kind is not exclusively Indo-European.^55 But where the horse or team of
horses is found in connection with the sun in non-Indo-European settings, as
in Egypt in the Amarna period and in China, it may be assumed to be a
borrowing from an Indo-European source.^56
FURTHER MYTHICAL MOTIFSContemplating the Sun-god’s daily round, poets embellished it with imagina-
tive anthropomorphic and domestic detail. In Indic, Greek, and Baltic
tradition its tireless continuity is remarked on. Everything else that moves
rests, but the waters and Su ̄ rya always keep coming forth (RV 10. 37. 2). The
sun comes unceasing, arámati-, 2. 38. 4; unflagging, ájasra-, 10. 12. 7;
atandrita-,MBh. 3. 160. 35; 5. 29. 8. Similarly in Homer he is qκα ́ μα,
unwearying. Mimnermus in the poem quoted above writes:
For Helios must toil day after day:
there’s never any break or rest for him
or for his horses, once rosefinger Dawn
leaves Ocean’s stream and climbs into the sky. (fr. 12. 1–4)Some of the Latvian songs deny that Saule ever sleeps (LD 6702, 33812 f. =
Jonval nos. 218–20). Her horses do not sweat or tire, and she does not let
them rest (LD 33914 f. = Jonval nos. 172 f.). They cross the world without
eating or drinking, but she takes them to the sea to drink at morning and
night (LD 33994, 33944 f. = Jonval nos. 27, 174 f.).
Su ̄ rya keeps strictly to his appointed daily programme, but when he has
completed his journey he rests with his horses (RV 3. 30. 12). Mimnermus
describes how the golden bowl carries Helios on his nocturnal voyage ε δονθ,
ρπαλω, ‘sleeping pleasantly’. In Stesichorus he crosses Oceanus in it ‘to
the holy deeps of Night, to his mother, his wedded wife, his dear children’
(PMGF S17 = 185). In the Old English poem Guthlac (1214) the Sun, sinking
in the west at evening, is setlgonges fús, ‘eager to settle’. In medieval German
verse too the Sun is portrayed as being tired and going to rest, to bed, etc.^57
(^55) I have cited Sumerian and other Near Eastern material in West (1997), 507. On the Hittite
hymn there mentioned see G. Wilhelm in W. Burkert–F. Stolz (edd.), Hymnen der alten Welt im
Kulturvergleich (Freiburg/Schweiz–Göttingen 1994), 65 f. Add a reference to Shamash’s swift
mules in Gilgamesh III 96 with A. R. George’s note, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford
2003), 814.
(^56) Egypt: Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 638 n. 41. China (from the Tocharians): E. G. Pul-
leyblank, JRAS 1966, 31–6.
(^57) Grimm (1883–8), 739 f., 1514.
- Sun and Daughter 211