creator and father of the gods;[3] the king of gods and men;[4] all
creatures are in his hand. It is surely extraordinary that the Aryas
could apply such hyperbolical laudations to the liquor which they had
made to trickle into the vat, and which they knew to be the juice of a
plant they had cut down on the mountains and pounded in a mortar; and
that intoxication should be confounded with inspiration. Yet of such
aberrations we know the human mind is perfectly capable.

[Sidenote: Connection with Persian, Greek, and Roman systems.
Varuna, the god of heaven.
The sublimity of the Vedic description of him.]
We have first referred to Agni and Soma, as being the only divinities of
highest rank which still retain their physical character. The worship
paid to them was of great antiquity; for it is also prescribed in the
Persian Avesta, and must have been common to the Indo-Iranian branch of
the Aryan race before the Hindus entered India. But we can inferentially
go still further back and speak of a deity common to the Greeks, Romans,
Persians, and Hindus. This deity is Varuna, the most remarkable
personality in the Veda. The name, which is etymologically connected
with [Greek: Ouranos], signifies "the encompasser," and is applied to
heaven--especially the all-encompassing, extreme vault of heaven--not
the nearer sky, which is the region of cloud and storm. It is in
describing Varuna that the Veda rises to the greatest sublimity which it
ever reaches. A mysterious presence, a mysterious power, a mysterious
knowledge amounting almost to omniscience, are ascribed to Varuna. The
winkings of men's eyes are numbered by him. He upholds order, both
physical and moral, throughout the universe.

[Sidenote: Contrast with the laudations of Agni and Soma.
The loftier conceptions of divinity the earlier.]