The Twelve Suns

Before this age of the world there was another, and it had its own gods.

Twelve of them were called the Tushitas. They had been gods through the whole reign of Chakshusha, the Manu of that time. Now his reign was running out. A new Manu was coming, and with him a new world and a new set of gods. The Tushitas would not be among them.

So the twelve met to talk.

"The age is ending," said one.

"And our place ends with it," said another.

"It need not. There is a way to keep it."

"What way?"

"Come, let us go quickly into the womb of Aditi. Let us be born again in the next age. Then we shall have the rank of gods once more."

They all agreed, and they did not wait.

Aditi was a daughter of Daksha, and she was the wife of Kashyapa, the son of Marichi. In the new age she bore her husband twelve sons, and they were the same twelve who had made the plan. Because they were Aditi's children they were called the Adityas.

The Purana gives their names: Vishnu, Shakra, Aryaman, Dhatri, Tvashtri, Pushan, Vivasvat, Savitr, Mitra, Varuna, Amsha and Bhaga.

Then the teller, the sage Parashara, stops to explain something to his pupil. Gods of this kind, he says, are born again at the end of every thousand ages, and by their own choice. We speak of their birth and their death, but those are only words for their coming and going. They are there age after age, in the way that the sun sets and then rises again.

Later in the same Purana the twelve have work to do.

The sun crosses the sky in a chariot, and the chariot is never empty. In every month of the year seven beings ride in it, and one of the seven is always an Aditya. The other six are a sage, a heavenly singer, a dancer, a serpent, a Yaksha and a Rakshasa.

Each has a task. The sage chants the sun's praise. The Gandharva sings, and the Apsaras dances in front of the car. The serpent harnesses the horses, and the Yaksha sees to the reins. The Rakshasa walks behind. All around them crowd the Balakhilyas, a band of tiny sages.

When the month turns, seven others take their places.

In Chaitra, when spring begins, the Aditya in the car is Dhatri. In Vaishakha it is Aryaman, and in Jyeshtha it is Mitra. Varuna rides in Ashadha and Indra in Shravana, the months of rain. Vivasvat has Bhadrapada and Pushan has Ashvin. In Kartik the place goes to Parjanya, a rain god who was not in the first list at all. Amsha rides in Margashirsha and Bhaga in Pausha, in the cold. Tvashtri has Magha. In Phalguna, the last month, it is Vishnu.

Between them, says Parashara, these troops of seven bring the cold, the heat and the rain, each in its season.

So the sun that rises tomorrow is the same sun as today, and still, by this account, he is not quite the same god all year. Twelve brothers take turns to carry the light.

The oldest hymns never say twelve.

One poet of the Rigveda pours his song out like butter from the ladle and names the kings he is singing to: Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Daksha and Amsha. That makes six. A later verse says in passing that the Aditya gods are seven. The hymn about the birth of the gods says that Aditi had eight sons, and that she kept seven and put one aside.

Six, seven, eight. Nobody in the Rigveda seems troubled by it.

The number twelve arrives in the Brahmanas, and the best-known moment is a contest of questions in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. A crowd of learned Brahmins is testing the sage Yajnavalkya. One of them, Vidagdha Shakalya, tries to catch him out with the simplest question of all.

"How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?"

"Three hundred and three, and three thousand and three," says Yajnavalkya, giving the number in the old hymn of praise.

"Yes. But how many are there really?"

"Thirty-three."

"Yes. And how many really?"

"Six."

Shakalya keeps asking, and the number keeps shrinking, to three, to two, to one and a half, and at last to one. Then he goes back up the ladder.

"Who are the thirty-three?"

"The eight Vasus, the eleven Rudras and the twelve Adityas. That is thirty-one. Indra and Prajapati make thirty-three."

"Who are the Adityas?"

"The twelve months of the year," says Yajnavalkya. "They move along, taking everything with them as they go. Because they go on taking everything, they are called Adityas."

He gives no list of names, and tells no story of a mother or a birth. For Yajnavalkya the sons of Aditi are time itself, month after month, carrying off the days of everything that lives.