Savitr has about eleven hymns of the Rigveda to himself and is named in a great many more. His name is an agent noun from the root su, to impel, to set in motion, to bring forth, so the name is a job description: the impeller. What he impels is everything. He sends the day out and calls it back, settles the birds and the people to rest, assigns the gods their immortality, and the winds and the waters follow his instruction.
His epithets are unusually physical for a Vedic deity. He is golden-handed, hiranyapani, and golden-tongued, and the hymns show him raising his broad arms as the sign that the world should begin or should cease. One much-discussed passage speaks of his hand being cut and replaced with one of gold, which the later ritual literature elaborates at length.
He belongs to the transitions rather than to the middle of the day, which is why he is invoked at dawn and at dusk, and that is the ground of his enduring liturgical place. He is counted among the Adityas, the sons of Aditi, and shares their concern with what is sanctioned and lawful: to be impelled by Savitr is to be authorised, not merely pushed. Ritual formulas beginning with the words for the impulse of the god Savitr open a large number of Vedic acts, so that the first move in a rite is a statement of whose motion is being obeyed.