Upanishads · Jābāladarśana 4.37
॥
Devanāgarī
यशस्विन्या मुनिश्रेष्ठ भगवान्भास्करस्तथा । अलम्बुसाया अबात्मा वरुणः परिकीर्तितः
Transliteration (IAST)
yaśasvinyā muniśreṣṭha bhagavānbhāskarastathā | alambusāyā abātmā varuṇaḥ parikīrtitaḥ
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
यशस्विन्याः मुनि-श्रेष्ठyaśasvinyāḥ muni-śreṣṭhaof yashasvini, O best of sages
भगवान् भास्करः तथाbhagavān bhāskaraḥ tathāthe lord Bhaskara, likewise
अलम्बुसायाः अप्-आत्माalambusāyāḥ ap-ātmāof alambusa, whose essence is water
वरुणः परिकीर्तितःvaruṇaḥ parikīrtitaḥVaruna is proclaimed
Translation
"Of yashasvini, O best of sages, [the deity is] the lord Bhaskara; of alambusa is proclaimed Varuna, whose essence is water."
Version
27fd94eb9529 · published Aug 12, 2026, 5:00:00 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
Bhaskara, "light-maker," is a name of the sun; Varuna is an ancient Vedic god, who governed the waters and, more importantly, the oath. Varuna deserves discussion on his own, for in the Vedas he is a remarkable figure, later greatly diminished. In the Rigveda, Varuna is the guardian of rita, that very world-order spoken of when reading the second line of the Ganapati. He sees everything, knows falsehood, and binds the guilty with his snares; the hymns to him are almost the only place in the Rigveda where a person confesses guilt and asks forgiveness.
One of them deserves citing, for little of its kind exists in this literature: "Not by my own will, Varuna — by deceit, by wine, by anger, by dice, by folly, have I sinned; the elder led the younger astray; even sleep does not turn one away from wrong" (7.86.6). This confession, it should be noted, is thorough and not self-justifying: drunkenness, dice-playing, and the bad influence of an elder are all listed. In later books Varuna sank to being merely the god of waters and lost his moral primacy; and in this line, of his former majesty only "waters" remains.
The Vaishnava side says of such shifts of gods that they are natural, and explains them through its own notion of adhikara, "office": the office remains, the occupant changes, and majesty passes with the office. It adds too what matters most for it: there are many offices, but the One who assigns them is one; and hence fluctuations in lists of gods do not touch the substance of the matter.