems to denote the sun as the motive power which drives men to action. In some passages the two gods are apparently used as identical, but in others the two gods appear in connexion with each other and as different: Savitṛ is said to impel Sūrya, to declare men sinless to the sun, to combine with the rays of the sun, or to shine with the rays of the sun. Savitṛ is also implored to strengthen the worshipper when the sun is risen.

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Savitṛ is pre-eminently a golden god: his eyes, hands, tongue, and arms are of gold: his hair is yellow: he wears a tawny garment and fares in a golden car. But, unlike Sūrya, he has two, not seven, steeds. The type of his action is the raising of his arms to rouse men: the action of Agni, Bṛhaspati, and the dawns is compared to it. He travels through the air on dustless paths, and is implored to convey the departed souls to the place where the righteous dwell. He grants the gods and men immortality, and makes the Ṛbhus immortal. Like Sūrya, he drives away the evil spirits and the wizards. His power is sometimes extolled in striking terms, as when Indra, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman, and Rudra are said not to be able to resist him, and like other gods he supports the sky and extends the earth.

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From Agni he borrows the epithet of son of the waters, and probably also that of domestic: from this connexion also perhaps comes his assignment by the Naighaṇṭuka to the aerial as well as to the celestial world. His power of stimulation leads to his identification with Prajāpati in the Brāhmaṇas. With Pūṣan he is equated or closely connected: the Sāvitrī verse,⁵ which is used in the daily ritual of the orthodox Hindu, occurs immediately after an invocation of the god Pūṣan. Bhaga again is identified with Savitṛ, or Savitṛ with Bhaga, in the single conception of Savitṛ Bhaga;¹ it is natural that elsewhere he should be distinguished.

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⁵ RV. iii. 62. 10.

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¹ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* iii. 39.

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The later tradition of Yāska² suggests that the distinction was drawn between Sūrya and Savitṛ in that the latter was the sun before his rising and after the dawn; but this conception is artificial, and is not supported by the Rigveda, where rather Savitṛ seems especially invoked at the beginning of the day and at its close, and his sound (*çloka*) may be compared to the Germanic belief in the noise emitted by the sun in his rising.³

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² Nir. xii. 12.

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³ RV. v. 82. 9; Tacitus, *Germania*, 45; Grimm, *Deutsche Myth.*⁴, pp. 606, 621.

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In nearly half its occurrences the name Savitṛ is coupled with Deva, a fact which strongly suggest that the word still was felt in large measure as an epithet: indeed in two passages the name seems to be given as an epithet to Tvaṣṭṛ. It is, of course, possible that, as Oldenberg⁴ holds, the god is an abstract deity pure and simple, and that he is merely assimilated to the sun, but the simpler and more natural view is to assume that Savitṛ is one aspect of Sūrya, the most important aspect of the power which wakens man to his work and the priest to his sacrifice.

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⁴ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 63, 64; ZDMG. li. 473 ff.; lix. 253 f.; GN. 1915, p. 193. But the detachment of epithets is not uncommon; cf. Farnell, *Greek Hero Cults*, pp. 80 ff.; Güntert, pp. 157 ff.

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Pūṣan is a curious and enigmatic figure: he is the subject of eight hymns only, five of them in book vi. He has, like Rudra, braided hair, and a beard. He carries not only a spear, but an awl, and a goad. He differs from other deities in that his chariot is drawn by goats, and that he eats mush, either because he is toothless as the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁵ declares him to be, or, as is much more likely, for some cause unknown to us, in which case the ascription of lack of teeth to the god is due no doubt to transfer from the habits of men.

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⁵ i. 7. 4. 7.

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Pūṣan shares with the gods in general the usual attributes of strength, glory, wisdom, generosity, and like the Açvins he is termed wonder worker, while with Agni alone he bears the epithet of Narāçaṁsa, probably felt as ‘extolled by men’. He is most frequently invoked with Bhaga and Viṣṇu of the other gods: in joint laudations he is found with Soma and Indra, while his food is expressly distinguished from the Soma of Indra, nevertheless in one passage it is attributed to Indra, and in two passages the libation to Indra is said to be mixed with it. The characteristic epithets of Pūṣan’s activity are those which denote him as the bringer of prosperity, who loses neither goods nor cattle. Pūṣan is essentially concerned with safefaring on paths: he is born himself on the far path of paths, the far path of heaven and earth, and between the two beloved abodes he goes and returns. Hence it follows that he is a guardian of roads, he makes the paths safe by removing the wolf and the waylayer: his epithet *vimuco napāt* may be rendered either ‘son of unyoking’ after safe arrival, or ‘son of deliverance’, and in the Atharvaveda⁶ he is definitely called upon to deliver from sin. As he is lord of the roads and a guide, he is invoked by the man who proposes to make a journey and by the man who on his way is lost.¹ In the morning and evening of the Gṛhya ritual, the offering made to Pūṣan is performed on the threshold of the house.² It is Pūṣan who preserves cattle, who keeps them from falling into pits and finds them when lost and brings them again home.³ He guides straight also the furrow, guards horses, and weaves the coats of sheep. Cattle are sacred to him and he is called the producer of cattle.

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⁶ vi. 112. 3.

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¹ AGS. iii. 7. 9; ÇGS. iii. 4. 9.

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² ÇGS. ii. 14. 9.

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³ RV. vi. 54. 7, 10. In verse 1 there is referred to the prototype of the Khojis of the Punjab, skilled trackers of stolen cattle (Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 365). Cf. the Homeric Hymn.

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Pūṣan has also other than agricultural connexions. He is exclusively called the glowing (*āghṛṇi*), and once bears the epithet, 'not to be concealed,' which is almost peculiar to Savitṛ. With golden ships he moves in the aerial ocean, acting as Sūrya's messenger under the influence of love. As best of charioteers, he is said to have driven downwards the wheel of the sun. Like Sūrya too he is the wooer of his mother and lover of his sister:⁴ the gods gave him⁵ to Sūryā, the sun-maiden, for a husband. In the marriage hymn he is bidden to take the hand of the bride, to lead her away, and to bless her in her marriage.

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⁴ RV. vi. 55. 5.

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⁵ RV. vi. 58. 4.

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Pūṣan again plays a part of the ritual of death: he is entreated to conduct the dead to the fathers, as Agni and Savitṛ lead them to the place of the righteous, and he conveys them in safety to their destined place. The goat of Pūṣan leads the horse when sacrificed to its place.

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The similarity of Pūṣan to Hermes is undoubted:⁶ both have in common the duty of conducting men or the souls of the dead on the roads: they are closely connected with the herds, confer wealth, act as convoys, are connected with the goat, and even the braided hair of Pūṣan has been compared with the Krobalos of Hermes.⁷ But it is impossible to lay much stress on the parallelism in view of the lack of similarity of name, and the difficulty of determining the original character of Hermes is much greater than that of determining that of Pūṣan. His name denotes the prosperor, and Yāska⁸ distinctly declares him to be the sun. This traditional interpretation is not inconsistent with any of his characteristics: it certainly accounts for his character as glowing, for his connexion with the sun-maiden, and his wealth: again it accounts for his power to show paths, from which it is not difficult to deduce his duty of conducting the souls or his going on errands. As the increase-giving sun, his close connexion with cattle is natural: Mithra in Iran, an almost undoubted sun-god, has the power to increase cattle, and bring lost animals home. The goat would be a natural animal to be associated with the god whose duty it was to go on difficult pathways. As against this natural explanation it is difficult to take very seriously the theory that he is not the representative of any natural phenomenon, but a god of the ways.¹ Much of his nature can thus be explained, but not the close connexion with the prospering of cattle and of men which is clearly his, but which cannot without difficulty be deduced from his nature as a god of ways, though attempts to do so may have been known in the oldest times. The only explanation which is possible as an alternative is to regard Pūṣan as in origin an animal god, embodied in the goat, or a vegetation spirit which might be conceived in goat shape.² But in that case much of the mythology would remain wholly unexplained.³

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⁶ Von Schroeder's objection (*Arische Religion*, ii. 11) is without substance. Etymological connexion with Pan (W. Schulze, *KZ.* xlii. 81, 374) is unproved.

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⁷ Siecke (*Hermes der Mondgott und Pūṣan*) sees in both moon gods, but this is unattractive. Güntert (pp. 41 ff.) treats him as the patron god of herdsmen.

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⁸ Nir. vii. 9.

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¹ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 234-7.

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² e.g. the goat in the Dionysiac ritual: Farnell, *Cults of the Greek States*, v. 161-72; *Greece and Babylon*, p. 240.

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³ Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* iii. 362 ff.) also agrees that Pūṣan was a sun-god, the special deity of a pastoral clan, the Bhāradvājas; Perry, *Drisler Memorial*, pp. 241 ff. For various views of the nature of Hermes, see Murray, *Four Stages of Greek Religion*, pp. 74 ff. (primitive phallic stone); Farnell, *Cults of the Greek States*, v. 1 ff. (pre-Hellenic in character); Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 212 (in part a wind-god); Fox, *Greek and Roman Myth.*, pp. 191 ff.

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