Like the Sun, he rises out of the waters where he has sunk and "enveloped in a cloud of light, he spans out the realm of space" (
RV 10:123).3
The Sun Horse (or Bird) is also equated
with the Gandharva and with Soma itself. He is called by a myriad Sanskrit names
such as Vena and Tarkshya. Vena ("desire") may be the archetype of Eros
("desire") who, in Hesiod s
Theogony (120) is paradoxically born
of the darkness of Tartarus. Golden-winged Eros closely recalls Vena rising
likewise from the bottom of the Ocean. Vena is also the archetype of the
Phoenix bird of the Greeks, born of its own ashes.
