cit.) says of this hymn that it is not remarkable in any way and that no good reason has ever been given for its fame.

The good reason for this fame, in our opinion, is that the longed-for glory was interpreted later as a revealed indication of primitive pantheism, and the verses were understood to express the desire of absorption into the sun, which, as will be seen, was one of the first divine bodies to be accepted as the type of the All-god.

This is also the intent of the stanzas added to I.50 (above, p.

17), where S[=u]rya is "the highest light, the god among gods," mystic words, taken by later philosophers, and quite rightly, to be an expression of pantheism.

The esoteric meaning of the G[=a]yatr[=i] presumably made it popular among the enlightened.