da_. These twin deities, Mitra and Varuna, measured out the span
of human life. They were the source of all heavenly gifts: they
regulated sun and moon, the winds and waters, and the seasons.[68]

These did the gods establish in royal power over themselves, because
they were wise and the children of wisdom, and because they excelled
in power.--_Prof. Arnold's trans. of Rigvedic Hymn_.

Mitra and Varuna were protectors of hearth and home, and they
chastised sinners. "In a striking passage of the _Mahabharata_" says
Professor Moulton, "one in which Indian thought comes nearest to the
conception of conscience, a kingly wrongdoer is reminded that the sun
sees secret sin."[69]

In Persian mythology Mitra, as Mithra, is the patron of Truth, and
"the Mediator" between heaven and earth[70]. This god was also
worshipped by the military aristocracy of Mitanni, which held sway for
a period over Assyria. In Roman times the worship of Mithra spread
into Europe from Persia. Mithraic sculptures depict the deity as a
corn god slaying the harvest bull; on one of the monuments "cornstalks
instead of blood are seen issuing from the wound inflicted with the
knife[71]". The Assyrian word "metru" signifies rain.[70] As a sky god
Mitra may have been associated, like Varuna, with the
waters above the firmament. Rain would therefore be
gifted by him as a fertilizing deity. In the Babylonian
Flood legend it is the sun god Shamash who "appointed
the time" when the heavens were to "rain destruction"
in the night, and commanded Pir-napishtim, "Enter into
the midst of thy ship and shut thy door". The solar
deity thus appears as a form of Anu, god of the sky and
upper atmosphere, who controls the seasons and the various
forces of nature. Other rival chiefs of city pantheons,
whether lunar, atmospheric, earth, or water deities, were
similarly regarded as the supreme deities who ruled the
Universe, and decreed when man should receive benefits
or suffer from their acts of vengeance.

It is possible that the close resemblances between Mithra and Mitra of
the Aryan-speaking peoples of India and the Iranian plateau, and the
sun god of the Babylonians--the Semitic Shamash, the Sumerian
Utu--were due to early contact and cultural influence through the
medium of Elam. As a solar and corn god, the Persian Mithra links with
Tammuz, as a sky and atmospheric deity with Anu, and as a god of
truth, righteousness, and law with Shamash. We seem to trace in the