the sun’. At the top he took hold of the cake and said ‘We have reached the
sun, O gods!’ Among some of the western Slavs in Upper Silesia round cakes
called ‘little suns’ would be baked for Midsummer Day, offered to the Sun,
and danced round in the fields. In Anglo-Saxon times, as Bede records,
the offering of cakes to gods was the principal feature of Solmonath or ‘Sun
month’ (February).^71 Probably the hot cross buns that we associate especially
with Easter perpetuate the ancient solar symbol of the cross-in-circle or four-
spoked wheel.
Salutation of the rising and setting sunBesides these seasonal activities there is a simple daily observance that can be
documented over thousands of years and over most of the Indo-European
area, as well as in other parts of the world: the salutation of the Sun at its
rising, and to a lesser extent also at its setting.^72 In India it has been practised
since ancient times. Brahmins have long used for this purpose the so-called
Ga ̄yatrı ̄ or Sa ̄vitrı ̄ prayer, RV 3. 62. 10, ‘This desirable light of the god Savitr
we apprehend: may he sharpen our thoughts’. Such morning and evening ̇
prayers, facing east and west respectively, are mentioned occasionally in the
Maha ̄bha ̄rata.^73
Hesiod (Op. 338–40) enjoins that we should propitiate the gods with
libations and oblations ‘both when you go to bed and when the divine
light returns, so that they may have a favourable mind towards you’. The sun
appears here only as a time-marker, but Plato (Laws 887e) refers to prostra-
tions and hand-kissings at the rising and setting of the sun and moon among
Greeks and all barbarians. He also mentions that Socrates prayed to the sun at
sunrise after concluding a prolonged meditation (Symp. 220d). Orpheus was
portrayed in Aeschylus’Bassarai as going up Mt Pangaion to greet Helios-
Apollo at sunrise. Lucian (cited above) says that whereas the Indians faced the
east and performed dance movements, the Greeks contented themselves with
a hand-kissing salutation.
Xerxes, according to Herodotus (7. 54), prayed and made libation to the
Sun at sunrise before crossing the Hellespont. There are also later references
to sunrise prayers among Persians and Parthians.^74
(^71) Oldenberg (1917), 85; von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 43 (104, 115, 365), cf. 378–81; Bede, De
temporum ratione 15, Solmonath potest dici mensis placentarum quas in eo diis suis offerebant.
(^72) von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 97–106; West (1978), 241.
(^73) Oldenberg (1917), 431 f., cf. 597; von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 8 f.; MBh. 5. 92. 6; 7. 1268*;
(^74) Procop. Bell. Pers. 1. 3. 20; Herodian, Hist. 4. 15. 1.
- Sun and Daughter 215