Varuna in the Rigveda

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Varuṇa: The Cosmic Sovereign of the Ṛgveda

Among the deities of the Ṛgveda, Varuṇa stands as one of the most sublime and philosophical. While Indra thunders with conquest and Agni blazes with sacrificial fire, Varuṇa reigns silently yet irresistibly, as the custodian of ṛta—the cosmic order that binds gods, humans, and the universe itself. He is not a tribal chieftain elevated to divine status, nor a mere atmospheric power, but rather a sovereign principle through whom the Vedic mind glimpsed the unfathomable lawfulness of reality. If we seek the moment when Indo-European religion moved from myth into metaphysics, we find it in the hymns to Varuṇa.

The Vedic poets describe him as the one who embraces three heavens and three earths[2], who knows the paths of birds, the flowing of rivers, and even the truth or falsehood in men’s hearts[3]. This is not nature-worship in a primitive sense, but the dawning awareness of an omniscient principle, an all-seeing witness whose pāśa (noose) represents the invisible bond between moral act and cosmic consequence. In this sense, Varuṇa anticipates the later concept of divine justice, yet without the anthropocentric narrowness that characterizes later religious moralism. His law is not imposed but intrinsic—ṛta itself.

Varuṇa’s Majesty and the Historical Mind

It is easy for modern readers, schooled in the Paurāṇic imagination where Varuṇa dwindles into a god of seas, to overlook the grandeur of his Vedic presence. In the Ṛgveda, Varuṇa is no watery Neptune but the very architect of order, setting the sun’s path[15], breathing through the wind[16], and measuring out the heavens with his māyā[12]. His golden palace with a thousand doors[8] is not merely a cosmic dwelling; it is the image of a universe open on all sides to truth, where no act escapes the gaze of the divine.

Historically, this figure reflects the moralization of religion. In a world of tribal conflict, where strength was often the measure of right, the Vedic seers intuited something higher: that the very fabric of existence insists on truthfulness (satya) and adherence to law (vrata). Varuṇa’s “spies”[9] are not secret police but the stirrings of conscience, those inner witnesses that modern psychology recognizes as moral awareness. Thus Varuṇa is not only a god of the sky—he is the first articulation of ethical monism in Indian thought.

Form and Symbolism

Varuṇa’s attributes reinforce his role as sovereign of order. His sun-as-eye imagery[5] presents him as the ultimate witness, while his fetters (pāśa)[22] remind us that guilt is itself a chain binding the soul. His ability to loosen these fetters[23] prefigures the later theological dialectic of sin and forgiveness: the cosmos punishes, yet the same cosmic principle heals when one realigns with truth. This is not arbitrary divine caprice but the law of life itself: the bondage is our own dissonance with ṛta, the release is reconciliation with it.

His dominion over waters[19] and rains[21] too must be read symbolically. Water in Vedic thought is not only physical but also the bearer of life and truth. To say that Varuṇa wears the waters as a robe[20] is to say that he clothes himself in purity, renewal, and continuity. Where the Paurāṇas later confine him to the oceans, the Ṛgveda envisions him as the fountainhead of cosmic waters—the currents of order that irrigate both the stars above and the conscience within.

Varuṇa and Mitra: Complementary Powers

In his frequent pairing with Mitra, we see two aspects of law: the outward contract of society and the inward covenant of the soul. Mitra governs friendship and alliance, but Varuṇa governs conscience and sovereignty. Later texts diminished this balance by splitting their realms—Mitra by day, Varuṇa by night—yet the Ṛgveda knew no such division. Order is indivisible: light and darkness alike fall under the same gaze of the cosmic king.

Decline and Transformation

As Indian religion evolved, Varuṇa’s stature dimmed. The Brāhmaṇas began to confine him to night, and by the time of the epics and Purāṇas, he was reduced to a maritime deity, lord of the western quarter, wielding a serpent noose like a regional official. But to read the Ṛgveda with fresh eyes is to see how impoverished such reduction is. For here is a god who prefigures philosophy itself: the realization that even the gods are subject to law[13], and that law is nothing other than the truth of existence.

Philosophical and Spiritual Significance

What does Varuṇa teach us today? In a world of ecological imbalance, moral relativism, and human estrangement from cosmic rhythms, Varuṇa’s voice resounds with fresh urgency. He tells us that freedom is not license but alignment with order; that forgiveness is possible because the cosmos itself bends toward harmony; that every act, seen or unseen, enters into the golden ledger of ṛta. If Indra is the god we invoke in battle, Varuṇa is the god we face in silence, when conscience whispers and the stars themselves seem to testify.

Thus, to defend the Rigvedic vision is not antiquarian nostalgia but spiritual realism. Varuṇa is not a relic of “primitive animism,” as colonial scholars once caricatured, but the profound voice of a civilization that perceived unity where others saw chaos, order where others saw chance, conscience where others saw only power. To remember Varuṇa is to remember that truth itself is divine, and that the path of ṛta is not only the way of the cosmos but also the way of the human soul.

References (Ṛgvedic verse citations)

  1. RV 1.24 — Varuṇa’s immeasurable might; birds and rivers cannot reach its limit.
  2. RV 7.87.5; 8.41.1,7 — “Three heavens and three earths are deposited in him”; he embraces all beings.
  3. RV 1.25.7–11; 7.49.3 — Knows flight of birds, course of wind; witnesses truth and falsehood.
  4. RV 7.88.2; 5.64 — Anthropomorphic acts (moves arms, walks, sits, drinks).
  5. RV 1.115.1; 7.34 — The sun as eye of Mitra-Varuṇa; Varuṇa thousand-eyed/far-seeing.
  6. RV 1.25.13; 5.62.4; 7.64.1; 4.41.3 — Golden mantle; “robe of ghee”; drinking Soma.
  7. RV 1.122.15; 5.62.7 — Varuṇa’s shining car with thongs, seat, whip, well-yoked steeds.
  8. RV 5.67.2; 1.136.2; 5.68.5; 2.41.5; 7.88.5; 7.60.3; 1.152.4; 10.14 — Golden abode; thousand-column seat; sun reports deeds; Fathers behold Varuṇa.
  9. RV 1.24.13; 7.87.3; 7.61.3; 6.67.5; 8.47.11 — Varuṇa’s spies encircling and observing.
  10. RV 10.115 — Golden-winged messenger (dūta) of Varuṇa (identified with the sun).
  11. RV 10.132.4; 2.27.10; 5.85.3; 7.87.6 — Varuṇa as king of gods and men; universal monarch; kṣatra, asura.
  12. RV 5.85.5; 3.61.7; 5.63.4,7; 6.48.14; 7.28.4; 10.147.5 — Varuṇa’s māyā: measuring earth with the sun, sending dawns, making sun traverse the sky, bringing rain; epithets of māyin.
  13. RV 8.41.7; 5.69.4; 1.23.5 — Fixed ordinances; Mitra-Varuṇa as lords/upholders of ṛta and light.
  14. RV 5.85 — Fire in waters, sun in sky, Soma on rock (cosmic placements).
  15. RV 1.24; 7.37; 7.60.4 — “Wide path” for the sun; opening paths.
  16. RV 5.62.1; 7.87.2 — Order where the sun’s steeds are loosed; the wind as Varuṇa’s breath.
  17. RV 1.24.10–11; 8.41.3 — Moon and stars by Varuṇa’s ordinances; “embracing the nights” and establishing mornings.
  18. RV 1.25.8; 7.66.11 — Knowledge of the twelve months; disposing autumn, month, day and night.
  19. RV 2.28.4; 5.85.6; 7.64.2 — Rivers streaming by his ordinance; rivers do not fill the ocean; lords of rivers.
  20. RV 1.161.14; 8.41.8; 7.49.3; 9.90.2; 8.80.11–12 — Oceanic/watery movement; “hidden ocean” in heaven; clothing himself in waters.
  21. RV 5.85.3–4; 5.68.5; 5.69.2; 3.62.16; 8.25 — Inverted cask (cloud) pouring rain; rainy skies and honeyed streams.
  22. RV 7.86.3–4; 1.24.15; 6.74.4; 10.85.24; 7.65.3; 7.84.2 — Varuṇa’s fetters/noose; barriers against falsehood; bonds “not of rope.”
  23. RV 1.122.9; 2.28.5; 5.85.7; 7.86.5; 1.25.1; 7.89.5 — Disease for neglect; loosening/removing sin; remission of one’s and fathers’ sins; daily transgressor spared; sins of thoughtlessness forgiven.
  24. RV 1.149; 1.24–25; 7.88.4–6; 8.42.2; 10.14.7 — Hundred/thousand remedies; power over life; friendship with worshipper; guardian of immortality; hope to see Varuṇa with Yama.

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