of the pure”; the “one born of old,” and is especially called upon to help the poets’ hymns.[38] It is here, in the last part of the Rig Veda, that he appears as [Greek:  psuchopompos], who “goes and returns,” escorting the souls of the dead to heaven.  He is the sun’s messenger, and is differentiated from Savitar in X. 139. 1.[39] Apparently he was a god affected most by the Bharadv[=a]ja family (to which is ascribed the sixth book of the Rig Veda) where his worship was extended more broadly.  He seems to have become the special war-god of this family, and is consequently invoked with Indra and the Maruts (though this may have been merely in his rote as sun).  The goats, his steeds, are also an attribute of the Scandinavian war-god Thor (Kaegi, Rig Veda, note 210), so that his bucolic character rests more in his goad, food, and plough.

Bhaga is recognized as an [=A]ditya (luminous deity) and was perhaps a sun-god of some class, possibly of all, as the name in Slavic is still kept in the meaning ‘god,’ literally ‘giver.’  In the Rig Veda the word means, also, simply god, as in bhagabhakta, ‘given by gods’; but as a name it is well known, and when thus called Bhaga is still the giver, ‘the bestower’ (vidhart[=a]).  As bhaga is also an epithet of Savitar, the name may not stand for an originally distinct personality.  Bhaga has but one hymn.[40] There is in fact no reason why Bhaga should be regarded as a sun-god, except for the formal identification of him as an [=A]ditya, that is as the son of Aditi (Boundlessness, see below); but neither S[=u]rya nor Savitar is originally an [=A]ditya, and in Iranic bagha is only an epithet of Ormuzd.

  HYMNS TO P[=U]SHAN AND BHAGA.

  To P[=U]SHAN (vi. 56).

  The man who P[=u]shan designates
  With words like these, ‘mush-eater he,’
  By him the god is not described.

  With P[=u]shan joined in unison
  That best of warriors, truest lord,
  Indra, the evil demons slays.

  ’T is he, the best of warriors, drives
  The golden chariot of the sun
  Among the speckled kine (the clouds).

  Whate’er we ask of thee to-day,
  O wonder-worker, praised and wise,
  Accomplish thou for us that prayer.

  And this our band, which hunts for kine,[41]
  Successful make for booty’s gain;
  Afar, O P[=u]shan, art thou praised.

  We seek of thee success, which far
  From ill, and near to wealth shall be;
  For full prosperity to-day;
  And full prosperity the morn.[42]

  To BHAGA (vii. 41).

  Early on Agni call we, early Indra call;
  Early call Mitra, Varuna, the Horsemen twain;
  Early, too, Bhaga, P[=u]shan, and the Lord of Strength;
  And early Soma will we call, and Rudra too.

This stanza has been prefixed to the hymn by virtue of the catch-word ‘early’ (in the morning), with which really begins this prosaic poem (in different metre):