ORIENTAL SERIES.

338
VARUNAVARUNANL
gresses his laws. In many places mention is made of the bonds
or nooses with which he seizes and punishes transgressors.
Mitra and Yaruwa 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 Yaruwa are described as binding with bonds
not formed of rope. On the other hand, Yaruwa 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 ho and
Yama, reigning in blessedness, shall be beheld in the next world
by the "
righteous.
" The attributes and functions ascribed to Yaruwa impart to
his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that
attributed to any other Yedic deity."
The correspondence of Yaruwa with Ouranos has been already
noted, but " the parallel will not hold in all points. There is
not in the Yedic mythology any special relation between
Yaruwa and Pnthivi (the earth) as husband and wife, as there
is between Ouranos and Gaia in the theogony of Hesiod ; nor is
Yaruwa represented in the Yeda, 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 Yaruwa
as "binding the guilty in fatal cords."
In the Puranas, Yaruwa is sovereign of the waters, and one
of his accompaniments is a noose, which the Yedic deity also
carried for binding offenders : this is called Naga-pasa, Pula-
kanga, or '
Yiswa-jit. His favourite resort is Pushpa-giri, flower
mountain/ and his city Yasudha-nagara or Sukha. He also
possesses an umbrella impermeable to water, formed of the hood
of a cobra, and called Abhoga. The Yishwu Purawa mentions
an incident which shows a curious coincidence between Yaruwa
and Neptune. At the marriage of the sage jRichika, Yaruwa
supplied him with the thousand fleet white horses which the
bride's father had demanded of him. Yaruwa is also called
Prachetas, Ambu-raja, Jala-pati, Kesa, 'lord of the waters;'
Ud-dama, ' the surrounder ;
'
Pasa-bhnt, '
'
the noose-carrier ;
Yiloma, Yari-loma, '
watery hair '
; Yada/i-pati, (
animals. His son is named Agasti
king of aquatic
VAETTJVAN1, YAKlLtVI Wife of Yaruwa and goddess ol