God Varuna in Rigveda

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Varuna is the creator of heaven and earth. He fixed the earth and sky asunder, lifting up the spacious vault of heaven and spreading the earth out beneath. The great- ness of Varuna is revealed in creation.

Varuna's attributes are wisdom, greatness, creative power, sovereignty, holiness (manifesting itself in wrath on account of sin), and mercy, when the sinner is penitent.

But Varuna not only forgives sin, but also gives wisdom to the simple, i. e. enables them to learn wisdom through experience of the fetters of sin; and then he restores worldly prosperity.

Varuna cannot be identified with the heaven, for the three heavens are in him. A magnificent statement of the transcendence of Varuna. He is the Container, not the contained.

Whatever contribution India has made to the world's good in the past has been along the line of her own specific endowment. So will it be in the future. Whatever may be the permanent value of the metaphysical conclusions to which the sages of ancient India attained, the type and attitude of mind which formulated the conclusions is, even more valuable than the conclusions formulated.

The awakening of Asia ought to mean, in the long run, an awakening of that spiritual instinct, that religious creativeness, by which in the past the whole world has been enriched.

This lecture is a paper read before the Society of comparative Theology and Philosophy of the Cornell University, in 1910.

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