Vedic era
Vedic · Lord of the roads, who brings home the strayed cow, the bride and the dead
Pushan
Pushan is the god of the road. The Rigveda gives him eight hymns of his own, five of them together in the sixth book, and shares two more between him and Indra and him and Soma. His name comes up about a hundred and twenty times.
ToolsA goad with a horn tip for the cattle, an awl, and a golden spear
Who Pushan is
Pushan is the god of the road. The Rigveda gives him eight hymns of his own, five of them together in the sixth book, and shares two more between him and Indra and him and Soma. His name comes up about a hundred and twenty times. The scholar Macdonell counted, and found that this puts Pushan a little ahead of the Vishnu of the hymns.
He is a herdsman's god, and the hymns to him are full of a herdsman's worries. He is asked to follow the cows as they graze, to keep them from falling into pits, and to bring back the ones that stray. He is asked to clear the road of wolves and robbers and to lead travellers to good grass. When people do not know the way, they ask him for someone who can point and say "It is here." He is called the lord of the path and the son of deliverance.
His looks are homely. He has braided hair and a beard. He carries a goad for driving cattle and an awl. His cart is pulled by goats. While Indra drinks Soma, Pushan eats gruel, and one hymn sets the two of them side by side as friends.
He knows roads that nobody else knows. A hymn says that he was born on the far path between earth and heaven and travels it both ways. For that reason the dead are put in his care, to be led to the Fathers. For the same reason he is asked to take the bride by the hand at the wedding of Surya, the Sun's daughter, and bring her safely to her new house. He also carries messages for the Sun in golden ships that sail the sea of the air.
The poets liked him. They ask him for wealth, as they ask every god, and in his hymns they ask for it lightly.
Let none be lost and none be hurt. Come back with all of them safe and sound.
From the Vedas to the Puranas
What became of Pushan
Pushan has no Puranic form of his own. The Puranas keep his name as one of the twelve Adityas, the sons of Aditi who are forms of the sun, and they remember him otherwise for one thing only, his missing teeth.
That story begins in the ritual books. The Rigveda says that he eats gruel and gives no reason. The Taittiriya Samhita (2.6.8) and the Shatapatha Brahmana (1.7.4) explain it. When Rudra pierced the gods' sacrifice, the damaged piece was given to Pushan to eat, and it knocked out his teeth. "Pushan is toothless," the Shatapatha says, and so his offering is made of ground grain. The Kaushitaki Brahmana (6.13) adds that he is "an eater of gruel" for this reason.
The Mahabharata (Sauptika Parva 18) has Rudra do it himself. Shut out of the sacrifice, he breaks Savitr's arms, puts out Bhaga's eyes and knocks out Pushan's teeth, and gives all of them back once he is calmed. The Bhagavata Purana (4.5 and 4.7) moves the scene to the sacrifice of Daksha. There Pushan had smiled when Daksha cursed Shiva, and Shiva's warrior Virabhadra knocks out his teeth for it. Shiva rules afterwards that Pushan must chew with the teeth of others and eat flour. In the Puranas the guide of the roads is a minor figure in Shiva's story.
His work survived better than he did. The Upanishads turned the guide of the dead into something deeper. The closing prayer of the Isha Upanishad asks Pushan to lift the golden disc that covers the face of truth. The household manuals kept his wedding verse, "May Pushan lead you from here, holding your hand," for the moment the bride mounts the cart, and prescribed an offering to Pushan the road-maker for anyone starting a journey or looking for something lost. The Brahmanas kept his hands in a formula said over every offering, "with the arms of the Ashvins, with the hands of Pushan."
No temple of Pushan is known today. One of the sun's twelve names in the Puranic lists is his, and the wedding and funeral verses that call on him are still recited.