The winds are his breath, the sun his eye, the sky his garment. He
rewards the good and punishes the wicked. Yet to the truly penitent he
is merciful. It is absolutely confounding to pass from a hymn that
celebrates the serene majesty and awful purity of Varuna to one filled
with measureless laudations of Soma or Agni. Could conceptions of
divinity so incongruous co-exist? That they could not spring up in the
same mind, or even in the same age, is abundantly manifest. And, as we
have mentioned, the loftier conceptions of divinity are unquestionably
the earlier. It is vain to speak, as certain writers do, of religion
gradually refining itself, as a muddy stream can run itself pure;
Hinduism resembles the Ganges, which, when it breaks forth from its
mountain cradle at Hardwar, is comparatively pellucid, but, as it rolls
on, becomes more and more muddy, discolored, and unclean.[5]

[Sidenote: Indra.
His achievements.]
Various scholars affirm that Varuna, in more ancient pre-Vedic times,
held a position still higher than the very high one which he still
retains. This is probable; indeed, it is certain that, before later
divinities had intruded, he held a place of unrivaled majesty. But, in
the Vedas, Indra is a more conspicuous figure. He corresponds to the
Jupiter Pluvius of the Romans. In north-western India, after the burning
heat, the annual return of the rains was hailed with unspeakable joy; it
was like life succeeding death. The clouds that floated up from the
ocean were at first thin and light; ah! a hostile demon was in them,
carrying off the healing waters and not permitting them to fall; but the
thunder-bolt of Indra flashed; the demon was driven away howling, and
the emancipated streams refreshed the thirsty earth. Varuna was not
indeed dethroned, but he was obscured, by the achievements of the
warlike Indra; and the supersensuous, moral conceptions that were