Varanasi

“ He who should leap over the sky and beyond it, would not escape the king Varuna: he has his spies, the spies of the heavens, who go through the world; he has his thousand eyes which look on the earth. The king Varuna sees everything, all that which is between the two worlds and beyond them: he reckons the winking of the eye of all creatures: The world is in his hand like the dice in the hand of the gamester. Let thy sevenfold bands, O Varuna, let thy bands of wrath which are thrice linked together, let them enfold the man with a lying tongue, let them leave free the man with a truthful tongue! ”

“ As Varuna became gradually greatest, so did Indra in turn. But Varuna was a philosopher's god, not a warrior's; and Varuna was not double and mystical. So even the priest (Agni) leaves Varuna, and with the warrior takes more pleasure in his twin Indra; of him making an All-god, a greatest god. Varuna is passive; Indra is energetic; but Indra does not struggle for his lordship. Inspired by soma, he smites, triumphs, punishes. Victor already, he descends upon his enemies and with a blow destroys them. It is rarely that he feels the effect of battle; he never doubts its issue. ”

“ Strike us not, Varuna, with those dread weapons which, Asura, at thy bidding wound the sinner. Let us not pass away from light to exile. Scatter, that we may live, the men who hate us 8. O mighty Varuna, now and hereafter, even as of old, will we speak forth our worship. For in thyself, invincible God, thy statutes never to be moved are fixed as on a mountain. 9. Move far from me what sins I have committed: let me not suffer, King, for guilt of others. Full many a morn remains to dawn upon us: in these, O Varuna, while we live direct us. ”

“ Deliver us from the sins committed in our persons. royal Varuna! deliver Vasishtha, like a calf from its tether, like a thief who has feasted on a stolen animal.
"O Varuna! all this sin is not wilfully committed by us. Error or wine, anger or dice, or even thoughtlessness, has begotten sin. Even an elder brother leads his younger astray; sin is begotten even in our dreams.
"Freed from sin, I will faithfully serve, as a slave, the Varuna who fulfils our wishes and supports us. We are ignorant, may the Arya god bestow on us knowledge. ”

“ It is by Varuna's power that they stand firm. He has established the sun 'like a tree,' i.e., like a support, and 'made a path for it.' [63] He has a thousand remedies for ills; to his realm not even the birds can ascend, nor wind or swift waters attain. It is in accordance with the changeless order [64] of Varuna that the stars and the moon go their regular course; he gives long life and releases from harm, from wrong, and from sin. [65]
Varuna is the most exalted of those gods whose origin is physical. His realm is all above us; the sun and stars are his eyes ”

“ Varuna has extended air in trees, strength in horses, milk in cows, and has laid wisdom in hearts; fire in water; the sun in the sky; soma in the stone. Varuna has inverted his water-barrel and let the two worlds with the space between flow (with rain) . With this (heavenly water-barrel) he, the king of every created thing, wets the whole world, as a rain does a meadow. He wets the world, both earth and heaven, when he, Varuna, chooses to milk out (rain) —and then do the mountains clothe themselves with cloud, and even the strongest men grow weak. ”

“ VARUNA, in early Hindu mythology, the greatest, with Indra, of the gods of the Rig Veda. He is invoked with his double Mitra in some dozen hymns. As contrasted with Indra the war god, Varuna is the lord of the natural laws, the up- holder of the physical and moral order of the universe. His power is limitless, his anger at wrong-doing unassuageable, and he is omniscient. He makes the sunshine; the wind is his breath; river valleys are hollowed out at his command. Unlike Indra, Varuna has no myths related of him. ”

“ Both the idea and the name of Varuna as a god of sky were known to the ancestors of the Aryan nations before the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians separated. In that remote period Varuna was the highest and holiest of the gods, and represented the spiritual aspect of religion. After the separation had taken place, this deity of righteousness was translated in Iran into Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity, while to the Hindu Varuna the Vedic bard sang:—
"O Varuna! the birds that fly have not attained thy power or thy vigour; the water which flows ceaselessly and the moving wind do not surpass thy speed. ”

“ Varnians, Varinians, means "defenders," and the protection here referred to can be none other than that given to the journeying divinities of light when they have reached the western horizon. According to Helge Hjorvardson's saga, Hate, who pursues the moon, is slain near Varin's Bay. Varinn, the "defender," "protector," is the singular form of the same word as reappears in the genitive plural Varna. These expressions—Billing veold Vernum, Varna vidr, and Varins vik—are to be considered as belonging together. ”

“ There was a pause, and then a loud shout.
Sir Francis Varney paid no attention to this summons, but sat, motionless, on the house-top, where he could hear all that passed below in the crowd.
"He will not come out," said one.
"Ah! he's much too cunning to be caught in such a trap. Why, he knows what you would do with him; he knows you would stake him, and make a bonfire about him."
"So he has no taste for roasting," remarked another; "but still, it's no use hiding; we have too many hands, and know the house too well to be easily baffled." ”

“ Varney had not before called upon the Lord for twenty years. To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense of his dependence and helplessness. The lighted candle was a more subjugating weapon than a drawn sword. He had contemplated springing upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it. ”

“ Varna is such a town as only could have been devised by a nomadic race aping the habits of civilized nations. If the lanes are not so ill-paved, so rugged, and so painful to the pedestrian as those of Gallipoli; if they are not so crooked and jagged and tortuous; if they are not so complicated and fantastically devious, it is only because nature has set the efforts of man at defiance, and has forbidden the Turk to render a town built upon a surface nearly level as unpleasant to perambulate as one founded on a hill-side. ”

“ There is but one plan—Sir Francis Varney must be found, and put out of the world in such a manner that he can't come back to it again; and all those who are dead that we have any suspicion of, should be taken up out of their graves and looked at, to see if they're rotting or not ”

“ It was, indeed, a hair-brained expedition, for whether Sir Francis Varney was really so awful and preternatural a being as so many concurrent circumstances would seem to proclaim, or not, he was not a likely being to allow himself to be conquered by anyone individual, let his powers or his courage be what they might. ”

“ The sounds that came upon the night air seemed to say that there was an unusual bustle in the town, which was, to Sir Francis Varney, ominous in the extreme.
What could people in such a quiet, retired place require out at such an hour at night? It must be something very unusual—something that must excite them to a great degree; and Sir Francis began to feel very uneasy.
"They surely," he muttered to himself—"they surely cannot have found out my hiding place, and intend to hunt me from it, the blood-thirsty hounds! they are never satisfied. ”

“ The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in view of the Cherokees' relish of the torture his manifestations of anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy. It brought, too, a fuller realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so valiantly risk himself. He evidently intended to take the trader's life, but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the Cherokee nation. ”

“ Admiral Bell can't do anything in the dark. No, no, d——e! all must be above board."
"Gentlemen," said Sir Francis Varney, "you see the dilemma I am in. Your principals have both challenged me. I am ready to fight any one, or both of them, as the case may be. Distinctly understand that; because it is a notion of theirs that I will not do so, or that I shrink from them; but I am a stranger in this neighbourhood, and have no one whom I could call upon to relinquish so much, as they run the risk of doing by attending me to the field." ”

“ It is strange how suddenly any mob will obey any impulse, and this perfectly groundless supposition was sufficient to turn their steps back again in the direction whence they came, and they had actually, in a straggling sort of column, reached halfway towards the town, when they encountered a boy, whose professional pursuit consisted in tending sheep very early of a morning, and who at once informed them that he had seen Sir Francis Varney in the wood, half way between Bannerworth Hall and his own home. ”

“ His departure quite staggered all the inhabitants of Varenne.
No sooner had he set foot on the shores of the States than he felt an irresistible inclination to take his big hat and his big sword and go off all alone through the woods, as he had been accustomed to do in his own country. His conscience, however, prevented him from quitting his master after having pledged himself to serve him. He had calculated that fortune would help him, and fortune did. ”

“ Varney said coolly. "Your father was a man of courage, as I found out for myself in his last painful illness. You had pluck enough as a boy; you'd have it again now if you dropped your champagne. Wash yourself well, and make yourself look as respectable as possible. We are going downstairs."
"What, like this!" the king cried in dismay. "In a uniform that is far too big——"
"Nothing of the kind. There is a change coming for you from your hotel. My confidential servant is seeing to it, and he will be here presently. With clean clothes and linen and an order or two you will be a passable king yet. ”

“ The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to men like me—but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature; in the end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children furnish the best example I have run across—you've never been to Rimarutu, I fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've never heard of Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning, unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with his exceptional temperament ”

“ It would almost seem as if they had expected some kind of response from Sir Francis Varney to the shout of defiance with which they had just greeted him; but the very calmness, repose, and absolute quiet of the ruin, and all about it, alarmed them, and they looked the one at the other as if the adventure after all were not one of the pleasantest description, and might not fall out so happily as they had expected.
Yet what danger could there be? there were they, more than half a hundred stout, strong men, to cope with one; they felt convinced that he was completely in their power ”

“ The hoots and shouts of the mob above had now attracted those below to the spot where Sir Francis Varney was trying to escape, but he had not gone far before the loud yells of those behind him told him that he was again pursued.
Half dead, and almost wholly spent, unarmed, and defenceless, he scarce knew what to do; whether to fly, or to turn round and die as a refuge from the greater evil of endeavouring to prolong a struggle which seemed hopeless. ”

“ You have neither honour nor credit to gain by such an encounter, and, certainly, you can gain no object."
"How are we to decide this affair? Am I considered absolved from the accusation under which I lay, of cowardice?" inquired Sir Francis Varney, with a cold smile.
"Why, as for that," said the admiral, "I should as soon expect credit for fighting behind a wall, as with a man that I couldn't hit any more than the moon."
"Henry; let me implore you to quit this scene; it can do no good." ”

“ There was a dreadful execration uttered by those who came up after him, and there was a momentary pause, for none liked to rush on to the bloody sword of Sir Francis Varney, who stood so willing and so capable of using it with the most deadly effect. They paused, as well they might, and this pause was the most welcome thing next to life to the unfortunate fugitive, for he was dreadfully distressed and bleeding.
"On to him boys! He can hardly stand. See how he pants. On to him, I say—push him hard."
"He pushes hard, I tell you," said another. ”

“ The Adityas are a brotherhood or college of gods, but some of the members of the fraternity have more individual character than, for example, the Maruts, who are simply a company with a tendency to become confused with the Adityas. Considered as a triad, the Adityas are Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman. The name of Varuna is commonly derived from vri (or Var) ,* to cover, according to the commentator Sayana, because "he envelops the wicked in his snares," the nets which he carries to capture the guilty. As god of the midnight sky, Varuna is also "the covering" deity, with his universal pall of darkness. ”