Chapter 19. Mitra and Mithra: The Indo-Iranian God of the Contract (Vedic Mitra, the Mitanni Treaty and the Mihr Yasht)

The god whom Roman soldiers would later worship in caves first appears in history as a name on a diplomatic document. Before he slew a bull or was hailed as the invincible Sun, Mitra was the power that held two kings to their sworn word. This chapter follows the oldest layer of the figure through three bodies of evidence: the cuneiform treaty from the Hittite capital, the Vedic hymns in which Mitra stands beside Varuna, and the Avestan hymn to Mithra (Yasht 10, the Mihr Yasht). Vermaseren states the difficulty of the whole field: for the Eastern Mithra “practically nothing except documentary evidence exists, whereas the Mithras of the Roman world is known to us almost exclusively from non-literary sources” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300, ch. 1 “Mithras in India and Iran”].

The Boghazköy treaty: a god sworn by kings

“In 1907 a large number of clay tablets was found in the palace archives of Boghazkoy”, Vermaseren writes. They “contain the first recorded mention of the name ‘Mitra'”, invoked “as the protector of a treaty between the Hatti (the Hittites) and their neighbours, the Mitanni”. The treaty belongs to the fourteenth century BC, and the last known reference to the Western Mithras falls in the fifth century AD, so “the god was revered for nearly two thousand years” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1]. Gershevitch gives the parties: the treaty “with the Hittite king Suppiluliumas was sworn in the early fourteenth century B.C. by Mattiwaza, an Indo-Iranian ruler of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni”. The five gods, “Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the two Nasatyas”, all “figure prominently in the Rig Veda”, and the cult “had very likely been in existence for a long period before” [Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, #60160, Introduction I “The earliest period”].

Ries quotes the cuneiform line mi-it-ra-as-si-il / a-ru-na-as-si-il / in-dar / na-sa-at-ti-ia-an-na. He reads the Hurrian ending -il as meaning “as a pair”, which places the couple Mitra-Varuna at the head of the list [Ries, Il Culto di Mithra, #38276, ch. 2 “Gli dei indiani di Mitanni”]. Campos Méndez reads the list through Dumézil’s three functions. On the first level are the sovereigns, “the all-powerful magician Varuna, and Mitra, the personified contract”; on the second, Indra “the strong god”; on the third, the Nasatya twins. He attributes the Vedic names to an Aryan chariot nobility that had entered the Hurrian monarchy, and sees in the royal oath “the relationship that from its origins was established between Mithra and kingship” [Campos Méndez, El Culto del Dios Mithra, #60243, ch. I.1; the catalogue wrongly lists Vaknin as author].

What the name means: treaty, contract, friend

Vermaseren renders Vedic Mitra “literally ‘treaty'” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1]. The modern debate starts with Meillet’s “Le dieu indo-iranien Mitra” (1907), which Campos Méndez credits with first making Mithra “the divinization of the contract”. He traces the word to an Indo-European root mei-, “union” but also “exchange”, from which the sense “friendship” could also come [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.1]. Ries reviews the later positions. Renou derived “Mitra = friend” from “Mitra = alliance”. Gonda warned against linking the god too closely to “alliance”. Varenne made Mitra “the personification of the contract and of the alliance”. Dumézil held that juridical contract and friendship were two late narrowings of an older idea of exchange. Merkelbach “holds that this notion of Bund, Vertrag… is very ancient”, and Ries also cites Thieme’s Mitra and Aryaman [Ries, #38276, chs. 1-2].

Moulton was “more than half convinced” by Meillet. He noted Sanskrit mitradruh “treacherous” beside Avestan miθro-druj “breaking a compact”, but suggested “a fusion of two originally independent conceptions”, one ethical and one elemental [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011, Lecture II “Before Zarathushtra”]. Gershevitch called Vedic mitra “friend” “a case of accidental homonymity”. To make Mithra “the Friend” would, he wrote, replace “a vivid and unmistakably characteristic identification of a god by a colourless description” [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction V “Mithra’s functions”]. Two other readings stand outside this philology. Debroy glosses that “Mitra is an aspect of the sun that presided over the day. Correspondingly, Varuna presided over the night” [Debroy, The Rig Veda, #82390]. Teeter, on his entheogen thesis, asserts that “Mitra is one of the hundred plus names of Soma in the Rig Veda and means ‘the friend of all men'” [Teeter, Amanita Muscaria, #63199].

Mitra in the Rig Veda: the junior sovereign

Mitra is mentioned more than two hundred times in the Rig Veda, yet Gershevitch calls the information “exasperatingly meagre”. Poets prefer the paired form mitrāvaruṇā, and hymns to Varuna alone number “hardly a dozen” (Macdonell). Only III.59 belongs to Mitra alone; in Geldner’s version: “He who calls himself Mitra [Friend] unites men; Mitra upholds earth and heaven; Mitra watches the peoples without closing his eyes.” Following Lüders, Gershevitch notes one difference: Varuna, god of the oath, dwells in the waters by which oaths were sworn, while Mitra seems to dwell in fire, “since pacts were presumably concluded in front of blazing fire” [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction I]. Griffith’s version keeps the paired address: “Our Sages, Mitra-Varuna, wide dominion, strong by birth, / Vouchsafe us strength that worketh well” (RV I.2.9) [Griffith (tr.), Four Vedas / Rig Veda, #42756].

Ries, following Dumézil, describes the pair as “contrast but not opposition”. In RV 1.115.5 the sun takes “this double form, one of Mitra, one of Varuna”, the bright and the dark. Mitra is “benevolent, friendly, reassuring”, and Varuna is the fearsome binder. Mitra’s epithet yātayajjana, “who brings people to agree”, places him “in the juridical domain”. In the ritual of the sacred furrow, the mythical cow is asked to yield “to Mitra and to Varuna, to Indra, to the Asvin gods”, which Ries takes as the Mitanni group surviving in Vedic cult [Ries, #38276, ch. 2]. Vermaseren adds that the sun is “the eye of Mitra and Varuna”, and that Mitra’s attendants Aryaman and Bhaga survive in Iran as Sraosha and Ashi [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1].

The Mihr Yasht: the grass-land magnate

Gershevitch dates the Avestan hymn to “approximately… the second half of the fifth century B.C.” and calls it “the one extensive ancient literary record” of the god. He renders the standing epithet vouru.gaoyaoiti- “grass-land magnate”. Ahura Mazdah opens the hymn: “When I created grass-land magnate Mithra, O Spitamid, I made him such in worthiness to be worshipped and prayed to as myself”. Stanza 2 states the law of the contract: “Never break a contract… whether you conclude it with an owner of Falsehood, or a Truth-owning follower of the good Religion; for the contract applies to both”. Mithra “has a thousand ears… ten thousand eyes… is strong, sleepless, (ever-)waking”, and “the heads of countries worship [him] as they go to the battlefield against the blood-thirsty enemy armies” (sts. 7-8). “Eight servants sit as watchers of the contract” (st. 45). He “grants favours at will” and grants grass-land (st. 60). He “dispenses fats and herds… gives power and sons… bestows life” (st. 65). He flies over the earth’s southern border with “good Sraosa” on his right and Rashnu on his left (sts. 99-100) [Gershevitch, #60160, Text and translation, sections 1-2, 9, 14, 16, 25].

Darmesteter, translating the same text for the Sacred Books of the East, judged: “This Yast, one of the longest of the Avesta and one of the most interesting in a literary point of view, is not very instructive for mythology. It consists of long descriptive pieces… and of fervent prayers and invocations for mercy or protection.” He held that “originally Mithra was the god of the heavenly light” [Darmesteter (tr.), The Zend-Avesta Part II, SBE 23, #60421, introduction to the Mihir Yast]. Gershevitch, by contrast, rejected Christensen’s division of the hymn into “original” and “Zoroastrian” layers. He argued that its 145 stanzas are grammatically uniform, “the work of one author, or small group of authors” [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction IV].

Contract, war, light: one god or several?

Gershevitch’s answer is that the noun miθra- “means ‘contract'” and that “Mithra’s original function is to watch over the contract, and nothing else.” The other functions grew from it. The sleepless watcher rises before the sun and so came to be seen as “the light of daybreak”. The guardian of a stable society gives sons, rain and pastures. The “punisher of wrong” against “defiant” countries “could hardly help resorting to war”, so the war-god is “not an original trait”, and Gershevitch denies that he inherited the warlike character of Indra. He calls the idea of an Avestan sky-god Mithra “a nineteenth-century myth” and places the full identification with the sun later, in Eastern Iran and Parthia [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction V].

Darmesteter’s “god of the heavenly light” stands on the other side, as does Johannes Hertel’s 1927 Die Sonne und Mithra im Awesta, which Gershevitch lists among the translations of Yasht 10 he argued against [Hertel, Die Sonne und Mithra im Awesta, #38270; Gershevitch, #60160, Abbreviations]. Moulton insisted Mithra “belongs to the night as well as the day”. He warned that “too many scholars have been in a hurry to antedate the ultimate identification of Mithra with the Sun”, while quoting Cumont that Chaldaean theology assimilated “Mithra to Shamash the god of the Sun” [Moulton, #55011, Lecture II]. Campos Méndez also derives the solar traits from Shamash, and records that Gnoli opposed Gershevitch’s position [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.1, n. 26]. Vermaseren states simply that Mithra was “a god of light, who in India was already regarded as the sun” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1].

The covenant as political order

The political point is in the sources themselves. For Gershevitch the “thousandfold contract between two countries” (st. 116) shows that Mithra “is the guarantor of orderly international relations, the god of the international treaty”. Rulers who keep or break treaties appease or incense other rulers through him (sts. 109, 111). He “smashes” faithless authorities (st. 18), and in Yasht 13.94 he will “further all supreme authorities… and pacify (the countries) that are in turmoil”. This concern with government made him “a maker, as well as undoer, of kings”. Gershevitch’s examples are Antiochus I’s monument at Nemrud Dagh and the Carnuntum dedication to Mithras as fautor imperii sui [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction V, VII]. Campos Méndez locates the root in tribal warrior society. The deified oath “found a direct beneficiary in the figure of the chief”, who gained “a divine ally in guaranteeing the fidelity of his warriors”. He notes that the Yasht calls Mithra lord of house, clan, tribe and country (Yt 10.17, 99) [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.1]. The chapters that follow trace this god of royal oaths through Achaemenid, Commagenian and Roman power.

Key points

• Vermaseren, Gershevitch, Ries and Campos Méndez agree that Mitra is first recorded in a 14th-century BC Hittite-Mitanni treaty from Boghazköy, found in 1907, as a divine guarantor beside Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas. Their exact dates vary; Teeter gives c. 1450 BC.
• Ries reads a Hurrian dual linking Mitra-Varuna. Campos Méndez, following Dumézil, sees sovereignty, force and fertility in three levels.
• Meillet’s “contract” thesis is accepted in different forms by Gershevitch, Dumézil, Varenne and Merkelbach. Moulton suspected a fusion of two concepts. Debroy calls Mitra the sun’s daytime aspect, and Teeter calls him a name of Soma.
• In the Rig Veda, Mitra appears mostly as Mitra-Varuna, has a single hymn of his own (III.59), and is the gentler partner of the binding Varuna.
• The Mihr Yasht, which Gershevitch dates to the late fifth century BC, shows a sleepless, thousand-eared, ten-thousand-eyed watcher of contracts. Heads of countries worship him before battle, and he gives herds, pastures and sons.
• Darmesteter thought the hymn “not very instructive for mythology”. Gershevitch used it to argue that contract is the only original function and that light, war and the sun came later. Darmesteter, Hertel and Cumont favoured a god of light.
• Gershevitch and Campos Méndez agree that the oath-god was from the outset a god of chiefs, kings and international treaties.