Adam Greenfield on Nostr: What can we learn from Varuna and Mitra? They take us back to the “Indo-“ facet ...

What can we learn from Varuna and Mitra? They take us back to the “Indo-“ facet of Dumézil's expertise. Varuna is a Hindu god – perhaps significantly, the god of Order and Truth – but rather confusingly, Mitra has so little independent identity he generally appears in the hybrid form Mitra-Varuna, “which has essentially the same attributes as the god Varuna alone.” It’s not much to go on, by way of opposition between figures symbolizing two principles, modes or rationalities of domination.