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 three which the hymns represent.  That it cannot be very early is evident from the mention of the intercalated month, not to speak of the image of Varuna eating the sweet oblation ‘like a priest.’  Its elevated language is in sharp contrast to that of almost all the other Varuna hymns.  As these are all the hymns where Varuna is praised alone by himself, it becomes of chief importance to study him here, and not where, as in iii. 62, iv. 41, vi. 51, 67, 68, and elsewhere, he is lauded as part of a combination of gods (Mitra or Indra united with Varuna).  In the last book of the Rig Veda there is no hymn to Varuna,[75] a time when pantheistic monotheism was changing into pantheism, so that, in the last stage of the Rig Veda, Varuna is descended from the height.  Thereafter he is god and husband of waters, and punisher of secret sin (as in ii. 28).  Important in contrast to the hymn translated above is v. 85.