In the Mahabharata, Crishna is also represented as the "Son of Aditi."[475:5] As the hour of his birth grew near, the mother became more beautiful, and her form more brilliant.[475:6]
Indra, the sun, who was worshiped in some parts of India as a Crucified God, is also represented in the Vedic hymns as the Son of the Dawn. He is said to have been born of Dahana, who is Daphne, a personification of the Dawn.[475:7]
The humanity of this SOLAR GOD-MAN, this demiurge, is strongly insisted on in the Rig-Veda. He is the son of God, but also the son of Aditi. He is Purusha, the man, the male. Agni is frequently called the "Son of man." It is expressly explained that the titles Agni, Indra, Mitra, &c., all refer to one Sun god under "many names." And when we find the name of a mortal, Yama, who once lived upon earth, included among these names, the humanity of the demiurge becomes still more accentuated, and we get at the root idea.
Horus, the Egyptian Saviour, was the son of the virgin Isis. Now, this Isis, in Egyptian mythology, is the same as the virgin Devaki in Hindoo mythology. She is the Dawn.[476:1] Isis, as we have already seen, is represented suckling the infant Horus, and, in the words of Prof. Renouf, we may say, "in whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly than in that of the Dawn?"[476:2]
Among the goddesses of Egypt, the highest was Neith, who reigned inseparably with Amun in the upper sphere. She was called "Mother of the gods," "Mother of the sun." She was the feminine origin of all things, as Amun was the male origin. She held the same rank at Sais as Amun did at Thebes. Her temples there are said to have exceeded in colossal grandeur anything ever seen before. On one of these was the celebrated inscription thus deciphered by Champollion:
"I am all that has been, all that is, all that will be. No mortal has ever raised the veil that conceals me. My offspring is the Sun."
She was mother of the Sun-god Ra, and, says Prof. Renouf, "is commonly supposed to represent Heaven; but some expressions which are hardly applicable to heaven, render it more probable that she is one of the many names of the Dawn."[476:3]
If we turn from Indian and Egyptian, to Grecian mythology, we shall also find that their Sun-gods and solar heroes are born of the same virgin mother. Theseus was said to have been born of Aithra, "the pure air," and Œdipus of Iokaste, "the violet light of morning." Perseus was born of the virgin Danae, and was called the "Son of the bright morning."[476:4] In Iô, the mother of the "sacred bull,"[476:5] the mother also of Hercules, we see the violet-tinted morning from which the sun is born; all these gods and heroes being, like Christ Jesus, personifications of the Sun.[476:6]
"The Saviour of Mankind" was also represented as being born of the "dusky mother," which accounts for many Pagan, and so-called Christian, goddesses being represented black.[477:1] This is the dark night, who for many weary hours travails with the birth of her child. The Sun, which scatters the darkness, is also the child of the darkness, and so the phrase naturally went that he was born of her. Of the two legends related in the poems afterwards combined in the "Hymn to Apollo," the former relates the birth of Apollo, the Sun, from Leto, the Darkness, which is called his mother.[477:2] In this case, Leto would be personified as a "black virgin," either with or without the child in her arms.