Surya

“ Surya was also Savitri, the quickener, who in the early morn rouses the sleepers, and in the evening twilight buries them again in sleep; he is also Vishnu, the companion of Indra, who traverses the celestial space in three long strides; he is Pushan, the nourisher and faithful guide of men and animals; and he is Yama, who traverses the steep road to death and the shades. Thus the gods multiplied—the original supreme deity, Varuna, who was one with Indra, though different from him, giving place to a multitude of solar deities, children of Dyaus, the great dawn-god or day-father. ”

“ Surya, the sun himself, gilds and enamels the letters, the images which, in their sculptured frame, not too deeply cut and not too rich for a setting, but precisely adequate, tell to all creatures the story of wisdom and elevation of spirit. ”

“ By the time we reach the thousand temples, Surya, the sun-god, has driven his fiery carriage to the zenith of his daily course through the air and [191] the fire-eyed raksasas, who guard the enclosure of holiness; two for each of the four entrances, stretch their gigantic limbs with dreadful menace in the warm brilliancy of indefinite space, tangible terror. ”

“ Surya is an Aryanized sun god. He drives a golden chariot drawn by seven mares, or a mare with seven heads; he has golden hair and golden arms and hands. As he is alluded to as “the eye of Varuna and Mitra”, and a son of Aditi, it is evident that if he did not originally belong to the group of Adityas, he was strongly influenced by them. In his Savitri character, which he possesses at morning as well as at evening, he stimulates all life and the mind of man. One of the most sacred and oldest mantras (texts) in the Vedas is still addressed by Brahmans to the rising sun. ”

“ I WILL extol the most heroic Indra who with his might forced earth and sky asunder; Who hath filled all with width as man's Upholder, surpassing floods and rivers in his greatness. 2. Surya is he: throughout the wide expanses shall Indra turn him, swift as car-wheels, hither, Like a stream resting not but ever active he hath destroyed, with light, the black hued darkness. 3. To him I sing a holy prayer, incessant new, matchless, common to the earth and heaven, Who marks, as they were backs, all living creatures: ne'er doth he fail a friend, the noble Indra. ”

“ Compare also Surya Bay in Old Deccan Days (6) . The final resurrection of Surya Bay is exactly like that in the Hottentot tale already quoted. Surya is drowned by a jealous rival, becomes a golden flower, is burned, becomes a mango; one of the fruits falls into a calabash of milk, and out of the calabash, like the Hottentot girl, comes Surya!
(14) The son of the persea tree was Bitiou, born of his own faithless wife; and when he grew up he had her put to death. ”

“ All-purifying, joying in their nature, to paths of Gods the Goddesses move onward. They never violate the laws of Indra. Present the oil-rich offering to the Rivers. 4. Whom Surya with his bright beams hath attracted, and Indra dug the path for them to travel, May these Streams give us ample room and freedom. Preserve us evermore, ye Gods, with blessings. ”

“ The treatment of the sun-Yazata, like that of Surya, the sun in the Rig Veda, and the physical sun as a phenomenon of nature is so complicated that it is difficult in many instances to distinguish the one from the other. ”

“ Dyaus, Prihovi, and their progeny afterwards became endowed with moral qualities, and were looked upon as creators and governors of the world; and as time wore on the original Vedic deities gradually gave place to purely solar deities: the sun was called Surya, and differed from Agni, who was god of terrestrial and celestial fire—sun, lightning, and altar fire in one, the soul of universe, and mediator between the gods and men ”

“ Yet still Surya, rejoicing in the magnificence of his [Pg 318] pageantry, delayed his coming, till the man upon the mountain top, impatient of the time, bethought him of his treasure, pulled the golden box from beneath his robe, opened it, and let the contents fall into his hand. ”

“ SUN OR LIGHT DEITIES— THE ASVINS. 45
others that they are day and night ; others, again, that they are the sun and moon. Professor Roth says, They hold a perfectly distinct position in the entire body of the Vedic deities of light. They are the earliest bringers of light in the morning sky, who hasten on in the clouds before the Dawn and prepare the way for her. ' '* In some hymns they are said to be sons of the sun {vide Surya ”

“ These few specimens of Vedic poetry will suffice, I hope, to show what is meant by the Solar Theory. It means that most of the physical phenomena which impressed the mind of primitive races, like those that have left us their religious utterances in the Veda, were connected with the sun, with the light of the morning, with day and night succeeding each other, and regulating the whole life of an agricultural population. What else was there to interest such people and to draw away their thoughts from a visible to an invisible world? ”

“ Between the two groups of astral force operating in this manner, the Sun acts as a mediating element through its double function of supporting the activity of the three lower planets by means of its heat and of conveying to the earth, through its light, the forces of the three higher planets. In the human microcosm the Sun-forces accomplish a corresponding task by means of the influences which radiate from the heart through the body along the paths taken by the blood. ”

“ The solar orb, like the nature of man, was divided by the ancient sages into three separate bodies. According to the mystics, there are three suns in each solar system, analogous to the three centers of life in each individual constitution. These are called three lights: the spiritual sun, the intellectual or soular sun, and the material sun (now symbolized in Freemasonry by three candles) . The spiritual sun manifests the power of God the Father; the soular sun radiates the life of God the Son; and the material sun is the vehicle of manifestation for God the Holy Spirit. ”

“ Now, the plain facts regarding the phenomenon of the solstice are that the sun, in its apparent annual motion, approaches a certain point in the heaven, seems stationary there for a short time, and then recedes again towards the equator. In Hindu mythology, the sun is represented as moving in the heaven in a car, or rath. And so his car, or rath, is represented on earth, and made to conform to his motions in the heavens. ”

“ We have hitherto considered that which belongs to our solare system — that world of material forms governed by the Sun — which includes the primary and secondary planets, comets of short and long periods of revolution, meteoric asteroids, which move thronged together in streams, either sporadically or in closed rings, and finally a luminous nebulous ring, that revolves round the Sun in the vicinity of the Earth, and for which, owing to its position, we may retain the name of zodiacal light. ”

“ They leave no doubt that, at those eclipses, the spectrum of the inner corona contained no perceptible dark lines. Perrine's Sumatra photographs seem to establish that the spectrum of the great outer portion is substantially a copy of the solar spectrum. The simplest interpretation of these observations is that the outer corona is largely composed of minute particles which reflect and diffract the sunlight falling upon them, whereas the portions near the hot solar surface are mostly incandescent, shining by their own light. ”

“ In this solar system the source of light is the sun and every light is acquired from it; even the lamps of the night are ignited through the sun, for if there were no sun the trees would not grow nor the mines develop, so that the oil be extracted from those trees and mines, and the lamps of the night be lit by it. ”

“ But I'll tell you something more wonderful to think of than that—the systems of double, treble, and quadruple suns. Now, our solar system is at the bottom rung of the social ladder in the heavenly world. We just have a plain white sun, which we revolve round with regular seasons and fixed day and night; but take a system that revolves round a double star, and thus has two suns, and say these suns differ in colour,—as is often the case, for every star has a colour of its own—Sirius is a pale green, Aldebaran rose-red, Betelgeuse orange-red, Rigel a blue-white, Capella a pearly white, and so on. ”

“ Then four benevolent persons having taken pity on the human race, and having seized the Mount Summer in their arms, shook it so violently that the ocean of the universe was agitated, in consequence of which there appeared the sun, the moon, and the stars.
The sun, according to the doctrine of the Buddhists, is a globe of crystal, being more than 700 miles in circumference. In its interior there is lodged a luminous being, whose radiant face spreads light and heat over all the earth. The sun is placed in an enormous plain, all covered with the most splendid flowers. ”

“ It is the sign of the Man. The truths of the past are becoming etherealized. Our solar parent has scarcely crossed the threshold of the sign Aquarius, and already we observe in many directions the activities of the peculiar influx. True, it is but the first flush of the dawn of a new era, the harbinger of a glorious day to our race. In the light of this truth, ponder well on the nature of the influx radiating from the solar center, each orb of his shining family absorbing a different ray, or attribute, of solar energy, corresponding to its own peculiar nature. ”

“ Similarly, near the sun’s poles we should find a gradual darkening, as is the case; but from five degrees to thirty degrees latitude, the sun, in its rotation, by reason of the inclination of its axis, passes at every point directly beneath the planets, or within their area of control, and here we find the solar spots in their greatest number, size, and intensity. These sun-spots cross the face of the sun in about fifteen days, and vary in development from year to year, having a cycle of 11.11 years from maximum to maximum. They also have a long cycle of about fifty-six years. ”

“ SOLAR INFLUENCE The Sun as the centre of the universe is the gravitational focus of all the forces of the cosmos. It stands to us as the symbol of Deity, or of that Logos which is the manifestation to us of the Inscrutable and Omnipresent. So far as we are concerned it is the source of Light and Heat to the world, and these two properties are the ultimate expressions of the Wisdom and Love of the Creator. When we speak of light and heat we mean those forces which, when they impinge on the Earth’s atmosphere and are sensed by us, produce the sensations of light and heat. ”

“ If the light of the setting sun, by thus passing through a long track of air, be divested of the green, blue, indigo, and violet rays, the remaining rays which are transmitted through the atmosphere, will illuminate the western clouds, first with an orange colour; and then, as the sun gradually sinks into the horizon, the track through which the rays must pass becoming longer, the yellow and orange are reflected, and the clouds grow more deeply red, till at length the disappearance of the sun leaves them of a leaden hue by the reflection of the blue light through the air. ”

“ The astronomical solar month runs from the moment of one saṁkrānti of the sun to the moment of the next saṁkrānti; and, as the signs of the Hindu zodiac are all of equal length, 30 degrees, as with us, while the speed of the sun (the motion of the earth in its orbit round the sun) varies according to the time of the year, the length of the month is variable: the shortest month is Dhanus; the longest is Mithuna. The civil solar month begins with its first civil day, which is determined, in different localities, in the same manner with the first civil day of the Mēshādi year, as indicated above. ”

“ The solar influences, which regulate, and possibly determine, every physical force with which we are acquainted, are active in effecting an actual change of state in matter. The sunbeam of the morning falls on the solid earth, and its influence is felt to the very centre. The mountain-top catches the first ray of light, and its base, still wrapt in mists and darkness, is disturbed by the irradiating power. ”

“ So slight a change would not be perceptible; but it is not alone sun-spots which obscure the solar surface, its entire globe is enveloped with an obscuring veil. When studied with a powerful telescope the sun’s surface is seen to be thickly mottled with relatively obscure specks, so numerous that it has been estimated that they cut off from one-tenth to one-twentieth of the light that we should receive from it if the whole surface were as brilliant as its brightest parts. ”

“ It is an interesting fact that the summer solstice, or the point which the sun occupies when it attains its greatest northerly declination, on the longest day of the year, is close by this great cluster in Gemini. In the glare of the sunshine those swarming stars are then concealed from our sight, but with the mind's eye we can look past and beyond our sun, across the incomprehensible chasm of space, and behold them still shining, their commingled rays making our great God of Day seem but a lonely wanderer in the expanse of the universe. ”

“ Be that as it may, the rings would collect into balls, and some of these, especially the outer, would cast off rings which would condense into moons, always excepting the rings of Saturn, which, like the planetoids, are evidently a failure. The solar system would then appear as a group of suns, a cluster of stars, in short, a constellation. Each would be what we call a 'nebulous star,' not unlike the sun at present; that is to say, it would be surrounded by a glowing atmosphere of vapours, and perhaps meteoric matter. ”