The Rigveda gives Pushan eight hymns of his own, and across them he is consistently a god of connection rather than confrontation. His name is generally traced to a root meaning to nourish or to cause to thrive, and the hymns cast him as the deity who keeps herds fat, marriages fruitful, and travelers safe on roads that had no signposts and few reliable landmarks. He is asked repeatedly to drive away wolves and bandits from the path, to find what is lost, whether an animal or a person, and to lead the traveler's cattle home by evening.
Two details set him apart from the Vedic pantheon's more commanding figures. He drives a chariot pulled by goats, a humble animal beside the horses of Indra or the Ashvins, which fits a god whose work is done on foot beside herdsmen rather than from a battlefield. And he carries an ankusha, a goad for driving cattle, instead of a thunderbolt or a bow. Later tradition also assigns him a special role at death: because he knows every road in life, he is asked to guide the departing soul safely on the road it must travel after the body is left behind, linking his everyday pastoral function to one of the tradition's largest questions.
Pushan belongs to the Adityas, the sons of the goddess Aditi, a group that later Puranic literature expands to include Vishnu himself, and some scholars read Pushan's pastoral, way-finding character as an older, more local layer of solar worship that predates the grander solar theology built up around Surya and Vishnu in later texts.