Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Open Questions

Does the Rigvedic hymn intend Martanda as the sun or as the first mortal?

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Open Question

The line brings him back for birth and for death, and both readings fit. The solar reading is supported by later usage, where Martanda is an epithet of the sun. The mortal reading stays closer to what the hymn says. Neither has displaced the other and the hymn offers no gloss.

What would resolve this A close comparison of how the commentarial traditions read the passage, set side by side rather than cited singly. No new evidence is expected; what is missing is the comparison itself.
OpenVedic philology and the history of Sanskrit commentaryArthur Anthony Macdonell, Vedic Mythology
Cross-Tradition Connections

Question On

Martanda, Deities
Source Vedic MythologyArthur Anthony Macdonell
Sources
Vedic Mythology
Arthur Anthony Macdonell, Karl J. Trubner, Strassburg, 1897View the Source
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