How names become gods.

Every natural object fills more than one part or function in the economy of the universe, has more than one quality or aspect wherewith to strike an observer—a variety easily expressed in speech by a number of adjectives and verbs or verbal nouns. If that observer be poetically inclined and therefore subject to moods, he will scarcely be disposed coolly to enumerate all these qualities and actions, producing a sort of dry descriptive litany ; he will be more specially struck, according to the mood of a given moment, by this or that particular aspect of the object of his contemplation ; he will let his fancy dwell on that aspect, suffer himself to be entirely possessed by it, and develop it in his song to the exclusion of all others, until the reflection in his poet’s soul is rendered tangible in form to his fellow-men, and becomes, although unsubstantial, a perfect, indelible creation. And what is this creation, seen first by the poet in his mind’s eye, then by his cunning word made visible to the world? heard first by him in his mind’s ear, then poured by his cunning metre into music for all ? this creation first revealed to him in that semi-trance of the soul, when the poet is lifted into a world which is not that of every day and where voices speak to him and visions come to him he knows not how? Is it a song ? a picture ? it is all that and more : it is a god. What he has seen and heard, and rendered, is so complete, so real that he is the first to forget that what he started from was really only one of many aspects or qualities belonging to an already familiar deity (divinized natural object, or power), and lo  the magic wand of language wielded by fancy has done its work, as the epithet or noun becomes a name, the quality or action it expresses becomes a person, and where there was one god, there now are two, henceforth imagined and worshipped distinctly and separately, in total forgetfulness of their original identity. And what was a poetical description of certain attributions, certain effects, becomes the god’s personal history, the story of his adventures.

Varuna, the Sky.

This is the way that gods—and myths—are born. And nowhere can the process be caught in the act, so to speak, as in the Rig-Veda, where poetical creation often hovers so closely over the boundary line  between reality and myth as to make it doubtful to which it finally belongs. And no apter illustration of the process can we have than in the person of the other Sky-god, Varuna, who, from a simple attribution, rose to be perhaps the sublimest figure of the Vedic pantheon. All ancient peoples used to say that “the heavens cover or encompass the earth and all it contains,” sometimes adding “ like a tent ” or “ like a roof ”—and meant it literally, not metaphorically, for to their unscientific minds, which knew nothing of optical delusions, but accepted unquestioningly the impresssions conveyed to them by their senses, the blue vault was a blue vault, solid and immutable—nay the very type of solidity and immutability, a veritable Jirma.rn.cnt—a designation, by the by, which shows how words will survive exploded notions (like the rising and setting of the sun) and sometimes perpetuate in the popular mind the errors which gave them birth. Now Sanskrit has a root VRI “ to cover,” —a prolific one, which can be traced in many words of kindred meanings,—and one of its most direct formations is this very name of Vdruna. It is as though we called the sky “ the coverer, the enfolder,” and indeed there would be nothing amiss with any one of our modern poets referring to “ the all-covering, enfolding heavens.” Only, we would admire the line as a beautiful, picturesque bit of imagery, but it would not crystallize in our minds into a person and a name (even setting apart the impossibility of such a thing on religious grounds) ; that is a faculty specially belonging to those remote ages of the world’s youth, which have on that account been nicknamed “ the mythopceicj i. e., “ myth-making,” ages —a faculty which could grow only out of an exuberant fancy, revelling in the novelty of things, unrestrained by knowledge, and therefore ready of belief. It must be well understood, however, that things went thus at the very beginning (whenever the beginning was), but that habit and routine soon asserted their deadening influence, and that what had been play of poetical fancy, then effusion of faith, settled into conventional form of speech, into stereotype phrase. It is, unfortunately, at this stage, further stiffened by set forms of worship, that the unconscious creations of the myth-makers generally reach us, even in the earliest monuments in our possession, and we cannot, therefore, be sufficiently grateful for such stray glimpses into the earliest workings of the myth-making brain as the Rig-Veda—and that alone—still occasionally affords.

Varuna, the King.

But—to return to Varuna. Scattered through the Rig-Veda are several hymns indited specially in his honor, sometimes alone, oftener in connection with some other god. In Book VII., attributed to the legendary Rishi Vasishtha, and at all events preserved and used as a sacred heirloom by the priestly family of that name, these hymns are most numerous. They abound with short descriptive invocations and passages which, if pieced together, would give a very lifelike presentation of the god with all his direct and personal physical attributions and, what is still more interesting, his connection with sundry natural phenomena that cannot possibly be dissociated from the sky in its several aspects. The fundamental idea expressed by Varuna’s name (as explained above) is distinctly traceable in many of these passages, but in none so much as in the following three, which may be said to contain a paraphrase or amplification of the name of the “ all-enfolder ” : he is said to “ cover the worlds as with a robe, with all the creatures thereof and their dwellings ”  to “ enfold the heavens,” and to “ measure out the earth and mark her uttermost bounds ” (the horizon,where sky and earth seem to touch). The same idea—the keynote to the god’s special identity—will be clearly seen to lurk in this bit of grand poetic imagery : “ He has encompassed the nights around ; he has, by his wisdom, established the dawns ; he visibly encompasses all things ” (VIII., 41). What particularly strikes in this last passage is the moral quality of wisdom which is added to the god’s physical attributions. This is the beginning of the process of spiritualization which all nature-gods undergo at some stage of their career : from being “ the Sky ” he becomes the “ god of the Sky,” and as such presides over all the numerous phenomena of which the sky is the seeming scene ; the alternations of light and darkness come under his rule, as well as the heavenly bodies themselves, and as nothing is more obviously and strikingly obedient to a law, so regular in a certain immutable round as these very phenomena, Varuna rose to be the supreme embodiment and guardian, then the maker of that law and, by an easy and natural transition, of all law and order, moral and cosmic both—“ King of gods and men ” in mythic phrase. “ King ” is the title more especially consecrated to him, though he is also frequently given that of Asura. As always happens in such cases, the god’s physical and spiritual nature blend, and merge into each other, and separate again, until it is very difficult at times to decide when certain descriptive phrases apply to him as the material sky itself, or as a power outside of it and governing it. The hymns consecrated to him contain some very grand poetry and, at all events, it is quite transparent and easy to comprehend after what has just been said. Sun and moon are said to be his eyes, but his relation to the former is expressed in especially varied and fanciful imagery. Sometimes the sun is Varuna’s golden steed, sometimes the golden-winged bird, his messenger, that dives into a sea of light ; then again it is a golden swing hung up on high ; on one occasion, in a riddle-style very familiar to the Rishis, Varuna is said to hold up the mighty tree by its top in the groundless space, with its roots up,—the tree-top being again the sun and the roots its beams.

Varuna, the ruler of the Atmosphere

 Besides “the two worlds” ( rodasi, Heaven and Earth), which are the first divine couple of all mythologies, there is a third which, from peculiar local conditions, early assumed a still greater importance in the eyes of the Aryas of India and almost monopolized their passionate interest. This is the world “which lies between the two others” —antariksha, the Atmosphere or Air-region,—where the winds do battle, where the clouds gather and disperse, where the waters collect until they form a giant reservoir, a mid-air or celestial sea, which then is poured down on the earth to feed and refresh her. From its seeming position, this fateful region might well be made a dependence of the sky and given into King Varuna’s keeping. This is why he is said to have hollowed out paths for the rivers which flow by his command ; and, on earth, the Seven Rivers are once called “ his sisters ” ; while in another very remarkable passage he is likened unto a sea, into which all the rivers flow yet never fill it a striking image for the cloudy, rain-laden sky. Of course he is also the giver of rain which, as so frequently throughout the Rig-Veda, is called “the milk of the kine,” i. e., the rain-clouds, which hold the waters as the cow the milk in her udder.

Hymns to Varuna.

A few coherent passages culled from various hymns to Varuna will now prove intelligible, and merge the fragmentary features of this sublimest of Vedic deities into a more complete and harmonious figure. One Rishi sings:

“ Sing a hymn, pleasing to Varuna the King—to him who spread out the earth as a butcher lays out a steer’s hide in the sun.— He sent cool breezes through the woods, put mettle in the steed the sun, milk in the kine clouds,wisdom in the heart, fire in the waters lightning in the clouds,placed the sun in the heavens, the Soma on the mountains.—He upset the cloud-barrel and let its waters flow on Heaven, Air, and Earth, wetting the ground and the crops.—He wets both Earth and Heaven, and soon as he wishes for those kine’s milk, the mountains are wrapt in thunderclouds and the strongest walkers are tired. “Varuna laid out the sun’s path, and sent the waters coursing to the sea [celestial or atmospheric — samudra ; for the days he appointed their wide tracks and guides them as a racer does his mares.—His breath is the wind that rushes through the air. .He leads forth the great, the holy sun-steed, that brings a thousand gifts.—When I gaze upon his face, I seem to see him as a blazing fire, as the King causes me to behold the splendor of light and darkness in the heavens. .The stars up there, that are seen at night, where do they hide in the day? But Varuna’s ordinances are immutable and the moon goes shining brightly through the night. . . .(I., 24.) He who knows the path of the birds as they fly through the ample space, and on the sea the ships, ... he who knows the track of the wind, . . . he is seated in his mansion protecting the law, Varuna, Almighty King, and looks down attentively from there on all that is hidden, on all that has been and is still to be done. Arrayed in golden mail, he wraps himself in splendor as in a garment  and around him sit his spies [the stars at night, the sunbeams by day".

Varuna, the keeper of Rita

The Cosmic Order and the Moral Law The “law” of which Varuna is keeper, the “ immutable ordinances ” which he has established and jealously maintains, are The Rita— originally the Cosmic Order, which regulates the motions of the sun and moon and stars, the alternations of day and night, of the seasons, the gathering of the waters in clouds and their downpour in rain ; in short, the order that evolves harmony out of chaos, and the visible scene of whose working is the sky. That this order is the result of a higher Law is clear—a law which the gods themselves (the Sun, the Moon, the Winds, etc.) can never transgress and that it is a beneficent law, is no less evident. Therefore Rita is holy, is true, it is “ the rightpath ”—the Right itself, the Absolute Good, which is at once transferred from the tangible and visible into the invisible and abstract world—from the physical into the spiritual. There is a moral Rita as there is a material one, or rather the same Rita rules both worlds. What Law is in the physical, that Truth, Right, is in the spiritual order, and both are Rita. Therefore the god who is the ordainer and keeper of the physical law is also the guardian and avenger of the moral law, the punisher of sin. The Arya loved light—the light of day and of the sun—with a passionate adoration and transports of gratitude, equalled only by his loathing and fear of darkness, with its dangers and snares, in any form ; and lying and wrong-doing,—in a word, sin—was to him moral night, with all its horrors. Now Varuna was the dispenser of both light and darkness ; when displeased with mortal man, he turned his face from him, and it was night. The accepted poetical expression of this fact was, “ Varuna binds the sinner with his fetters.” For man felt as helpless in the dark as though bound and given over without defence to the dangers he could not see. Disease was another of Vdruna’s fetters, and lastly — death. To Varuna, therefore, man when oppressed with the consciousness of wrong-doing, of sin, cries out for pardon and mercy. And there are in the Rig-Veda a few penitential hymns which, for beauty and depth of feeling, rival the best of the kind in any literature. Vasishtha’s are the most impressive.