VARAHA MIHIRA An astronomer who was one of “the nine gems” of the court of Vikramaditya. (See Nava-ratna.) He was author of Brihat-sanhita and Brihaj-jataka. His death is placed in Saka 509 (A.D. 587).

VARAHA PURANA “That in which the glory of the great Varaha is predominant, as it was revealed to Earth by Vishnu, in connexion, wise Munis, with the Manava kalpa, and which contains 24,000 verses, is called the Varaha Purana;” but this description differs so from the Purana which bears the name in the present day, that Wilson doubts its applying to it. The known work “is narrated by Vishnu as Varaha, or in the boar incarnation, to the personified Earth. Its extent, however, is not half that specified, little exceeding 10,000 stanzas. It furnishes also itself evidence of the prior currency of some other work similarly denominated.” “It may perhaps be referred to the early part of the twelfth century.” 

VARANASI The sacred city of Benares; also called Kasi. 

VARANAVATA The city in which the Pandavas dwelt in exile. 

VARARUCHI A grammarian who is generally supposed to be one with Katyayana (q.v.). There was another Vararuchi who was one of “the nine gems” at the court of Vikramaditya. 

VARDDHA-KSHATRI A patronymic of Jayad-ratha. 

VARKSHI Daughter of a sage, who is instanced in the Maha-bharata as being a virtuous woman, and wife of ten husbands. 

VARNA ‘Class or caste.’ The Chatur-varna, or four castes, as found established in the code of Manu, are-

1. Brahman. The sacerdotal and learned class, the members of which may be, but are not necessarily priests.

2. Kshatriya. The regal and warrior caste.

3. Vaisya. Trading and agricultural caste.

4- Sudra. Servile caste, whose duty is to serve the other three. 

        The first three castes were called dwi-ja, “twice born or regenerate,” from their being entitled to investiture with the sacred thread which effects a second birth. The Brahmans maintain that their caste alone remains, that the other three have been lost or degraded, and it is generally believed that there are no pure Kshatriyas or Vaisyas now existing. The numerous castes which have sprung up from the intercourse of people of different castes or from other causes are called Varna-Sankara, ‘mixed castes.’ 

VARSHA A region. Nine varshas are enumerated as situated between the great mountain ranges of the earth:- (1.) Bharata-varsha, India; (2.) Kim-purusha or Kin-nara; (3.) Hari; (4.) Ramyaka; (5.) Hiran-maya; (6.) Uttara-kuru; (7.) Ilavrita; (8.) Bhadraswa; (9.) Ketu-mala. 

VARSHNEYA A name of Krishna as a descendant of Vrishni. Name of King Nala's charioteer. 

VARTTlKAS Supplementary rules or notes to the grammar of Panini by later grammarians, as Katyayana, Patanja1i, &c. Katyayana is the chief of these annotators, and is called Varttika-kara, ‘the annotator.’ 

VARUNA Similar to **. ‘The universal encompasser, the all-embracer.’ One of the oldest of the Vedic deities, a personification of the all-investing sky, the maker and up-holder of heaven and earth. As such he is king of the universe, king of gods and men, possessor of illimitable knowledge, the supreme deity to whom especial honour is due. He is often associated with Mitra, he being the ruler of the night and Mitra of the day; but his name frequently occurs alone, that of Mitra only seldom. In later times he was chief among the lower celestial deities called Adityas, and later still he became a sort ofNeptune, a god of the seas and rivers, who rides upon the Makara. This character he still retains. His sign is a fish. He is a regent of the west quarter and of one of the Nakshatras or lunar mansion. According to the Maha-bharata he was son of Kardama and father of Pushkara. The Maha-bharata relates that he carried off Bhadra, the wife of Utathya (q.v.), a Brahman, but Utathya obliged him to submit and restore her. He was in a way the father of the sage Vasishtha (q.v.). In the Vedas, Varuna is not specially connected with water, but there are passages in which he is associated with the element of water both in the atmosphere and on the earth, in such a way as may account for the character and functions ascribed to him in the later mythology.

Dr. Muir thus sums up in the words of the hymns the functions and attributes of Varuna:- “The grandest cosmical functions are ascribed to Varuna. Possessed of illimitable resources (or knowledge), this divine being has meted out (or fashioned) and upholds heaven and earth, he dwells in all worlds as Sovereign ruler; indeed the three worlds are embraced within him. He made the golden and revolving sun to shine in the firmament. The wind which resounds through the atmosphere is his breath. He has opened out boundless paths for the sun, and has hollowed out channels for the rivers, which flow by his command. By his wonderful contrivance the rivers pour out their waters into the one ocean but never fill it. His ordinances are fixed and unassailable. They rest on him unshaken as on a mountain. Through the operation (of his laws) the moon walks in brightness, and the stars which appear in the nightly sky mysteriously vanish in daylight. Neither the birds flying in the air, nor the rivers in their ceaseless flow can attain a knowledge of his power or his wrath. His messengers behold both worlds. He knows the flight of birds in the sky, the paths of ships on the ocean, the course of the far-travelling wind, and be- holds all the things; that have been or shall be done. No creature can even wink without him. He witnesses men's truth and falsehood. He instructs the Rishi Vasishtha in mysteries; but his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the foolish.” “He has unlimited control over the destinies of mankind. He has a hundred thousand remedies, and is supplicated to show his wide and deep benevolence and drive away evil and sin, to untie sin like a rope and remove it. He is entreated not to steal away, but to prolong life, and to spare the suppliant who daily transgresses 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 a8 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-pasa, Pula-kanga, or Viswa-jit. His favourite resort is Pushpa-giri, ‘flower mountain,’ and his city Vasudha-nagara or Sukha. 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, Vari-loma, ‘watery hair;’ Yadah-pati, ‘king of aquatic animals.’ His son is named Agasti. 

VARUNANI, VARUNl Wife of Varuna and goddess of wine. She is said to have sprung from the churning of the ocean. The goddess of wine is also called Mada and Sura. 

VASANTA Spring and its deified personification. 

VASANTA-SENA The heroine of the drama called Mrich-chhakati, ‘the toy cart.’

VASAVA-DATTA 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 Rage 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 Viswa- mitra, 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 sago Agastya to have sprung from Mitra and Varuna. The hymn says, “Thou, O Vasishtha, art a son of Mitra and Varuna, born a Brahman 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 Rig-veda (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 Maha-bharata, where he is not the priest of Sudas but of his son Kalmasha-pada, who bore the patronymic Saudasa. 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 (vipasa) on its banks. From this the river received the name of Vipasa (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 Kalmasha-pada, 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 Brahmana. Kalmasha-pada 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 la 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 Viswa-mitra'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 Purana 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 Purana 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 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 Urja, 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 Ikshwaku himself, but with his descendants down to the sixty-first 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 q. 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 Urvasi, or to have had some other supernatural origin" (Muir, i. 337). Vasishtha's descendants are called Vasishthas and Vashkalas.

VASTOSHPATl ‘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 Ahuka, and the youngest of them, Devaki, was the mother of Krishna. After the death of Krishna and Bala-rama he also died, and four of his wives burnt themselves with his corpse. So says the Maha-bharata, but according to the Vishnu Purana he and Devaki and Rohini burnt themselves at Dwaraka. He received the additional name of Anaka-dundubhi, because the gods, conscious that he was to be the putative father of the divine Krishna, sounded the drums of heaven at his birth. He was also called Bhu-kasyapa and Dundu, ‘drum.’ 

VASU-DEVA A name of Krishna, derived from that of his father, Vasu-deva; but as that is incompatible with his claims to divinity, the Maha-bharata explains that he is so called “from his dwelling (vasanat) in all beings, from his issuing as a Vasu from a divine womb.” The name was assumed by an impostor named Paundraka, who was killed by Krishna. See Paundraka. 

VASUKI King of the Nagas or serpents who live in patala. He was used by the gods and Asuras for a coil round the mountain Mandara at the churning of the ocean. See Sesha. 

VASU-SENA A name of Karna. 

VATA ‘Wind.’ Generally the same as vayu, but the name is sometimes combined in the Veda with that of Parjanya, and Parjanya-vata and Vayu are then mentioned distinctively. 

VATAPI Vatapi and Ilwala, two Rakshasas, sons either of Hrada or Viprachitti. They are mentioned in the Ramayana as dwelling in the Dandaka forest. Vatapi assumed the form or a ram which was offered in sacrifice and afterwards eaten by Brahmans. Ilwala then called upon him to come forth, and accordingly he tore his way out of the stomachs of the Brahmans. He tried the same trick upon Agastya, but that austere sage ate and digested him. Ilwala, as before, called his brother to come forth, and assaulted the sage, who told him that his brother would never return. Then Ilwala was burnt up by fire from the eyes of Agastya. The Maha-bharata's story Varies slightly. 

VATA-VASIN ‘Dwelling in fig-trees’ (vata). Yakshas. 

VATSA, VATSA-RAJA King of Vatsa, the capital of which was Kausambi. A title of the prince Udayana. There are many persons named Vatsa. 

VATSYAYANA A sage who wrote upon erotic subjects, and was author of the Kama-sutras and Nyaya-bhasha. He is also called Malla-naga. 

VAYU ‘Air, wind.’ The god of the wind, Eolus. In the Vedas he is often associated With Indra, and rides in the same car with him, Indra being the charioteer. The chariot has a framework of gold which touches the sky, and is drawn by a thousand horses. There are not many hymns addressed to him. According to the Nirukta there are three gods specially connected with each other. “Agni, whose place is on earth; vayu or Indra, whose place is in the air; and Surya, whoso place is in the heaven.” In the hymn Purusha-sukta vayu is said to have sprung from the breath of Purusha, and in another hymn he is called the son-in-law of Twashtri. He is regent of the north-west quarter, where he dwells.

According to the Vishnu Purana he is king of the Gandharvas. The Bhagavata purana relates that the sage Narada in-cited the wind to break down the summit of Mount Meru. He raised a terrible storm, which lasted for a year, but Vishnu's bird, Garuda, shielded the mountain with his wings, and all the blasts of the wind-god were in vain. Narada then told him to attack the mountain in Garuda's absence. He did so, and breaking off the summit of the mountain, he hurled it into the sea, where it became the island of Lanka (Ceylon).

Vayu is the reputed father of Bhima and of Hanumat, and be is said to have made the hundred daughters of King Kusanabha crooked because they would not comply with his licentious desires, and this gave the name Kanya-kubja, ‘hump-backed damsel,’ to their city.

Other names of Vayu (Wind) are Anila, Marut, Pavana Vata, Gandha-vaha, ‘bearer of perfumes;’ Jala-kantara, ‘whose garden is water;’ Sada-gata, Satata-ga, ‘ever moving,’ &c. 

VAYU PURANA “The purana in which vayu has declared the laws of duty, in connection with the Sweta kalpa, and which comprises the Mahatmya of Rudra, is the Vayu purana; it contains twenty-four thousand verses.” No MS. containing this number of verses has yet been discovered, but there are indications of the work being imperfect. The purana is divided into four sections, the first beginning with the creation, and the last treating of the ages to come. It is devoted to the praise of Siva, and is connected with the Siva purana, for when one of them is given in a list of puranas the other is omitted.