arelessness at the sacrifice, guards the worshipper, and slays
demons. A mechanical little hymn describes him as measuring the
'thirty stations.' Not one of these hymns has literary freshness or
beauty of any kind. They all belong to the class of stereotyped
productions, which differ in origin and content from the hymns first
mentioned.[20]

SAVITAR.

Turning to Savitar one finds, of course, many of the same descriptive
traits as in the praise of S[=u]rya, his more material self. But with
the increased spirituality come new features. Savitar is not alone the
sun that rises; he is also the sun that sets; and is extolled as such.
There are other indications that most of the hymns composed for him
are to accompany the sacrifice, either of the morning or of the
evening. In II. 38, an evening song to Savitar, there are inner signs
that the hymn was made for rubrication, but here some fine verses
occur: "The god extends his vast hand, his arms above there--and all
here obeys him; to his command the waters move, and even the winds'
blowing ceases on all sides." Again: "Neither Indra, Varuna, Mitra,
Aryaman, Rudra, nor the demons, impair his law" We call attention here
to the fact that the Rig Veda contains a strong(stong in the original)
current of demonology, much stronger than has been pointed out by
scholars intent on proving the primitive loftiness of the Vedic
religion.

In III. 62. 7-9 there are some verses to P[=u]shan, following which is
the most holy couplet of the Rig Veda, to repeat which is essentially
to repeat the Veda. It is the famous G[=a]yatr[=i] or S[=a]vitr[=i]
hymnlet (10-12):

Of Savitar, the heavenly, that longed-for glory may we win,
And may himself inspire our prayers.[21]

Whitney (loc. cit.) says of this hymn that it is not remarkable in any
way and that no good reason has ever been given for its fame. The good
reason for this fame, in our opinion, is that the longed-for glory was
interpreted later as a revealed indication of primitive pantheism, and
the verses were understood to express the desire of absorption into
the sun, which, as will be seen, was one of the first divine bodies to
be accepted as the type of the All-god. This is also the intent of the
stanzas added to I. 50 (above, p. 17), where S[=u]rya is "the highest
light, the god among gods," mystic words, taken by later philosophers,
and quite rightly, to be an expression of pantheism. The esoteric
meaning of the G[=a]yatr[=i]