Ancestor of Mortals, or the Sun

The line that brings Martanda back says he is brought back for birth and for death, and two readings of it have been in circulation for as long as the hymn has been read. The first takes the phrase at its plainest: what is born and dies is a mortal, so Martanda is the first of the mortals and the ancestor of the human line, the one member of Aditi's brood who was not allowed to stay among the gods. The second reads him as the sun, which is born every morning and dies every evening, and which the same literature elsewhere calls the son of Aditi. Later usage supports the solar reading, since Martanda becomes an epithet of the sun in classical Sanskrit, and the name Martanda Bhairava belongs to a solar cult site in Kashmir.

Neither reading disposes of the other, and they may not be alternatives. Vedic poetry is willing to say two things about one name in adjacent verses, and the solar and mortal readings share a logic: what dies daily and what dies once are both the opposite of the boundlessness the mother is named for. A figure whose whole function is to be excluded from a class of deathless gods can be filled with either meaning without strain.

The atlas records both and chooses neither. The identification with the sun is marked as argued rather than as fact, and the entry carries an open question naming what would move it, which is not a discovery so much as a close comparison of how the commentarial traditions read the passage. Nothing new is going to be found; what could change is how carefully what already exists has been set side by side.