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gresses his laws. In many places mention is made of the bonds or nooses with which he seizes and punishes transgressors. Mitra and Varuna conjointly are spoken of in one passage as being barriers against falsehood, furnished with many nooses, which the hostile mortal cannot surmount; and, in another place, Indra and Varuna are described as binding with bonds not formed of rope. On the other hand, Varuna is said to be gracious even to him who has committed sin. He is the wise guardian of immortality, and a hope is held out that he and Yama, reigning in blessedness, shall be beheld in the next world by the righteous.'

"The attributes and functions ascribed to Varuna impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic deity."

The correspondence of Varuna with Ouranos has been already noted, but "the parallel will not hold in all points. There is not in the Vedic mythology any special relation between Varuna and Prithivi (the earth) as husband and wife, as there is between Ouranos and Gaia in the theogony of Hesiod; nor is Varuna represented in the Veda, as Ouranos is by the Greek poet, as the progenitor of Dyaus (Zeus), except in the general way in which he is said to have formed and to preserve heaven and earth" (Muir's Texts, v. 58). Manu also refers to Varuna

as "binding the guilty in fatal cords."

In the Puranas, Varuna is sovereign of the waters, and one of his accompaniments is a noose, which the Vedic deity also carried for binding offenders: this is called Naga-pāsa, Pulakānga, or Viswa-jit. His favourite resort is Pushpa-giri, ‘flower mountain,' and his city Vasudha-nagara or Sukhā. He also possesses an umbrella impermeable to water, formed of the hood of a cobra, and called Abhoga. The Vishnu Purana mentions an incident which shows a curious coincidence between Varuna and Neptune. At the marriage of the sage Richika, Varuna supplied him with the thousand fleet white horses which the bride's father had demanded of him. Varuna is also called Prachetas, Ambu-raja, Jala-pati, Kesa, lord of the waters;' Ud-dama, the surrounder;' Pasa-bhrit, the noose-carrier;' Viloma, Väri-loma, 'watery hair;' Yadah-pati, 'king of aquatic animals. His son is named Agasti.

VARUNĀNĪ, VARUNI. Wife of Varuna and goddess of

ocean.

VĀSAVA-DATTĀ—VASISHTHA.

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wine. She is said to have sprung from the churning of the The goddess of wine is also called Mada and Surā. VASANTA. Spring and its deified personification. VASANTA-SENĀ. The heroine of the drama called Mrichchhakati,the toy cart.'

VĀSAVA-DATTĀ. A princess of Ujjayini, who is the heroine of a popular story by Subandhu. The work has been printed by Dr. F. Hall in the Bibliotheca Indica. He considers it to have been written early in the seventh century. See Udayana.

VASISHTHA. 'Most wealthy.' A celebrated Vedic sage to whom many hymns are ascribed. According to Manu he was one of the seven great Rishis and of the ten Prajapatis. There was a special rivalry between him and the sage Viswamitra, who raised himself from the Kshatriya to the Brahman caste. Vasishtha was the possessor of a "cow of plenty," called Nandini, who had the power of granting him all things (vasu) he desired, hence his name. A law-book is attributed to him, or to another of the same name. Though Vasishtha is classed among the Prajapatis who sprang from Brahma, a hymn in the Rig-veda and the commentaries thereon assign him a different origin, or rather a second birth, and represent him and the sage Agastya to have sprung from Mitra and Varuna. The hymn says, "Thou, O Vasishtha, art a son of Mitra and Varuna, born a Brāhman from the soul of Urvasi. All the gods placed in the vessel thee the drop which had fallen through divine contemplation." The comment on this hymn says, "When these two Adityas (Mitra and Varuna) beheld the Apsaras Urvasi at a sacrifice their seed fell from them. . . . It fell on many places, into a jar, into water, and on the ground. The Muni Vasishtha was produced on the ground, while Agastya was born in the jar.”

...

There is a peculiar hymn attributed to Vasishtha in the Rigveda (Wilson, iv. 121), beginning "Protector of the dwelling," which the commentators explain as having been addressed by him to a house-dog which barked as he entered the house of Varuna by night to obtain food after a three days' fast. By it the dog was appeased and put to sleep, "wherefore these verses are to be recited on similar occasions by thieves and burglars."

In the same Veda and in the Aitareya Brahmana, Vasishtha appears as the family priest of King Sudas, a position to which his rival Viswamitra aspired. This is amplified in the Malia

bharata, where he is not the priest of Sudās but of his son Kalmasha-pāda, who bore the patronymie Saudāsa. It is said that his rival Viswamitra was jealous, and wished to have this office for himself, but the king preferred Vasishtha. Vasishtha had a hundred sons, the eldest of whom was named Saktri. He, meeting the king in the road, was ordered to get out of the way; but he civilly replied that the path was his, for by the law a king must cede the way to a Brahman. The king struck him with a whip, and he retorted by cursing the king to become a man-eater. Viswamitra was present, but invisible, and he maliciously commanded a man-devouring Rakshasa to enter the king. So the king became a man-eater, and his first victim was Saktri. The same fate befell all the hundred sons, and Vasishtha's grief was boundless. He endeavoured to destroy himself in various ways. He cast himself from the top of Mount Meru, but the rocks he fell upon were like cotton. He passed through a burning forest without harm. He threw himself into the sea with a heavy stone tied to his neck, but the waves cast him on dry land. He plunged into a river swollen by rain, but although he had bound his arms with cords, the stream loosened his bonds and landed him unbound (vipása) on its banks. From this the river received the name of Vipasā (Byas). He threw himself into another river full of alligators, but the river rushed away in a hundred directions, and was consequently called Sata-dru (Sutlej). Finding that he could not kill himself, he returned to his hermitage, and was met in the wood by King Kalmāsha-pāda, who was about to devour him, but Vasishtha exorcised him and delivered him from the curse he had borne for twelve years. The sage then directed the king to return to his kingdom and pay due respect to Brāhmans. Kalmasha-pāda begged Vasishtha to give him offspring. He promised to do so, and "being solicited by the king to beget an heir to the throne, the queen became pregnant by him and brought forth a son at the end of twelve years."

Another legend in the Maha-bharata represents Viswamitra as commanding the river Saraswati to bring Vasishtha, so that he might kill him. By direction of Vasishtha the river obeyed the command, but on approaching Viswamitra, who stood ready armed, it promptly carried away Vasishtha in another direction.

The enmity of Vasishtha and Viswamitra comes out very

strongly in the Ramayana. Viswamitra ruled the earth for many thousand years as king, but he coveted the wondrous cow of plenty which he had seen at Vasishtha's hermitage, and attempted to take her away by force. A great battle followed between the hosts of King Viswamitra and the warriors produced by the cow to support her master. A hundred of Viswamitra's sons were reduced to ashes by the blast of Vasishtha's mouth, and Viswamitra being utterly defeated, he abdicated and retired to the Himalaya. The two met again after an interval and fought in single combat. Viswamitra was again worsted by the Brahmanical power, and "resolved to work out his own elevation to the Brahmanical order," so as to be upon an equality with his rival. He accomplished his object and became a priest, and Vasishtha suffered from his power. The hundred sons of Vasishtha denounced Viswamitra for presuming, though a Kshatriya, to act as a priest. This so incensed Viswamitra that he "by a curse doomed the sons of Vasishtha to be reduced to ashes and reborn as degraded outcasts for seven hundred births." Eventually, "Vasishtha, being propitiated by the gods, became reconciled to Viswamitra, and recognised his claim to all the prerogatives of a Brahman Rishi, and Viswamitra paid all honour to Vasishtha.

A legend in the Vishnu Purāna represents Vasishtha as being requested by Nimi, a son of Ikshwaku, to officiate at a sacrifice which was to last for a thousand years. The sage pleaded a prior engagement to Indra for five hundred years, but offered to come at the end of that period. The king made no remark, and Vasishtha, taking silence as assent, returned as he had proposed. He then found that Nimi had engaged the Rishi Gautama to perform the sacrifice, and this so angered him that he cursed the king to lose his corporeal form. Nimi retorted the curse, and in consequence "the vigour of Vasishtha entered into the vigour of Mitra and Varuna. Vasishtha, however, received from them another body when their seed had fallen from them at the sight of Urvasi.”

In the Markandeya Purāna he appears as the family priest of Haris-chandra. He was so incensed at the treatment shown to that monarch by Viswamitra, that he cursed that sage to be transformed into a crane. His adversary retorted by dooming him to become another bird, and in the forms of two monstrous

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birds they fought so furiously that the course of the universe was disturbed, and many creatures perished. Brahma at length put an end to the conflict by restoring them to their natural forms and compelling them to be reconciled.

According to the Vishnu Purana, Vasishtha had for wife Ūrja, one of the daughters of Daksha, and by her he had seven sons. The Bhagavata Purana gives him Arundhati for wife. The Vishnu Purana also makes him the family priest "of the house of Ikshwaku;" and he was not only contemporary with Ikshwāku himself, but with his descendants down to the sixtyfirst generation. "Vasishtha, according to all accounts (says Dr. Muir), must have been possessed of a vitality altogether superhuman," for it appears that the name Vasishtha is "used not to denote merely a person belonging to a family so called, but to represent the founder of the family himself as taking part in the transactions of many successive ages.'

"It is clear that Vasishtha, although he is frequently designated in post-vedic writings as a Brahman, was, according to some authorities, not really such in any proper sense of the word, as in the accounts which are given of his birth he is declared to have been either a mind-born son of Brahma, or the son of Mitra and Varuna and the Apsaras Urvasī, or to have had some other supernatural origin" (Muir, i. 337). Vasishtha's descendants are called Vasishthas and Vashkalas.

VĀSTOSH-PATI. House protector.' One of the later gods of the Veda, represented as springing from Brahma's dalliance with his daughter. He was the protector of sacred rites and guardian of houses.

VASU. The Vasus are a class of deities, eight in number, chiefly known as attendants upon Indra. They seem to have been in Vedic times personifications of natural phenomena. They are Apa (water), Dhruva (pole-star), Soma (moon), Dhara (earth), Anila (wind), Anala (fire), Prabhasa (dawn), and Pratyusha (light). According to the Ramayana they were children

of Aditi.

VASU-DEVA. Son of Sura, of the Yadava branch of the Lunar race. He was father of Krishna, and Kunti, the mother of the Pandava princes, was his sister. He married seven daughters of Āhuka, and the youngest of them, Devaki, was the mother of Krishna, After the death of Krishna and Bala