¹ Besides Greece and India, the motif of the dropped seed occurs in Caucasian myths, particularly those which deal with the hero Soszryko. The 'Earth' is replaced by a stone, Hephaistos by a shepherd, and Athena by the 'beautiful Satana', who watches carefully the pregnant stone and who, when the time comes, calls in the blacksmith who serves as midwife to the 'stone-born' hero whose body is blue shining steel from head to foot, except the knees (or the hips) which are damaged by the pliers of the smith. The same Soszryko seduces a hostile giant to measure the depth of the sea in the same manner as Michael or Elias causes the devil to dive, making the sea freeze in the meantime.

In the case of the Rishi:

He originated from the seed of Mitra and Varuna, which they dropped into a water-jar on seeing the heavenly Urvashi. From this double parentage he is called Maitrāvaruni, and from his being born from a jar he got the name Khumbasambhaya¹ (Khumba is the name of Aquarius in India and Indonesia, allegedly late Greek influence.)

¹ ... let us mention that the Egyptian Canopus is himself a jar-god; actually, he is represented by a Greek hydria ...

On the very same time and occasion there also was 'born' as son of Mitra and Varuna - only the seed fell on the ground not in the jar - the Rishi Vasishta. This is unmistakably zeta Ursae Majoris, and the lining up of Canopus with zeta, more often with Alcor, the tiny star near zeta (Tom Thumb, in Babylonia the 'fox'-star) has remained a rather constant feature, in Arabic Suhayl and as-Sura. This is the 'birth' of the valid representatives of both the poles, the sons of Mitra and Varuna and also of their successors ..."

On Easter Island high summer is dry and sun is far south, 'close to Canopus'. From there water comes back. The time anciently was equal to Aquarius. North of the equator Aquarius marked the time of water because sun was as far away south as possible, south of the equator it was seen as if in a mirror - sun quite too hot and the dry earth in need of being reimpregnated.

Stone or earth, the heavenly rain saved the situation. Twins were born, one representing the southern sea and one representing the northern sky.

"... To follow up the long and laborious way leading from Rigvedic Mitrāvaruna (dual) to the latest days of the Roman Empire where we still find a gloss saying 'mithra funis, quo navis media vincitur' - 'mithra is the rope, by which the middle of the ship is bound', would overstep the frame of this essay by far. Robert Eisler relying upon his vast material, connected this fetter or 'rope', mithra, right away with the 'ship's belt' from the tenth book of Plato's Republic.

Of the inseparable dual Mitrāvaruna, Varuna is still of greater relevance, particularly because it is he who 'surveyed the first creation' (RV 8.41.10), he who hid the Ocean - Ovid had it that the sources of the Nile were hidden - and he who is himself called 'the hidden Ocean' (RV 8.41.8).

Varuna states about himself: 'I fastened the sky to the seat of the Rita' (RV 4.42.2). And at that 'seat of Rita' we find Svarnara, said to be 'the name of the celestial spring ... which Soma selected as his dwelling'.¹

¹ ... Soma is addressed as 'lord of the poles', and to Agni is given the epithet svarnaram thrice ... But we did hear about 'Agni, like the felly the spokes, so you surround all the gods', and Soma and Agni supplement each other ...

This is no other 'thing' than Hvarna (Babylonian melammu) which the 'bad uncle' Afrasiyab attempted to steal by diving to the bottom ot Lake Vurukasha, although Hvarna belonged to Kai Khusrau ... Thus in whichever dialect the phenomenon is spelled out, the fallen ruler of the Golden Age is held to dwell nearest to the celestial South Pole, particularly in Canopus which marks the steering oar of Argo, Canopus at the 'confluence of the rivers'.

This is true whether Varuna fastened the sky to the seat of the Rita (and his own seat), whether Enki-Ea-Enmesharra, dwelling in Eridu, held all the norms and measures (Rita, Sumerian me: Akkadian: parsu) - Thorkild Jacobsen called him very appropriately the 'Lord modus operandi' - or whether Kronos-Saturn kept giving 'all the measures of the whole creation' to Zeus while he himself slept in Ogygia-the-primeval."

Maybe Varuna is equal to some old word (now lost) varu-ga ('the place of 8').