Varuna

Let this paean to the Emperor of Order surpass in splendor every song that now exists. Mounted atop the amphibious beast called a makara, Varuna was one of the first asuras to set himself above and apart from his brethren. His mandate sets the rivers flowing down to the sea, swift as birds. His lasso binds up fear and anguish, debt overwhelming, and thieves in the night. He was the Devá’s first king before he ceded his throne to great Indra. Yet he remains present, his lasso in hand to cast towards those who would speak untruths.

What are we to think of his fall from primacy? Have the millions forgotten that he measured out the distance between the sky and earth with the primordial sun? During the war between Rama and Ravana, Varuna failed to answer Rama’s call to part the seas until Rama threatened to smite him with a cruel weapon, at which point Varuna revealed Ravana had enslaved him. It is all well and good that Varuna’s lot might be humility, but does it now ever cross the line into humiliation?

Varuna remains a symbol of a bygone time, a simpler time, when a Devá’s responsibilities were the sky and the seas, the sun and the earth, the primal forces that comprise the World’s basic functions. His avatars exemplify that foundational formlessness: They don’t look like a person with a job so much as a hulking, dripping-wet man staggering out of the nearest waterway, a rope in his hand. But while his sovereignty may have faded, he encourages his Scions to act out the lordly grace of their pantheon’s earliest history. They can still be kings of kings, shaping the world according to Varuna’s order and vanquishing lies with their regal gazes. Perhaps one of them will rise above this generation, as Indra over Varuna and Vishnu over Indra.