śrī āditya stavam

Brahmā's praise of the Sun in the hundredth chapter of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, and one of the few hymns in this group whose frame narrative changes its point. Brahmā praises him as made of Ṛk, the treasury of the Yajus, the womb of the Sāmans, the one whom yogins contemplate as light beyond all form — and then says why he has come: I carry out creation only because your primal power impels me to it, and not by any wish of my own, and the same holds of maintenance and dissolution. The last verse of the praise is the request the whole hymn exists to deliver — draw in your heat, for your splendour is gathered too strongly, and I am about to begin. Mārkaṇḍeya then narrates the answer in three verses: the Sun withdrew his splendour and held back only a little, and Brahmā, now able to work, made gods and men and beasts and trees as he had in the ages before.