We are assured by Godfrey Higgins that Brahme is the sun the same
as Surya. Brahma sprang from the navel of Brahme. Faber in his
Pagan Idolatry says that all the gods of the ancients "melt
insensibly into one, they are all equally the sun." The word
Apollo signifies the author or generator of Light. In the Rig
Veda, Surya, the sun, is called Aditya. "Truly, Surya, thou art
great; truly Aditya, thou art great."

Selden observes that whether the gods be called Osiris, or
Omphis, or Nilus, or any other name, they all center in the sun.

According to Diodorus Siculus, it was the belief of the ancients
that Dionysos, Osiris, Serapis, Pan, Jupiter and Pluto were all
one. They were, the sun.

Max Muller says that a very low race in India named the Santhals
call the sun Chandro, which means "bright." These people
declared to the missionaries who settled among them, that Chandro
had created the world; and when told that it would be absurd to
say that the sun had created the world, they replied: "We do not
mean the visible Chandro, but an invisible one."

Not only did Dionysos, and all the rest of the gods who in later
ages came to be regarded as men, represent the sun, but after the
separation of the male and female elements in the originally
indivisible God, Maut or Minerva, Demeter, Ceres, Isis, Juno, and
others less important in the pagan world were also the sun, or,
in other words, they represented the female power throughout the
universe which was supposed to reside in the sun.