oaths, and contracts. Varuna too is vis ́vávedas- (RV 8. 42. 1) and wide of eye
(urucáks
̇
as-, 1. 25. 5, al.). He has watchers who ‘come hither from heaven;
with a thousand eyes they watch over the earth’.^22 The all-seeing Sun is
sometimes identified as the eye of Varuna or of Mitra–Varuna.^23
In the Ga ̄tha ̄s Varuna’s place is taken by Ahura Mazda ̄. He too is addressed
as ‘wide of eye’ (vourucasˇa ̄ne ̄, Y. 33. 13). He witnesses everything, watchful
with his eye’s beam (31. 13); ‘he is not to be deceived, the Lord who observes
all’ (45. 4). In the Younger Avesta the sun is called his eye. At the same time
Mithra, who corresponds to the Indian Mitra, emerges in a parallel role. He
has ten thousand spies (or in other passages a thousand ears and ten thousand
eyes), he is all-knowing, and he cannot be deceived.^24
How does all this hang together? The eye, the wide vision, and the myriad
spies that the Greeks ascribe to Zeus are ascribed in the Indo-Iranian
tradition not to Dyaus^25 but to Mitra and Varuna, or in Zoroastrian doctrine
to Mithra and Ahura Mazda ̄. The critical factor is the allocation of responsi-
bility for the supervision of justice and righteousness. Whichever god
assumes this function is furnished with the appropriate apparatus of eyes or
spies.
It is hard to say which was original. Mitra–Varuna are certainly an old-
establishedfirm, already attested in the fourteenth-century treaty between
Hatti and Mitanni. It would not be difficult to suppose that as Zeus grew in
importance among the Greeks he took over the supervision of justice from
another celestial god or gods who faded out of sight. On the other hand the
deified Sky, Dyeus, was from the beginning suited to serve at least as a
witness to oaths and treaties. He appears in the role at Rome under the name
of Dius Fidius (Diu ̄s < Dyéus); this god’s temple on the Quirinal had an
opening in the roof, because oaths had to be taken under the open sky (sub
Ioue). The Luwians had a Tiwaz of the Oath, h
̆
̄rutallisı dUTU-waza: this is
the Sun-god, but the name, as we have noted, is a derivative of *Diw-. We see
how easily Heaven and its dazzling focal point, the Sun, can take on similar
functions.
The commonest Greek form of asseveration is ‘by Zeus’,ν^ ∆α, or in a
negative sentence μw ∆α. A more emphatic expression is Aστω Ζε3, ‘let
Zeus know it’, that is, let him take note of my affirmation and hold me
(^22) AV 4. 16. 4, cf. RV 1. 25. 13; 6. 67. 5; 7. 34. 10, 61. 3, 87. 3; 10. 10. 8; Schmitt (1967), 157–9.
(^23) See below, p. 198.
(^24) Yt. 10. 7, 24, 35, 82, 91; Nya ̄yisˇn 1. 6, 2. 10; Ga ̄h 1. 2, al.; Pettazzoni (1956), 132–6.
(^25) The sun and moon, however, are called the eyes of Dyaus, RV 1. 72. 10; cf. AV 10. 7. 33; 11.
- 2; S ́B 7. 1. 2. 7. The dual phrase used in the Rigveda passage, Divó... aks
̇
ı ̄ ́, corresponds
etymologically, though not semantically, to ∆ι: Zσσε in Il. 14. 286, and in part to the Latvian
Dieva actin ̧a‘the eye of God’ (LD 8682 var. 5).
172 4. Sky and Earth