The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s2.9

v2.c41.s2.9

Güntert, while admitting the possibility of Asianic origin for the myth of an androgynous primeval creator of mankind, does not claim that the motifs discussed are Indo-European, but rather takes them as evidence of a long-continued contact between the special peoples among whom they occur. A similar contact he finds² suggested by the partial parallelisms of Odin-Wodan with Varuṇa and Ahura Mazdāh, the root idea in all these cases being, in this view, that of a lord and creator of the world, a cosmic magician, one of whose aspects is that of him who binds the sinner, whence the name Varuṇa from *ver*, bind, while Mitra, whose name has a similar force,³ binds men together in bonds of social obligation. A connecting link between the Aryans and the Teutons may be seen in the Thracian deity Darzales, whose name denotes him as the binder, and who may be the source of the Egyptian Sarapis,⁴ while the Thracians and the Phrygians had a goddess Bendis with similar functions. Savitṛ again is merely a hypostasis of Varuṇa,⁵ the aspect in which the world lord stretches aloft his mighty hands, the beams of the sun, and his figure accords with the delineations of a god with mighty hands uplifted which are found freely in the German and Thraco-Phrygian areas, while a remnant of the idea is to be seen in the epithet ‘long-handed’ applied to the Iranian demon Būšyasta.