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143 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Sun and Sun Worship

inscription of Rameses II. giving the account of the treaty with the Hittite King Khetasira (cf. W. M. Miiller, Der Biindnisvertrag Ramses 11. and des Chetiterk5nigs, Berlin, 1904; W. H. Ward, Seals, etc., ut sup., pp. 257 sqq.), it is clear that the solar disk was employed among the Hittites (this is abundantly evident also from other remains), and there are references to a sun-god localized as " god of Arenena," but also universalized as " lord of all lands." The quite numerous seals reveal the worship of Shamash (or his Hittite equivalent; these seals show this deity in attitudes characteristically Babylonian), as well as of a deity similar to Nergal. The entire question of borrowing is here on the carpet, priority between native conceptions and the acceptance of Babylonian-Assyrian gods being hard to decide (J. Garstang, Land of the Hittites, p. 322, London, 1910). The series of art-remains plainly influenced by Egyptian ideas do not here come into consideration.

e. India: A distinct change is to be perceived in passing from the immediately Semitic environment. The emphasis upon the sun as an object of worship is lost, and other objects fairly divide with him the attention of devotees (only about thirty of the 1,028 hymns of the Rig Veda are to the sun-deities). In India, the land of many races and of different grades of civilization contemporaneously present, interesting features are to be discerned, one of which is that in the Vedas there can be traced the advance of the Aryan invaders as they enter the land from the northwest and advance into central and southern India. The difference in the conception of the sun in the Rig Veda and in the Atharva Veda is noteworthy; in the former the sun is the quickener and giver of life, in the latter he becomes deadly and the cause of death (E. W. Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 44, Boston, 1895). In early times and under favoring environment Surya, the principal Vedic deity, son of Aurora, was " the shining god, the red ball in the sky " (Hopkins, ut sup., pp. 4041). He is also called Savitar, " the quickener or generator," and comes later to be identified with the local Brahmanic deity Bhaga and iiith Pushan, while in Hinduism he appears as Vishnu, who traversed the dome of heaven in three strides, thus winning the worlds for the gods, who holds the solar disk as his emblem, and has the eagle-man as his companion. Inc the earlier time this deity was felt as a stimulating force, author of birth, giver of life even to the gods, and donor of wealth. He drives across heaven with his seven steeds, and notes in his course all that passes. Sometimes again he is the eye of Varuna (Ouranos, " Heaven "), the creation of Mithra and Varuna. A little farther on in time the advance of the priestly conception is seen, and the statement is made that he is " the priest's priest," the " arranger of sacrifice " (Rig Veda, v. 81), and in later time his glory was as the divider of time for the sacrifice. As Pushan the bucolic deity he was bestower of a prosperity in which the rural or pastoral ideas are predominant, though those of the warrior or priest are to be seen invading. The later sun-god is Vishnu, whose hymns in the earliest collection are few, celebrating his three strides, his anchoring of the earth, and his

munificence. In the Brahmanas the sun has the power to draw forth and out a person's vitality and to cause his death; and so he is regarded often as malignant (Satapatha Brahmana, II., iii. 3, § 7, Eng. transl., SBE, American ed., ix. 343). As the priesthood developed its power, the solar gods, like the others, lost much of their divinity in the thorough anthropomorphization they underwent. Yet in the epics Surya retains much of his old grandeur and under Hinduism regained much of his eminence as creator, furnishing the rain which refreshes the earth and so acting as the provident father of his family. So in the Bhagavad Crita (III., iii. 36 sqq.) occurs a hymn where are chanted the 108 names of the sun, while the poet thinks " that in all the seven worlds and all the brahma-worlds there is nothing superior to the sun." Among the Hindu sects naturally there are some devoted particularly to the sun; and it is curious that a feature found in Egypt and elsewhere repeats itself here, since some sects direct their worship to the sun of the morning, others to that of noon, and still others to the evening sun, while some unite all in their worship as offered to a triad or trinity. The Sauras of southern India are an existing sect of this sort. In the festivals the second of the four New Year's'days is sacred to Agni of Surya, and Feb. 4th to the sun. Some of the finest temples in India tell of the ardor of his worshipers. For early hymns to solar deities cf. Hopkins, ut sup., pp. 17-18, 48-50, the translations noted at vol. ii., pp. 249-250 of this work, and R. W. Frazer, Literary History of India, pp 49-50 (New York, 1898).

7. China and Japan: The sun in China is not marked out for especial distinction in worship. The sacrifices to him belong not in the first or highest grade into which cultic offerings are divided, but in the middle or second grade. In Peking he has a large walled park with open altar terrace outside the East Gate, where the especial sacrifices by the emperor or his representative are offered in the middle of spring. In Japan in the Shinto pantheon (see JAPAN, II., 1) the sun-goddess Amaterasu-O-MiKami (or Amaterasu no Oho-Kami, " Heaven-shining-great-Deity "; or, to use the now common Chinese equivalent of her name, Tien-sho-dai-yin) is chief, bears the title " ruler of heaven," and is said to be unrivaled in dignity. It must not be understood from these expressions that there is any lordship over the other deities, nor is the idea quite that of the worshiper in Egypt, who in addressing any one deity heaped up phrases of adoration as if no other deity existed. The goddess had her supposed sphere of influence, however, and her worship is historically perhaps,the most important in the island empire. The mythology of the Japanese is in spots peculiarly crude and repulsive, to say nothing of its occasional obscenity. Thus in the theogony the origin of Amaterasu is traced to the ablutions of the primitive creation deity Izanagi, who made the " descent into hell " to see his dead consort. This compelled ceremonial purification on his return, and in his ablutions as he discarded garments and washed away filth, these became deities of various grades, and the sun-goddess took form from the washings of his left eye (those from his right eye