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 Varuṇa, 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 Varuṇa than of Mitra. In Varuṇa 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 Varuṇa will not enjoy this exalted rank for long. Soon the priests will declare that Mitra rules over the day and Varuṇa over the night (TS. II. i. 7, 4; VI. iv. 8, 3), and then Varuṇa will begin to sink in honour. The "noose of Varuṇa" will come to mean merely the disease of dropsy. His connection with the
