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.