The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

500 Hymns of the Atris
Mitra and Varuna and the high level of Agni. Agni is the lord
of that vast substance of riches and perfected enjoyment; he
lavishes on us those abundances. O Dawn, voice of the Truth,
queen of plenitude, bring to us the many desirable boons, thou
who hast in thee all their plenty. To that goal may Savitri, Bhaga,
Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Indra move aright for us with riches
of our felicity.”
VARUNA
We have the word Varuna from a root which means to surround,
cover or pervade. From these significances of the name there
emerged before the poetic eye of the ancient mystics the images
that are our nearest concrete representation of the Infinite. They
saw God as a highest covering Heaven, felt divine existence
like an encompassing ocean, lived in its boundless presence as
in a pure and pervading ether. Varuna is this highest heaven,
this soul-surrounding ocean, this ethereal possession and infinite
pervasion.
The same root had given them an appellation for the dark
Coverer, the adversary Vritra; for to obstruct and resist, screen
or hedge, besiege and hem in are also some of its many kindred
senses. But dark Vritra is the thick cloud and the enveloping
shadow. His knowledge — for he too has a knowledge, a Maya,
— is the sense of limited being and the hiding away in subconscient
Night all the rest of the rich and vast existence that should
be ours, and for this negation and contrary power of creative
knowledge he stands up stiffly against the Gods, — his undivine
right against the divine right of God and man. Varuna by his
wide being and ample vision rolls back these limits; surrounding
us with light his possession reveals what dark Vritra’s obsession
had withheld and obscured. His godhead is the form or spiritual
image of an embracing and illuminating Infinity.
For this reason the physical figure of Varuna is much less
definite than the burning Fire or the radiant Sun or the luminous
Dawn. The old commentators thought strangely enough that he
was the God of Night. In the Puranas he is the deity of the waters