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Mitra, Sûrya, Savitri, and perhaps Puśan, Bhaga, Vivasvat and Vishnu, are all loose personifications of certain functions or epithets of the sun. Deities are often thought of in classes. Thus we have the Maruts, Rudras and Vasus. We hear of Prajâpati in the singular, but also of the Prajâpatis or creative forces.
He tells the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? Then he gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, which, as it stands, is 'quite unintelligible. But Yaska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion.
Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented as the offspring, of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching firmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here but so many different names for what is at bottom one and the same conception.
The texts rather single out special stories only as suitable for that performance; on the general injunction quoted above there follows an injunction defining which stories are to be told, 'King Manu, the son of Vivasvat, &c. The stories told in the Vedanta-texts do not therefore form parts of the pariplava performance, but are connected with injunctions of meditations.
Beholding that bull of tigers among men safe and sound, the two Krishnas became filled with joy, like the twin Ashvinis on seeing Vasava. The king then congratulated them both like Vivasvat congratulating the twin Ashvinis, or like Brihaspati congratulating Sankara and Vishnu after the slaughter of the mighty asura Jambha.
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