Devalok ← All gods
Also calledMitra-Varuna

At a glance

TraditionVedic
NameMitra

a word that still means friend in most Indian languages

PartnerVaruna

with whom he is praised in almost every hymn as the pair Mitra-Varuna

Who Mitra is

Mitra is the friend among the Vedic gods. His name is the ordinary word for a friend, and it is also an old word for an agreement between two people. He is the god who stands behind both.

He is hardly ever praised alone. The Rigveda has more than twenty hymns to the pair Mitra-Varuna and only one, hymn 59 of the third book, to Mitra by himself. In the paired hymns the two are kings who keep the order of the world. They see everything, and the sun is called their eye. Whoever breaks his word has to answer to them.

The one hymn that is Mitra's own is short and calm. It says that when Mitra speaks, people stir and set to their work. He holds up the earth and the sky. He watches the people with eyes that never close. The man who keeps Mitra's law is not killed or conquered, and trouble does not reach him from near or far. The five peoples have all come to him, the hymn says, and he sustains all the gods.

Scholars have noticed one word in that hymn that belongs to Mitra more than to anyone else. He is the one who brings people together, who gets them moving in one direction. The same is said of the fire god, who is called Mitra when he is kindled.

His name is very old. A treaty of the fourteenth century before the common era, made by a king of Mitanni in western Asia, calls on Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas to witness the oath. In ancient Iran the same god is Mithra, guardian of the given word and close companion of the sun.

In the Vedic texts that follow the Rigveda, the pair is divided between light and dark. The Atharvaveda sets Mitra at sunrise and Varuna in the evening. A Yajurveda text says that Mitra brought forth the day and Varuna the night. In the ritual a white animal is offered to Mitra and a dark one to Varuna.

There is very little story about him. The one tale that is his own shows him refusing to take part in a killing, because he is the friend of all.

When Mitra speaks, people rise and go to their work. He holds up the earth and the sky, and he watches over the people without closing his eyes.

From the Vedas to the Puranas

What became of Mitra

Mitra never became a great god of the Puranas. He stayed what the later Vedic texts had made him: the gentle half of the pair Mitra-Varuna, keeper of the day, and one of the twelve Adityas who share the year between them.

The Brahmanas explain him by contrast. In the Shatapatha Brahmana Mitra is the priesthood and Varuna the ruling power. Mitra is the one who thinks a thing out, and Varuna is the one who does it. The same text says that Mitra could stand without Varuna, but Varuna could do nothing right until he asked Mitra to walk in front of him. The Taittiriya Samhita tells how Mitra would not join in the crushing of King Soma, and how the cup he shares with Varuna came to be mixed with milk.

In the epics and Puranas his best-known part is as a father. The Rigveda already calls the sage Vasishtha the son of Mitra and Varuna, born when the two gods saw the nymph Urvashi. The last book of the Ramayana tells this at length and adds the sage Agastya, born from the same jar. In that telling it is Mitra's angry word that sends Urvashi down to earth to become the wife of King Pururavas.

The Puranas give him a household. The Bhagavata Purana names his wife as Revati and their sons as Utsarga, Arishta and Pippala. The Vishnu Purana seats him on the chariot of the sun. Each month a different Aditya rides there with a sage, a Gandharva, a nymph and other attendants, and Mitra's month is Jyeshtha, in early summer.

No large temple belongs to Mitra today. He is honoured inside the worship of the sun. Verses to Mitra are recited in the morning prayer to the risen sun. In Bengal, women keep a vow called Itu Puja on the Sundays of the month of Agrahayan, sowing grains in a bowl of earth beside a water pot. One explanation of the name is that Itu is Mitra, worn down to Mitu and then to Itu, though the scholar Sukumar Sen traced it to Indra instead. The word itself has lasted best. Across India a friend is still called a mitra.

See how the Vedic gods became the Puranic ones →

Related gods

VedicVaruna VedicIndra VedicSoma