Indo-European Poetry and Myth

The literary testimony to the Sun’s divine status may be supplemented by
the evidence of prehistoric art. Starting from the third millennium , and
across much of Europe as well as further east, there are numerous examples of
what are clearly solar symbols, in some cases the object of adoration by
human figures. We shall return to this later.

Attributes; the all-seeing god

In Vedic and Greek poetry the Sun, like Dyaus/Zeus, has the epithet ‘great’:
RV 2. 23. 2 Su ̄ ́riyo... mahó, 3. 2. 7 súvar mahát; Hes. Th. 19 and 371 ,Ηλιο ́ ν
τε μγαν. He is also ‘swift’: AV 13. 2. 2 a ̄s ́úm... Su ̄ ́ryam; Mimnermus fr. 11a.
1 and 14. 11 Gκο ,Ηελοιο.^11 In both cases the Vedic and Greek adjectives
are cognate. And as Savitr
̇

in the early morning raises up his banner jyótir
vís ́vasmai bhúvana ̄ya kr
̇

n

̇

ván, ‘making light for all creatures’ (RV 4. 14. 2), so
Helios goes up into the sky ‘to shine for the immortals and for mortal men’
(Od. 3. 1–3, cf. 12. 385 f.).
The most widely noted attribute of the Sun-god is that he (or she, as the
case may be) surveys the whole world and sees everything that goes on. Su ̄rya
isurucáks
̇

as-, ‘wide of vision’ (RV 7. 35. 8, 63. 4), and indeed vis ́vácaks

̇

as-, ‘all-
seeing’ (1. 50. 2; 7. 63. 1), just as Helios πα ́ ντ, $φορ|ι (Il. 3. 277, Od. 11. 109)
and is παν(τ)ο ́ πτη ([Aesch.] Prom. 91, fr. 192. 5). The Indian Sun is also
nr
̇

cáks

̇

as-, ‘men-watching’ (1. 22. 7; 7. 60. 2): he sees r

̇

jú mártes

̇

u vr

̇

jina ̄ ́ ca,
‘(what is) straight among mortals and crooked’ (4. 1. 17; 6. 51. 2; 7. 60. 2).
Sometimes he is identified as the eye of the god or gods who supervise justice:
of Varuna (1. 50. 6), of Mitra–Varuna (1. 115. 1; 6. 51. 1; 7. 63. 1; 10. 37. 1), or
in the Younger Avesta of Ahura Mazda ̄ (Y. 1. 11, 3. 13, 7. 13, al.). In other
passages he is just ‘the eye of the gods’ (RV 7. 76. 1, 77. 3).
He is the spy or watcher of all that lives and moves (spás ́- vís ́vasya jágatah
̇

,
RV 4. 13. 3, cf. AV 7. 81. 1). In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (62) Helios is
θε;ν σκοπ: (δC κα? qνδρ;ν, ‘watcher of gods and men’, where σκοπο ́ 
has the same root as spás ́-, the word used in the Vedic verse.^12 Derivatives of
it are similarly used in connection with the Sun at Od. 8. 302 ,Ηλιο γα ́ ρ οT
σκοπι^ν #χεν‘for Helios had been keeping watch on his behalf ’, and Pindar,
Pae. 9. 1 (A1. 1 Rutherford) qκτ? ,Αελου, τ πολ3σκοπ, $μσαο;‘Ray of
the Sun, what, O far-sighted one, have you done?’^13

(^11) Schmitt (1967), 164 f.
(^12) First noted by Kuhn (1859), 103; cf. Schmitt (1967), 163.
(^13) πολ3σκοπο may be an old compound; cf. the Avestan noun pouruspaxsˇt i- ‘extensive
vision’ (Yt. 9. 1, 10. 11, al.), implying the adjective *pouruspas-.
198 5. Sun and Daughter