Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

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Mitra also appears in Manichaeism. The name Mehr or Meher comes from Mitra.

Vedic Mitra was invoked along with other Vedic gods as far away as current day Syria/Turkey

[..] Indic Mitra is first attested in a 14th century BCE Mitanni inscription in which an Indo-Aryan king of Mitanni invokes the gods Mitra, Indra, Varuna, and the Nasatyas as guarantors of his sworn obligations.[..]

Also in the treaties signed by Mittanis and the Hittites.

Mitra always appears with Varuna. In the beginning of Rig Veda, Varuna is the king of the Vedic gods and is resplendent and benevolent..but towards the end, he loses his luster and becomes a minor god..mean, dull and almost cruel as Indra becomes the new head after slaying Ahi , the serpent demon who captured Apas, the water goddess(apam-napat or apa also appears as a Zoroastrian deity)

One theory is that this event of Indra rescuing apa from ahi by releasing her frozen waters(ahi froze the waters and indira used his lightning bolt/thunderbolt weapon vajra to melt the ice so she will flow down back from the frozen state) can be times to one of the ice ages ..and younger dryas event + the sedimentation layer might have been after that..which would have been due to thehastened melting of the ice when the comets burned down..causing the ‘great flooding’..an event that is recorded in every world mythology.

Back to Ahura Mazda/Varuna split.. there were two priests classes..brighus and angiras..angiras took some books and went east..the brighus kept some of the Bhargava texts. Even today, the Vedas are bit complete and many parts of it are considered ‘lost’

Shri Jatindra Mohan Chatterji argues that Zend Avesta is the Bhargava Veda text. He asserts that the Bhargava Veda the missing Book of the Bhrigu Angirasa Samhita (The Hymns of Atharvan Zarathustra – Published by The Parsi Zoroastrian Association, Calcutta, 1967).

The Indo-Iranians likely became divided because of differences in opinion about methods of worship and accent on certain principles. Likely leading to the split of the original Aryan land into India and Iran..east of river Sindhu became the land of Hindus.

> Shri Jatindra Mohan Chatterji argues that Zend Avesta is the Bhargava Veda text. He asserts that the Bhargava Veda the missing Book of the Bhrigu Angirasa Samhita (The Hymns of Atharvan Zarathustra – Published by The Parsi Zoroastrian Association, Calcutta, 1967).

This is unlikely, as the the Vedas were composed after the Indian-Iranian split, and the last common ancestor of Avestan and Vedic is much before that.

Source?

> Ahi , the serpent demon who captured Apas, the water goddess > ahi froze the waters

As for the serpent motive, I think it relates to the movement and shape of glaciers. Here are some pictures.

Snake-like path of a swiss glacier: [1]

The end of a glacier which (with skimming) may look like a snake head releasing streams of melt water: [2]

In these ~110 year old illustrations glaciers are depicted with weird lion head and sluggish lizard body: [3]

Ahi seems to be Azi Dahâka in Zoroastrianism, which also has a lot of long-winter themes [4]:

"The world was imagined as lasting a long year of twelve millenniums. There had been an old myth, connected with that notion, which made the world end in a frightful winter, to be succeeded by an eternal spring, when the blessed would come down from the Vara of Yima to repeople the earth. But as storm was the ordinary and more dramatic form of the strife, there was another version, according to which the world ended in a storm, and this version became the definitive one.

The serpent, Azi Dahâka, let loose, takes hold of the world again. As the temporary disappearance of the light was often mythically described either as the sleeping of the god, or as his absence, or death [...]"

This story about the Vara is also super interesting and similar to the Ark story, though not with a big flood but a long winter and "foul frost". The numbers make more sense, because they gather over a thousand "seeds of men and women" instead of only a single family. [5]

[1] https://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/glossary/valley-glacier-en...

[2] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CTPcUSfYG3c/maxresdefault.jpg

[3] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/02/culture-history...

[4] https://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0405.htm

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29802590

[..] This story about the Vara is also super interesting and similar to the Ark story, though not with a big flood but a long winter and "foul frost". The numbers make more sense, because they gather over a thousand "seeds of men and women" instead of only a single family.[..]

Thank you. The links are very helpful.

The flood myth in Vedic Hindu mythology is called Pralaya..the Great Dissolution. [..] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga_Cycle [..] A Yuga Cycle (a.k.a. chatur yuga, maha yuga, etc.) is a cyclic age (epoch) in Hindu cosmology. Each cycle lasts for 4,320,000 years (12,000 divine years[a]) and repeats four yugas (world ages): Krita (Satya) Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga.

As a Yuga Cycle progresses through the four yugas, each yuga's length and humanity's general moral and physical state within each yuga decrease by one-fourth. Kali Yuga, which lasts for 432,000 years, is believed to have started in 3102 BCE. Near the end of Kali Yuga, when virtues are at their worst, a cataclysm and a re-establishment of dharma occur to usher in the next cycle's Satya Yuga, prophesied to occur by Kalki.

There are 71 Yuga Cycles in a manvantara (age of Manu) and 1,000 Yuga Cycles in a kalpa (day of Brahma).[..]

At the end of the 4 ages, Seven Sages will save the Vedas to pass it on to the next edition of the universe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saptarishi : [..] At the end of every four ages there is a disappearance of the Vedas and it is the province of the seven Rishis to come down upon earth from heaven to give them currency.[..]

All other life and the universe is Maya or illusion. Even the Gods are gone. They too were part of the illusion.

Only Brahman remains. This formless attributeless universal consciousness will restart creation after every great dissolution. Everything is part of Brahman and Brahman is part of everything. This cycle of creation and dissolution is endless.

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