The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.84

c8.84

The mythic cycle represented by Mitra-Mithra and Varuna-Ahura is important for early Vedic religion, and, more permanently, for the whole history of Persian religion. There is no chapter of Aryan religion and mythology that has stimulated the instinct of ultimate interpretation more persistently than this very one. I am of those who cannot imagine any cessation of these attempts for any great length of time. The one solid point in the genesis of these myths is the solar character of the Aryan Mitra. In later Persian the word *mithra* in the form *mihir* is the name of the sun. As previously stated,² this solar Mithras passed, in the centuries after Christ, out of the bounds of Persia and started upon a career of conquest which threatened at one time to subject all Western civilisation.