Savitrसवितृ

Savitṛ (सवितृ), from the root sū, to impel, is the Vedic god of the sun's stirring power, the impeller who rouses the world to motion at dawn and settles it to rest at evening. He is not simply the visible sun; the hymns distinguish him from Sūrya as the animating will behind the light, though the two figures shade into one another and later tradition merged them. The Veda describes him in gold throughout: golden-eyed, golden-tongued, and above all golden-handed, raising his broad arms to bless and command the world twice daily, so that all creatures obey his ordinance, going forth at morning and ceasing at dusk.

The Gāyatrī

Savitṛ's immortality rests on a single verse. The Gāyatrī mantra of the Ṛgveda, also called the Sāvitrī after him, is a meditation on his desirable radiance and a prayer that he impel the reciter's thoughts. It became the most sacred verse in Hinduism: imparted at the upanayana, the initiation that admits a student to Vedic study, and repeated at the sandhyā, the twilight devotions performed at dawn and dusk, precisely the two hinges of the day that are Savitṛ's own. Millions who could name no other Vedic hymn recite his verse daily, often without knowing the god it names.

Impeller and afterlife

In the later tradition Savitṛ dissolved into Sūrya, surviving as one of the twelve Ādityas and as a solar epithet, while his feminine derivative flourished independently: Sāvitrī names both the personified mantra, worshipped as a goddess and consort of Brahmā, and the legendary princess who argued Yama out of her husband's death. The god himself remains a presence of the utmost quietness, honoured not with temples but with the twice-daily turning of minds toward light, which is, after all, exactly the office the Veda gave him.