The Seba library treats Vara in 4 passages, across 2 authors (including Campbell, Joseph, Benveniste, Émile).
Varuṇa’s name is from the verbal root vṛ, ‘to cover, to encompass’; for he encompasses the universe, and his attribute is sovereignty.
Campbell derives Vara/Varuṇa from the root vṛ (‘to cover, to encompass’), identifying cosmic sovereignty and the regulation of ṛta as the deity’s defining attributes.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962thesis
This descriptive term goes back to a heroic age with its idealization of the warrior and its celebration of the young fighter who, standing upright in his chariot, hurls himself into the fray.
Benveniste contextualizes Indo-European sovereignty and warrior terminology within a comparative social framework, providing the linguistic background against which Varuṇic sovereign vocabulary is best understood.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
vazraka is applied to the king: xšāyaθiya vazraka, the royal protocol, repeated immutably after the name of the sovereign, in his three titles: ‘Great King,’ ‘King of Kings,’ ‘King of the Countries.’
Benveniste documents how Old Persian royal epithets of greatness and encompassment echo the semantic field of Vara/Varuṇa in the Achaemenid sovereign tradition.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
The first sense is not, as one would be tempted to imagine, ‘to be free of, rid of something’; it is that of belonging to an ethnic stock designated by a metaphor taken from vegetable growth.
Benveniste’s analysis of Indo-European concepts of freedom and membership provides an indirect comparative backdrop for understanding the encompassing, binding sovereignty associated with Vara/Varuṇa.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside