the way of trade
or otherwise. This explains the still surviving relationship as it is
found in later hymns and in thank-offerings apparently involving
Iranian personages.

They that believe in a monotheistic Varuna-cult preceding the Vedic
polytheism must then ignore the following facts: The Slavic equivalent
of Bhaga and the Teutonic equivalent of V[=a]ta are to these
respective peoples their highest gods. They had no Varuna. Moreover,
there is not the slightest proof that Ouranos in Greece[25] was ever a
god worshipped as a great god before Zeus, nor is there any
probability that to the Hindu Dyaus Pitar was ever a great god, in the
sense that he ever had a special cult as supreme deity. He is
physically great, and physically he is father, as is Earth mother, but
he is religiously great only in the Hellenic-Italic circle, where
exists no Uranos-cult[26]. Rather is it apparent that the Greek raised
Zeus, as did the Slav Bhaga, to his first head of the pantheon. Now
when one sees that in the Vedic period Varuna is the type of
[=A]dityas, to which belong Bhaga and Mitra as distinctly less
important personages, it is plain that this can mean only that Varuna
has gradually been exalted to his position at the expense of the other
gods. Nor is there perfect uniformity between Persian and Hindu
conceptions. Asura in the Veda is not applied to Varuna alone. But in
the Avesta, Ahura is the one great spirit, and his six spirits are
plainly a protestant copy and modification of Varuna and his six
underlings. This, then, can mean--which stands in concordance with the
other parallels between the two religions--only that Zarathustra
borrows the Ahura idea from the Vedic Aryans at a time when Varuna was
become superior to the other gods, and when the Vedic cult is
established in its second phase[27]. To this fact points also the
evidence that shows how near together geographically were once the
Hindus and Persians. Whether one puts the place of separation at the
Kabul or further to the north-west is a matter of indifference. The
Persians borrow the idea of Varuna Asura, whose eye is the sun. They
spiritualize this, and create an Asura unknown to other nations.

Of von Bradke's attempt to prove an original Dyaus Asura we have said
nothing, because the attempt has failed signally. He imagines that the
epithet Asura was given to Dyaus in the Indo-Iranian period, and that
from a Dyaus Pitar Asura the Iranians made an abstract Asura, w