Rudra, thou smiter of workers of evil, The doers of good all love and adore thee. Preserve me from injury and every affliction— Rudra, the nourisher.
Give unto me of thy medicines, Rudra, So that my years may reach to a hundred; Drive away hatred, shatter oppression, Ward off calamity.
The rain cloud was personified in Parjanya, who links with Indra as the nourisher of earth, and with Agni as the quickener of seeds.
Indra's great rival, however, was Varuna, who symbolized the investing sky: he was “the all-enveloping one”. The hymns impart to him a character of Hebraic grandeur. He was the sustainer of the universe, the lawgiver, the god of moral rectitude, and the sublime sovereign of gods and men. Men worshipped him with devoutness, admiration, and fear. “It is he who makes the sun to shine in heaven; the winds that blow are but his breath; he has hollowed out the channels of the rivers which flow at his command, and he has made the depths of the sea. His ordinances are fixed and unassailable; through their operation the moon walks in brightness, and the stars which appear in the nightly sky, vanish in daylight. The birds flying in the air, the rivers in their sleepless flow, cannot attain a knowledge of his power and wrath. But he knows the flight of the birds in the sky, the course of the far-travelling wind, the paths of ships on the ocean, and beholds all secret things that have been or shall be done. He witnesses men's truth and falsehood.”[79]
[79] Muir's _Original Sanscrit Texts_, v, 58, ff.
[Illustration: SHIVA'S DANCE OF DESTRUCTION, ELLORA (see pages 147-8) 8]
He is the Omniscient One. Man prayed to him for forgiveness for sin, and to be spared from the consequences of evil-doing:
May I not yet, King Varuna, Go down into the house of clay: Have mercy, spare me, mighty Lord.
O Varuna, whatever the offence may be That we as men commit against the heavenly folk, When through our want of thought we violate thy laws, Chastise us not, O god, for that iniquity.
[80] Professor Macdonell's _A History of Sanskrit Literature_.
His messengers descend Countless from his abode—for ever traversing This world and scanning with a thousand eyes its inmates. Whate'er exists within this earth, and all within the sky, Yea, all that is beyond, King Varuna perceives.... May thy destroying snares, cast sevenfold round the wicked, Entangle liars, but the truthful spare, O King!