god appears to the poets as a bull, a bird,[7] a steed, a stone, a jewel, a flood, a torch-holder,[8] or as a gleaming car set in heaven.  Nor is the sun independent.  As in the last image of a chariot,[9] so, without symbolism, the poet speaks of the sun as made to rise by Varuna and Mitra:  “On their wonted path go Varuna and Mitra when in the sky they cause to rise Surya, whom they made to avert darkness”; where, also, the sun, under another image, is the “support of the sky."[10] Nay, in this simpler view, the sun is no more than the “eye of Mitra Varuna,"[11] a conception formally retained even when the sun in the same breath is spoken of as pursuing Dawn like a lover, and as being the ‘soul of the universe’ (I. 115. 1-2).  In the older passages the later moral element is almost lacking, nor is there maintained the same physical relation between Sun and Dawn.  In the earlier hymns the Dawn is the Sun’s mother, from whom he proceeds.[12] It is the “Dawns produced the Sun,” in still more natural language;[13] whereas, the idea of the lover-Sun following the Dawn scarcely occurs in the family-books.[14] Distinctly late, also, is the identification of the sun with the all-spirit ([=a]tm[=a], I. 115. 1), and the following prayer:  “Remove, O sun, all weakness, illness, and bad dreams.”  In this hymn, X. 37. 14, S[=u]rya is the son of the sky, but he is evidently one with Savitar, who in V. 82. 4, removes bad dreams, as in X. 100. 8, he removes sickness.  Men are rendered ‘sinless’ by the sun (IV. 54. 3; X. 37. 9) exactly as they are by the other gods, Indra, Varuna, etc.  In a passage that refers to the important triad of sun, wind and fire, X. 158.  I ff., the sun is invoked to ’save from the sky,’ i.e. from all evils that may come from the upper regions; while in the same book the sun, like Indra, is represented as the slayer of demons (asuras) and dragons; as the slayer, also, of the poet’s rivals; as giving long life to the worshipper, and as himself drinking sweet soma.  This is one of the poems that seem to be at once late and of a forced and artificial character (X. 170).

Although S[=u]rya is differentiated explicitly from Savitar (V. 81. 4, “Savitar, thou joyest in S[=u]a’s rays"), yet do many of the hymns make no distinction between them.  The Enlivener is naturally extolled in fitting phrase, to tally with his title:  “The shining-god, the Enlivener, is ascended to enliven the world”; “He gives protection, wealth and children” (II. 38.1; IV. 53. 6-7).  The later hymns seem, as one might expect, to show greater confusion between the attributes of the physical and spiritual sun.  But what higher power under either name is ascribed to the sun in the later hymns is not due to a higher or more developed homage of the sun as such.  On the contrary, as with many other deities, the more the praise the less the individual worship.  It is as something more than the sun that the god later receives more fulsome devotion.  And, in fact, paradoxical as it seems, it is a decline in sun-worship proper that is here registered.  The altar-fire becomes more important, and is revered in the sun, whose hymns, at most, are few, and in part mechanical.