s of S[=u]rya
swinging (his banner) have laid darkness like a skin in the waters.
Unconnected, unsupported, downward extending, why does not this (god)
fall down? With what nature goes he, who knows (literally, 'who has
seen')? As a support he touches and guards the vault of the sky" (IV.
13).

There is here, no more than in the early hymn from the first book,
translated in the first chapter, any worship of material phenomena.
S[=u]rya is worshipped as Savitar, either expressly so called, or with
all the attributes of the spiritual. The hymn that follows this[19] is
a bald imitation. In V. 47 there are more or less certain signs of
lateness, _e.g.,_ in the fourth stanza ("four carry him, ... and ten
give the child to drink that he may go," etc.) there is the juggling
with unexplained numbers, which is the delight of the later
priesthood. Moreover, this hymn is addressed formally to Mitra-Varuna
and Agni, and not to the sun-god, who is mentioned only in metaphor;
while the final words _namo dive_, 'obeisance to heaven,' show that
the sun is only indirectly addressed. One cannot regard hymns
addressed to Mitra-Varuna and S[=u]rya (with other gods) as primarily
intended for S[=u]rya, who in these hymns is looked upon as the
subject of Mitra and Varuna, as in VII. 62; or as the "eye" of the two
other gods, and 'like Savitar' in VII. 63. So in VII. 66. 14-16, a
mere fragment of a hymn is devoted exclusively to S[=u]rya as "lord of
all that stands and goes." But in these hymns there are some very
interesting touches. Thus in VII. 60. 1, the sun does not make
sinless, but he announces to Mitra and Varuna that the mortal is
sinless. There are no other hymns than these addressed to S[=u]rya,
save those in the first and tenth books, of which nine stanzas of I.
50 (see above) may be reckoned early, while I. 115, where the sun is
the soul of the universe, and at the same time the eye of
Mitra-Varuna, is probably late; and I. 163 is certainly so, wherein
the sun is identified with Yama, Trita, etc.; is 'like Varuna'; and is
himself a steed, described as having three connections in the sky,
three in the waters, three in the sea. In one of the hymns in the
tenth book, also a mystical song, the sun is the 'bird' of the sky, a
metaphor which soon gives another figure to the pantheon in the form
of Garutman, the sun-bird, of whose exploits are told strange tales in
the epic, where he survives as Garuda. In other hymns S[=u]rya averts
c