runa is the enveloping heaven;[70] that
is, in distinction from Dyaus, from whom he
differs _toto caelo_, so to speak, the invisible world, which embraces
the visible sky. His home is there where lives the Unborn, whose place
is unique, above the highest heaven.[71]

But it is exactly this loftiness of character that should make one shy
of interpreting Varuna as being originally the god that is presented
here. Can this god, 'most august of Vedic deities,' as Bergaigne and
others have called him, have belonged as such to the earliest stratum
of Aryan belief?

There are some twelve hymns in the Rig Veda in Varuna's honor. Of
these, one in the tenth book celebrates Indra as opposed to Varuna,
and generally it is considered late, in virtue of its content. Of the
hymns in the eighth book the second appears to be a later imitation of
the first, and the first appears, from several indications, to be of
comparatively recent origin.[72] In the seventh book (vii. 86-89) the
short final hymn contains a distinctly late trait in invoking Varuna
to cure dropsy; the one preceding this is _in majorem gloriam_ of the
poet Vasistha, fitly following the one that appears to be as new,
where not only the mysticism but the juggling with "thrice-seven,"
shows the character of the hymn to be recent.[73] In the first hymn of
this book the late doctrine of inherited sin stands prominently forth
(vii. 86. 5) as an indication of the time in which it was composed.
The fourth and sixth books have no separate hymns to Varuna. In the
fifth book the position of the one hymn to Varuna is one favorable to
spurious additions, but the hymn is not otherwise obnoxious to the
criticism of lateness. Of the two hymns in the second book, the first
is addressed only indirectly to Varuna, nor is he here very prominent;
the second (ii. 28) is the only song which stands on a par with the
hymn already translated. There remain the hymns cited above from the
first, not a family-book. It is, moreover, noteworthy that in ii. 28,
apart from the ascription of general greatness, almost all that is
said of Varuna is that he is a priest, that he causes rivers to flow,
and loosens the bond of sin.[74] The finest hymn to Varuna, from a
literary point of view, is the one translated above, and it is mainly
on the basis of this hymn that the lofty character of Varuna has been
interpreted by occidental writers. To our mind this hymn belongs to
the close of the first epoch of the