Hindu Gods and Heroes | Page 5

of the sun. We hear a good deal
about him in the Rig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description of
the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical, and partly
literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal god. The case is not
quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean literally
"stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it seems most likely that
he represents the sun, as the vivifying power in nature, though some[6]
think that he was originally an abstraction of the vivifying forces in the
world and later became connected with the sun. However this may be,
Savita is and remains an impersonal spirit with no human element in
his character.
[Footnote 6: See Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 64 f.]
Still more perplexing are the two deities Mitra and Varuna, who are
very often associated with one another, and apparently are related.
Mitra certainly is an old god: if we go over the mountains to the west
and north-west of the country of our Indian Aryans, we shall find their
kinsmen in Persia and Bactria worshipping him as a power that
maintains the laws of righteousness and guards the sanctity of oaths
and engagements, who by means of his watchmen keeps mankind
under his observation and with his terrible weapons crushes evil powers.
The Indian Aryans tell almost exactly the same tale of their Mitra and
his companion Varuna, who perhaps is simply a doublet of Mitra with a
different name, which perhaps is due to a variety of worship. But they
have more to say of Varuna than of Mitra. In Varuna we have the
highest ideal of spirituality that Hindu religion will reach for many
centuries. Not only is he described as supreme controller of the order of
nature--that is an attribute which these priestly poets ascribe with
generous inconsistency to many others of their deities--but he is
likewise the omniscient guardian of the moral law and the rule of
religion, sternly punishing sin and falsehood with his dreaded noose,
but showing mercy to the penitent and graciously communing with the
sage who has found favour in his eyes.
But Mitra and Varuna will not enjoy this exalted rank for long. Soon
the priests will declare that Mitra rules over the day and Varuna over

the night (TS. II. i. 7, 4; VI. iv. 8, 3), and then Varuna will begin to sink
in honour. The "noose of Varuna" will come to mean merely the
disease of dropsy. His connection with the darkness of the night will
cause men to think of him with fear; and in their dread they will forget
his ancient attributes of universal righteousness, justice, and mercy, and
remember him chiefly as an avenger of guilt. They will banish him to
the distant seas, whose rivers he now guides over the earth in his
gracious government of nature; and there he will dwell in exile for ever,
remembered only to be feared. And Mitra will become merely another
name for the sun.
What is the origin of this singular couple? And why are they destined
to this fall? Neither of these questions can be answered by anything but
conjectures. There is no evidence either from Indian or from Iranian
religion that Mitra or his double Varuna grew out of the worship of the
sun or the sky, although in their worship they were sometimes
connected with the sun and the sky. However far backwards we look,
we still find them essentially spirits of natural order and moral law,
gods in the higher sense of the word. But their character, and especially
the character of Varuna, it seems to me, is rather too high to survive the
competition of rival cults, such as that of the popular hero Indra and the
priests' darling Agni, which tend to engross the interest of worshippers
lay and cleric, and to blunt their relish for more spiritual ideals. So
Mitra and Varuna become stunted in their growth; and at last comes the
fatal time when they are identified with the sky by day and night. This
is the final blow. No deity that is plainly limited to any one phase or
form of nature in India can be or become a great god; and speedily all
their real divinity fades away from Mitra and Varuna, and they shrivel
into insignificance.
Next we turn to a spirit of a very different sort, the Fire-god, Agni. The
word agni is identical with the Latin ignis; it means "fire," and nothing
else but fire, and this fact is quite sufficient to prevent Agni from
becoming a great god. The priests indeed do their best, by fertile fancy
and endless repetition of his praises, to lift him to that