The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.86

c8.86

Now what is the natural origin of that other partner in the dual partnership, namely, Vedic Varuṇa the Asura, Avestan Ahura Mazda? Not very many years ago Professor Oldenberg advanced and defended ingeniously the hypothesis¹ that Varuṇa is the Moon, and this theory he did not hesitate to follow to a very logical conclusion. Mitra and Varuṇa are Sun and Moon. They are members, as we have seen, in a group of gods called Ādityas. Oldenberg chooses, perhaps a little hastily, the number seven as the sum total of this group.² Similarly in the Avesta, Ahura is accompanied by the so-called "Immortal Holy Ones," the Amesha Spents, the angels of the Puritan Zoroastrian faith. They also make up the number seven. Mithra, we may note, is altogether absent from the Avestan arrangement. Now Oldenberg believes not only that Varuṇa and Mitra were the Moon and the Sun, but that the Ādityas, essentially identical with the Amesha Spents, were the planets. He assumes still further that the whole set, originally, were not Indo-European divinities at all, but that they were borrowed by the Aryans from a Shemitic people—presumably the Babylonians—far enough advanced in astronomical knowledge to observe the interrelations of sun, moon, and the planets.