The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s1.5

v1.c11.s1.5

The figure of Ahura Mazdāh cannot possibly¹ be dissociated from Varuṇa who bears the epithet Asura, the term applied to other Vedic gods, while in the later Saṁhitās the Asuras have become the foes of the gods. Like Ahura, Varuṇa is the lord of holy order, Ṛta, which corresponds to the Avestan Aša : he is closely united with Mitra, as Ahura with Mithra, the sun-god : he is the chief of the Ādityas as deities of light, as Ahura is connected with the Ameša Spentas,² who like the Ādityas are not at first fixed in number : Varuṇa guards the sun from falling and makes it a path wherein to wander along the heaven, as Ahura keeps the earth from falling and provides the sun with a pathway. But, apart from these coincidences, the mere moral grandeur of both deities can only be explained by a common origin : the history of Varuṇa in India is that of moral elevation which gradually disappears, and the god sinks to a mere god of the waters, of quite secondary importance. It is inconceivable that this fact should be explained in any other way than that as a god he was brought to India, when under less favourable circumstances his moral quality evaporated. This theory, moreover, renders it easy to understand the success of the Zoroastrian faith and its choice of Ahura as the great and only god in the proper sense of the term : it was not a creation, but a purification of a conception existing among the people of Iran. The loss of the name Varuṇa is natural enough, and it is now probable that we actually have a record of the period when Varuṇa and Mitra were Aryan or Iranian gods in the list of the gods of Mitanni, referred to above. The same list contains the name of Indra, and supports the view that this deity was Aryan, for the same conclusion is irresistibly suggested by the fact that the Avesta knows a demon Indra, and a genius of victory whose name Verethraghna is unmistakably equivalent to Vṛtrahan, the epithet *par excellence* of Indra, as slayer of Vṛtra his greatest foe.³ We do not know the precise steps of the process by which Indra fell from honour among the Iranians : there was, however, an obvious incompatibility of temper between the moral and stately Varuṇa and the impetuous war god Indra, which comes out even in the Rigveda, but in India there was no religious reformation to regard Indra as the inferior deity and reduce him to the rank of a demon.