three which the hymns represent.
That it cannot be very early is evident from the mention of the
intercalated month, not to speak of the image of Varuna eating the
sweet oblation 'like a priest.' Its elevated language is in sharp
contrast to that of almost all the other Varuna hymns. As these are
all the hymns where Varuna is praised alone by himself, it becomes of
chief importance to study him here, and not where, as in iii. 62, iv.
41, vi. 51, 67, 68, and elsewhere, he is lauded as part of a
combination of gods (Mitra or Indra united with Varuna). In the last
book of the Rig Veda there is no hymn to Varuna,[75] a time when
pantheistic monotheism was changing into pantheism, so that, in the
last stage of the Rig Veda, Varuna is descended from the height.
Thereafter he is god and husband of waters, and punisher of secret sin
(as in ii. 28). Important in contrast to the hymn translated above is
v. 85.

TO VARUNA.

"I will sing forth unto the universal king a high deep prayer, dear to
renowned Varuna, who, as a butcher a hide, has struck earth apart
(from the sky) for the sun. Varuna has extended air in trees, strength
in horses, milk in cows, and has laid wisdom in hearts; fire in water;
the sun in the sky; _soma_ in the stone. Varuna has inverted his
water-barrel and let the two worlds with the space between flow (with
rain). With this (heavenly water-barrel) he, the king of every created
thing, wets the whole world, as a rain does a meadow. He wets the
world, both earth and heaven, when he, Varuna, chooses to milk out
(rain)--and then do the mountains clothe themselves with cloud, and
even the strongest men grow weak. Yet another great and marvellous
power of the renowned spirit (Asura) will I proclaim, this, that
standing in mid-air he has measured earth with the sun, as if with a
measuring rod. (It is due to) the marvellous power of the wisest god,
which none ever resisted, that into the one confluence run the rivers,
and pour into it, and fill it not. O Varuna, loosen whatever sin we
have committed to bosom-friend, comrade, or brother; to our own house,
or to the stranger; what (we) have sinned like gamblers at play, real
(sin), or what we have not known. Make loose, as it were, all these
things, O god Varuna, and may we be dear to thee hereafter."

In this hymn Varuna is a water-god, who stands in mid-air and directs
the rain; who, after the rain, reinstates the sun; who releases from
sin (as water does from