--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
> Varuna is purely Indic god, being conspicuous by his abence in
> Iranian tradition. Of course, Bruce Lincoln in his book "Priests,
> Warriors and Cattle" (Los Angeles, 1981)... tries to equate Varuna
> with Ahura Mazda but that does not really gel.
Not so fast, Kishore.
You seem to be unaware that the equation Indic Varuna = Iranian
Ahura Mazda was first proposed by Hermann Oldenberg more than a
century ago:
http://tinyurl.com/4zewyw
Later on, Oldenberg's thesis gained the support of some great
historians of religion like Georges Dumézil and Mircea Eliade (and
many others!):
http://tinyurl.com/4zgq7u
http://tinyurl.com/4uulmq
Bruce Lincoln is but one of many scholars who have discussed this
thesis after Oldenberg. Other scholars, as is often the case in
scholarly debates, have rejected it; among them I may cite Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy, who thought Varuna to be an autochthonous South Asian
deity connected with non-Aryan serpent cults.
With this I don't mean to say that Oldenberg's thesis is correct. I
just mean to stress you cannot simply brush this long-debated thesis
aside as an aborted idea of Bruce Lincoln's, which is what your post
in fact suggests.
Regards,
Francesco