171–3), or grey (179), or brown (124). Slavonic folk traditions tell of a golden
car and two white horses, or three (gold, silver, and diamond), or twelve
(yellow-brown).^46
In RV 4. 53. 4 the phrase mahó ájmasya, ‘the great drive’, is apparently used
of the path of the solar horses (cf. 1. 163. 10). It has an exact equivalent in
Greek μγα Zγμο, which in one of the later Homeric Hymns (32. 11)
designates the moon’s orbit and in Aratus (749) the sun’s path through the
zodiac. The word Zγμο generally means a furrow or row; it perhaps refers to
wheel-ruts in a passage of Nicander.^47
The solar boatThe idea of a ship, boat, or other floating vessel as transport for the Sun is
less widely attested, but certainly old. It is not, of course, exclusively Indo-
European; it is well known as a feature of the Egyptian solar mythology.
In RV 5. 45. 10 Su ̄ rya is said to have risen into the shining flood (árn
̇
as-;
i.e. the air), after harnessing his straight-backed mares; these intelligent
creatures have guided him like a ship through the water. This is only a simile,
but in the Atharvaveda (17. 1. 25 f.) the risen Sun is twice told ‘O A ̄ditya, thou
hast boarded a ship of a hundred oars for well-being’. The oars perhaps
represent the rays of light.
As with the horse-drawn wheel, the Vedic image finds graphic expression
in Bronze Age Scandinavia. Ships are a favourite subject of the rock artists,
and in a number of cases there is a solar wheel –– or sometimes two –– riding
just above them, or attached to the vessel by means of one or two ropes or
posts. Some of these may be depictions of a ritual in which a solar emblem
was carried in a ship, though others can hardly be understood in this way. At
Nors in Jutland a clay jar was found containing about a hundred tiny model
ships made of bronze and gold leaf and decorated with solar symbols. Again
some ritual use seems likely.^48
Three representations are of particular interest, because the solar horse
appears as well as the ship, in such a way as to suggest that the horse is
supposed to take the sun across the sky by day and then rendezvous with
the ship. One is the carving from Kalleby already mentioned. The horse
and sun-wheel are just above the ship, but clearly not in it; they could be
(^46) Mannhardt (1875), 93–6; Vánˇa (1992), 61.
(^47) Nic. Th. 371. Cf. Watkins (1995), 16.
(^48) J. Déchelette (as n. 36), 329 fig. 14, 330–7, 338–40; de Vries (1956), i. 108 f., 122; Gelling–
Davidson (1969), 11–15, 64; M. Green (1991), 77–9; Meller (2004), 31, 52 f.; F. Kaul, ibid. 58–63,
66–8, 72.
- Sun and Daughter 207