The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c15.29

v1.c15.29

The discovery among the gods of the Mitanni of the names of Indra as well as of Mitra and Varuṇa is on the whole decidedly in favour of the view that the Iranians knew of Indra as a god equally with Varuṇa. If so, then the history of the two gods in Iran has been determined by a long development culminating in the state of religion preserved in the reforms of Zoroaster, and we cannot draw any conclusion from Iran as to the earlier history of the gods. In India there is no evidence to show that even in the earliest times known to us there was any priority of Varuṇa over Indra, and the greatness of Indra and his close association with the ideals of the Vedic Indian suggest that he was from the earliest times of which we have knowledge a great Indian god. The same remark, however, applies to Varuṇa for the whole of the early period of the Rigveda, and the practical equality of the two gods for this period seems to be established by the very hymn² which has often been adduced as showing the supersession of the older by the younger god. In it Varuṇa claims for himself the kingship, on the ground that all the immortals obey him, that he rules over the highest heaven, that he has established the earth, the air, and the sky, and has made the waters to flow. Indra replies that he is the irresistible one, on whom men call in time of conflict, and that the worlds tremble when the praise of men and the draughts of Soma have evoked his great powers. In the mere argument Indra would seem to have the worse rather than the better part, but the end of the hymn asserts that the wife of Purukutsa honoured both the gods, and received from them in reward the son Trasadasyu, who is one of the most famous of the kings of the Rigveda. But at the same time it must be admitted that in the later period of the Rigveda Varuṇa’s popularity seems to be declining: the argument from the fact that in the tenth book he has no hymn addressed to himself alone, while Indra has forty-five, is not conclusive, because the number of hymns addressed to Indra even in books ii and iii amounts to forty-five and Varuṇa has no hymn in iii and but one in ii; but it is true that Varuṇa is comparatively seldom mentioned in book x, and, what is far more important, by the time of the Atharvaveda he is already reduced to a very inferior position, while Indra is deliberately placed above all the gods, including Mitra and Varuṇa.³