Chapter 7. The Vedic Gods: Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Asura-Deva Split

Chapter 6 reconstructed the shared Indo-Iranian religion from what the Rigveda and the Avesta hold in common. This chapter looks at the Indian branch. The Rigveda is the oldest surviving witness to the gods whom Zarathushtra’s tradition would partly exalt and partly demonise, and its Mitra is the direct ancestor of the Iranian Mithra followed in Part 3. The chapter covers the text and its dating, the sovereign pair Mitra and Varuna and their guardianship of ṛta, Indra and the Vritra myth, Agni and the sacrifice, the Mitanni gods, the Indian side of the asura/deva reversal, Georges Dumézil’s tripartite theory and its critics, and the priestly specialists who carried the cult.

The Rigveda: text and date

The reference shelf describes the Rigveda Samhita as “a collection of 10 books (maṇḍalas) with 1,028 hymns (sūktas) in about 10,600 verses”. Books 2 to 9 are the oldest, while Books 1 and 10 add speculative and philosophical material. The bulk was composed “in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent … most likely between c. 1500 and 1000 BCE”, although a wider range of c. 1900–1200 BCE has also been proposed. Jamison and Brereton call the dating “a matter of contention”. The Mitanni documents (c. 1450–1350 BCE) offer a reasonable reference point, since they name Varuna, Mitra and Indra [Wikipedia: Rigveda].

A. A. Macdonell’s Vedic Mythology (1897) ranks the gods by how many hymns are addressed to them and how often they are named. His five classes run from “1) Indra, Agni, Soma; 2) Asvins, Maruts, Varuna” down to “5) Yama, Parjanya”. He cautions that this statistical standard is only a partial guide [Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, #54250].

Mitra, Varuna and the cosmic order (ṛta)

Julien Ries, summarising Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna (1940) and Les dieux souverains, presents the pair as two faces of one sovereignty. Dumézil, as Ries quotes him in Italian translation (rendered here in English), concludes that “from one end to the other of the course followed by Mitra and Varuna as great sovereign gods, from pre-Vedic times to the end of Vedic times, their union has kept the same principle: a typology of contrast”. He adds at once that this contrast is “neither hostility nor rivalry”, and certainly not a dualism of a good and an evil god: “contrast but not opposition”. Their shared task is “to maintain and preserve the ṛta, that is, the Order of the cosmos”: they administer the division of heaven and earth and the alternation of day and night and of the seasons, and keep watch “through acts of espionage” over human societies. Mitra is “benevolent, friendly, reassuring”, near to humans and linked with day, fire and the priestly function. Varuna is “the lord of bonds”, “a binder god” who catches the guilty in his nooses and holds the māyā, the power to shape forms. He is linked with night, water and kingship [Ries, Il culto di Mithra, #38276, “Mitra e Varuṇa, dei sovrani”]. Ries also reports Abel Bergaigne’s gloss of ṛta as “what is fitted” [Ries, #38276].

Curtis Heckaman’s study of ṛta adds verse evidence. Mitra and Varuna are “ṛtajāta” (born of ṛta) at RV 7.66.13, and “they govern all the world with the ṛta and set the sun firmly in its place” (RV 5.63.7). Heckaman argues, however, that “a precise definition cannot, and need not, be found for ṛta“. He links the term with images of wide, safe space, of pathways free from harm, of light, and of the sound that dispels evil [Heckaman, Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of Ṛta in the Rig Veda, #51915]. Mircea Eliade, in the Romanian edition of his Patterns in Comparative Religion, distinguishes Varuna’s kingship from Indra’s: Varuna is king “not by his own force (svarāj, like Indra) but is king samrāj, universal” (RV 7.82.8). For Eliade, “the Avestan Mithra-Ahura thus answers to the Vedic binomial Mitra-Varuna” [Eliade, Morfologia religiilor, #46394; translated from Romanian].

Indra, Vritra and Agni

Macdonell calls Indra “the favourite national god of the Vedic Indians”, a deity “conceived by the militant Vedic Indian as a sovereign of the warrior type”. Because the Vritra myth is so central, “the chief and specific epithet of Indra is Vṛtrahan, Vṛtra-slayer”, applied “about 70 times to him in the RV”. In the hymns Indra, strengthened by soma, “cleaves the mountain, making the streams flow or taking the cows”, lets loose the torrents and “slew the Dānava” [Macdonell, #54250, §22 “Indra”]. In early Vedic usage, the reference shelf adds, the good asuras (Adityas) were “led by Varuna” and the malevolent Danavas “led by Vritra” [Wikipedia: Asura].

Agni, the sacrificial fire, ranks with Indra and Soma among “the three most” prominent gods by Macdonell’s count. He is the household god “whom the forefathers kindled”, whose “ancestral friendship … with his worshipper” is “more typical of him than of any other deity”. Above all he is the divine priest: “a Hotṛ appointed by men and by gods”, “the most eminent of Hotṛs”, also an adhvaryu and a brahman, combining “the functions … of the various” priests [Macdonell, #54250, §35 “Agni”]. Chapter 6 gives Moulton’s contrast between the Indian Agni, “the consumer of the sacrifice”, and the Iranian hearth-fire Atar.

The Mitanni gods and the asura/deva reversal

The Hittite–Mitanni treaty of c. 1380 BCE, which invokes Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas, is treated in chapter 6 and again in chapter 19. Here it matters as evidence that the Vedic sovereign pair and the warrior god were already invoked together, as treaty witnesses, in Syria in the fourteenth century BCE.

On the Indian side of the reversal, the reference shelf reports a “wide consensus” that Sanskrit asura and Avestan ahura both derive from Proto-Indo-Iranian háSura, “lord”. In the oldest layer of the Rigveda, “Agni, Indra and other gods are also called Asura”, whereas in later Vedic texts the asuras became “enemy of the gods”. Bhargava’s count gives 88 occurrences in the Rigveda: Indra is called asura in nine hymns, Agni has twelve such descriptions, Varuna ten and Mitra eight [Wikipedia: Asura]. Macdonell notes that the epithet is linked with Varuna, “alone or accompanied by Mitra, oftener than with Indra and Agni”. He observes that “in both religions the term asura = ahura is applied to the highest gods, who in both are conceived as mighty kings”, and he relates this to “the supreme position, as a moral ruler, of Ahura Mazda in the Avesta and of Varuna in the Veda” [Macdonell, #54250].

Nanditha Krishna’s Book of Demons surveys the explanations. She attributes the first “religious split” theory to Haug: as asuras “became disliked demons in India and Devas the gods, the reverse was happening in Iran, where the Daevas … had become demons and Ahura the supreme god”. She reports Hale’s conclusion that an asura was “chosen to be a lord or Asura by his people”, and his observation that the word does not appear in the plural in the early books. She also presents a historical hypothesis that the term fell from favour when “the cruel and violent Assurs” drove out the Mitanni, so that “the term Asura alone became impolitic” while Varuna and the other gods kept their standing [Krishna, The Book of Demons, #50894]. These are reported explanations, not settled results.

Dumézil’s tripartite ideology and its critics

The reference shelf summarises the trifunctional hypothesis. Proto-Indo-European ideology was organised around “the sacral, or sovereign, the martial, and the productive”. Sovereignty itself was split into a “juridical and priestly” half and a “powerful, unpredictable” half, which is the Mitra/Varuna pair. In India the pattern is matched with the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. Dumézil “later described them chiefly as an ideological pattern” rather than a reconstruction of three original classes [Wikipedia: Trifunctional hypothesis]. Ries reports Dumézil’s most consequential application, to Iran. On this account Zarathushtra turned the functional gods into abstract entities around Ahura Mazda: Vohu Manah replaced Mitra, Asha replaced Varuna, Khshathra replaced Indra, and Haurvatat and Ameretat replaced the Nasatyas [Ries, #38276, “Il dio Mithra nella riforma di Zarathustra, secondo Dumézil”]. Part 2 examines this claim.

The critics, as the reference article lists them, are numerous. Jan Gonda raised “methodological objections” to Dumézil’s use of Indo-Iranian evidence. John Brough argued that similar three-way divisions occur outside Indo-European societies. Cristiano Grottanelli held that projecting trifunctionalism onto early cultures “is mistaken”. Arnaldo Momigliano faulted the method’s isolation of “survivals” from the rest of Roman religion. Carlo Ginzburg, Momigliano and Bruce Lincoln connected the work with Dumézil’s “sympathies for the political right” or with a projection of “modern hierarchical ideology” onto ancient material. Supporters include Benveniste, Sergent and Lebedynsky [Wikipedia: Trifunctional hypothesis].

Sacrifice and the priestly classes

The yajña demanded specialists. In the reference shelf’s account, the “older references uniformly indicate hotṛ as the presiding priest, with perhaps only the adhvaryu as his assistant in the earliest times”. The developed Śrauta rite used four chief priests, each tied to a Veda: the hotṛ (Rigvedic recitation), the adhvaryu (the physical rite and Yajurvedic formulas), the udgātṛ (Samavedic chant, especially for soma) and the brahman (the overseer, later linked to the Atharvaveda). The patron, the yajamāna, became “only a sponsor”, and this gave rise to the growing power of the purohita, the household priest of a king. The article notes that Vedic hotar corresponds to Avestan zaotar and atharvan to āθrauuan, which shows that the priestly titles are older than the split [Wikipedia: Vedic priesthood]. The class order itself is first stated in the Purusha Sukta (RV 10.90), where the four varṇas come from the mouth, arms, thighs and feet of the sacrificed cosmic Man. The reference article calls this “a relatively late addition”, probably made “to accord theological sanction to an increasingly unequal Kuru polity” [Wikipedia: Purusha Sukta].

Key points

• The Rigveda (10 books, 1,028 hymns) was composed mostly c. 1500–1000 BCE in the north-west of the subcontinent. Its date is still debated, and the Mitanni texts offer an external anchor [Wikipedia: Rigveda].
• Mitra and Varuna form a contrasting but complementary sovereign pair who uphold ṛta: Mitra the friendly, contractual and priestly side, Varuna the binding, magical and royal side. This is Dumézil’s reading as reported by Ries [#38276]. Heckaman holds that ṛta resists any single definition [#51915].
• Macdonell calls Indra the Vedic “national god” and warrior-sovereign, whose defining deed is slaying Vritra. Agni is the divine priest and messenger of the sacrifice [#54250].
• Asura first meant “lord” and was applied to Varuna, Mitra, Indra and Agni. Later Indian usage made the asuras demons, the mirror image of Iran’s exalted ahura and demonised daēva. Krishna reports competing explanations from Haug, Hale and a Mitanni-Assyrian hypothesis [#50894; Wikipedia: Asura].
• Dumézil’s trifunctional ideology (sovereignty, force, fertility) shaped the study of these gods and of Zarathushtra’s Amesha Spentas. It has been criticised on method by Gonda, Brough, Grottanelli and Momigliano, and on politics by Ginzburg and Lincoln.
• Vedic sacrifice was run by specialists (hotṛ, adhvaryu, udgātṛ, brahman). The patron became a sponsor and the purohita a power beside the king. The reference shelf reads the four-varṇa hierarchy of RV 10.90 as a late addition giving “theological sanction” to an unequal Kuru polity [Wikipedia: Purusha Sukta].