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VedAnvaya
Deity atlas

Deity

pūṣā

Pusan

The guardian of roads and herds, who finds what is lost, protects the traveller, and conducts the dead along the path to the Fathers.

Supported
solar · psychopomp · terrestrial

Across the four Vedas

Where this deity is named in the text, counted per collection. Certain and probable mentions are included; ambiguous ones are held back and shown separately below.

Named in the text

Passages in which a registered form of this name occurs, counted once per passage.

Measured over Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda.

Named in the text. Passages in which a registered form of this name occurs, counted once per passage.
Rigveda59 passages
Samaveda4 passages
Yajurveda6 passages
Atharvaveda5 passages
  • Rigveda holds back 60 ambiguous mentions
  • Samaveda holds back 7 ambiguous mentions
  • Yajurveda holds back 47 ambiguous mentions
  • Atharvaveda holds back 27 ambiguous mentions

These are Sanskrit surface matches and therefore lower bounds. Being named is not the same as the passage being about the deity.

32Certain
42Probable
141AmbiguousHeld back from every figure above. The referent could not be resolved, so counting these would overstate the deity.

Ascribed by the apparatus

The traditional hymn dedication, which is a different kind of record from being named in a verse. The two are never summed.

How the ascription was recorded

Passages carrying this deity as their dedication, split by whether the source states it verse by verse or the hymn heading was projected downward.

The ascription apparatus exists for Rigveda, Atharvaveda only. A zero elsewhere is a missing apparatus, not an absent deity.

How the ascription was recorded. Passages carrying this deity as their dedication, split by whether the source states it verse by verse or the hymn heading was projected downward.
Stated for the verse18 passages
Inherited from the hymn72 passages
  • Inherited from the hymn the hymn heading projected onto every verse inside it

Ascription is the traditional apparatus dedicating a hymn. For this deity it reaches RV, AV, and the layer as a whole reaches RV, AV. The total spans two routes with two methods and `ascription_routes` separates them: the Rigvedic dedication is the Anukramani naming a deity the registry holds, the Atharvavedic one is that dedication recovered from a Sanskrit adjective under Panini 4.2.24 sasya devata, and 277 of the 324 Atharvavedic descriptors are refused a deity rather than resolved -- each carrying its own recorded reason. The Atharvavedic dedications counted here were derived from 39 of the 47 that resolve, because the derived layer has not been rebuilt from the 8 the R4 matcher gained (R4-RESIDUAL-ATTRIBUTION-002). A zero in a corpus the layer reaches is an absent dedication; a zero in the Samaveda or Yajurveda is a missing apparatus rather than an absent deity. Most ascriptions are a hymn label projected onto each verse inside it rather than a per-verse statement.

What this deity does

Actions where the deity stands as the grammatical agent. Read from the Rigvedic morphological annotation only.

  • Moves to
  • Is or becomes
  • Protects
  • Blesses
  • Unmapped verbal root
  • Creates
  • Desires
  • Establishes
  • Grants
  • Leads

What it is asked to do

Actions in the imperative or optative: what the poets request, as distinct from what is asserted.

  • Moves to
  • Seeks
  • Leads
  • Unmapped verbal root
  • Is or becomes
  • Rescues
  • Sees

Associated ideas

Registered concepts named in the same passages.

  • friendship (sakhya)
  • chariot (ratha)
  • prize (vāja)
  • wealth (rayi)
  • praise (stoma)
  • resolve (kratu)
  • heaven (dyaus)
  • ancestors (pitaraḥ)
  • cattle (go)
  • desire (kāma)

Objects and substances

  • chariot (ratha)
  • friendship (sakhya)
  • praise (stoma)
  • prize (vāja)
  • resolve (kratu)
  • desire (kāma)
  • heaven (dyaus)
  • insight (dhī)
  • mind (manas)
  • waters (āpaḥ)

Seers of its hymns

Ranked over the ascription apparatus, most of which is inherited from the hymn heading.

  • bārhaspatyo bharadvājaḥ
  • ghauraḥ kaṇvaḥ
  • aindraḥ prājapatyaḥ
  • bārhaspatyaḥ śaṁyuḥ
  • daivaodāsiḥ parucchepaḥ
  • kāṇvo devātithiḥ
  • yāmāyano devaśravāḥ
  • gāthino viśvāmitraḥ
  • kāṇvo medhātithiḥ

Metres

  • gāyatrī
  • anuṣṭup
  • triṣṭup
  • atyaṣṭiḥ
  • pragāthaḥ
  • uṣṇik
  • bṛhatī
  • jagatī
  • kakubh

Named alongside

Deities that share passages with this one. Co-mention is proximity in a verse, not a relationship the text asserts.

Formula families

Shared wording that recurs in passages naming this deity.

svādur mitrāya3 mantras naming this deity
stotāras ta iha smasi3 mantras naming this deity
svāhā sarasvatyai3 mantras naming this deity
na riṣyema kadā cana3 mantras naming this deity
pari pra dhanvendrāya soma svādur mitrāya pūṣṇe bhagāya3 mantras naming this deity
pūṣann iha kratuṁ vidaḥ3 mantras naming this deity
sarasvatyai svāhā2 mantras naming this deity
sa no bhagāya vāyave2 mantras naming this deity

Passages to read

Verses that name this deity, and verses the apparatus dedicates to it. These are different claims and are listed separately.

Derived measures

Computed over this graph. Each states its method, and none is a statement the texts make.

Derived measure

Devata attribution by veda

Rv
77

Attribution to a deity in the registry (HAS_DEVATA) exists for the Rigveda only (RV). A zero for another Veda means that Veda has no such layer, NOT that the deity is absent from it. It also does NOT mean the corpus has no traditional index: the Atharvaveda's Anukramani is recorded separately as ascription descriptors, which are not resolved into the deity registry and so are never counted in this metric.

How it was computed

count of HAS_DEVATA edges grouped by passage veda

VG:METRIC:DEVATA_ATTRIBUTION_BY_VEDA:VG:DEVATA:PUSA

Derived measure

Devata attribution precision

Container inherited
59
Per passage
18
Per passage share
0.234

container_inherited attributions are the sukta's label projected onto its mantras by a scope rule. They are reproducible derivations, not statements the source made about the individual mantra.

How it was computed

HAS_DEVATA edges split on attribution_precision

VG:METRIC:DEVATA_ATTRIBUTION_PRECISION:VG:DEVATA:PUSA

Derived measure

Devata structural spread

1
17
3
3
6
40
8
4
10
13

Rigvedic mandala numbers; other Vedas absent for want of a layer.

How it was computed

count of attributed mantras grouped by top-level structural division

VG:METRIC:DEVATA_STRUCTURAL_SPREAD:VG:DEVATA:PUSA