d: if we go over the mountains to the west
and north-west of the country of our Indian Aryans, we shall find
their kinsmen in Persia and Bactria worshipping him as a power that
maintains the laws of righteousness and guards the sanctity of oaths
and engagements, who by means of his watchmen keeps mankind under his
observation and with his terrible weapons crushes evil powers. The
Indian Aryans tell almost exactly the same tale of their Mitra and his
companion Varuna, who perhaps is simply a doublet of Mitra with a
different name, which perhaps is due to a variety of worship. But they
have more to say of Varuna than of Mitra. In Varuna we have the
highest ideal of spirituality that Hindu religion will reach for many
centuries. Not only is he described as supreme controller of the order
of nature--that is an attribute which these priestly poets ascribe
with generous inconsistency to many others of their deities--but he is
likewise the omniscient guardian of the moral law and the rule of
religion, sternly punishing sin and falsehood with his dreaded noose,
but showing mercy to the penitent and graciously communing with the
sage who has found favour in his eyes.

But Mitra and Varuna will not enjoy this exalted rank for long. Soon
the priests will declare that Mitra rules over the day and Varuna over
the night (TS. II. i. 7, 4; VI. iv. 8, 3), and then Varuna will begin
to sink in honour. The "noose of Varuna" will come to mean merely the
disease of dropsy. His connection with the darkness of the night will
cause men to think of him with fear; and in their dread they will
forget his ancient attributes of universal righteousness, justice, and
mercy, and remember him chiefly as an avenger of guilt. They will
banish him to the distant seas, whose rivers he now guides over the
earth in his gracious government of nature; and there he will dwell in
exile for ever, remembered only to be feared. And Mitra will become
merely another name for the sun.

What is the origin of this singular couple? And why are they destined
to this fall? Neither of these questions can be answered by anything
but conjectures. There is no evidence either from Indian or from
Iranian religion that Mitra or his double Varuna grew out of the
worship of the sun or the sky, although in their worship they were
sometimes connected with the sun and the sky. However far backwards we
look, we still find them essentially spirits of natural order and
moral law, gods