Transcript for How Mitra became Mithras 

Here we are in the Hotung gallery of the British Museum surrounded by these incredible images and sculptures from ancient India and all the stories that are connected to them.

These stories, these millennia-old myths and folklore, contained almost the entire intellectual stock of the age. They taught the philosophies, the sciences, even the languages were taught through these stories. And these stories were then further visualised and translated into images like these.

Take for instance this one here of Mitra. Mitra the Sun God, Mitra also known as the eternal friend. 
Bright, blazing glorious Mitra. Bringer of daylight and energy, giver of life. Welcomed, worshipped, adored by everyone who saw him every morning. Everyone that is, except his wife, Sanjinna.

Poor Sanjinna had had a very hard life with Mitra. She’d spent her entire married life squinting up at Mitra, looking at him like this because the light that was so bright. And this had caused not only wrinkles to appear just around there, but also had given her the most awful headaches.

Sanjinna decides she’s had enough, she is going to run away. But she is married to the Sun himself. His light reaches everywhere, he would just find her and bring her back.

However, if she can get another woman to swap places with her, the way she figures it, Mitra is so cocooned in his own light, he’s so blinded by his own blaze he would never notice that there was a different woman living with him.

Chaya, the goddess of shadows, agrees to swap places with Sanjinna.

Mitra had absolutely no idea for years and years that he was living with the wrong woman. 

To give him his due, however, the day that he found out that his wife Sanjinna was missing Mitra decides to go out and look for her and bring her back. There was just one problem Sanjinna had got used to a life free of headaches, she liked living little quiet leafy glade. She wouldn’t go back.

Mitra wouldn’t return to the heavens without her. The entire Earth was plunged into darkness. Would this be the end? 

Happily Sanjinna’s father who is also the heaven’s architect, comes to the rescue. He offered to chop off one eighth of the Sun’s energy. This would make the light a little bit easier to bear. However, what do you do with this amazing energy? It was too powerful to contain. It was impossible to destroy. Once again there’s a little bit of panic. Once again Sanjinna’s father, the architect of the heavens, comes to the rescue. He took all this energy that belonged to the Sun. And from this he created weapons for all the gods. Krishna’s discus, Shiva’s trident, even Durga’s swords. All was well in the heavens.

But here on Earth there had been complete panic. Perhaps the story is the result of a prolonged eclipse or a similar phenomena.

The worshippers of Mitra had lost him once. They were not going to lose him again. So the worshippers and the followers of the Sun God decide to follow in the path of the Sun, travelling westwards in an effort to keep up with the great life giver.

The cult of Mitra or rather Mithras as he came to be known in the Western world, arrived in Persia and from here travelled on to Ancient Rome. In Rome Mithras in his role as the eternal friend, as the light giver, became one of the most important gods of the Roman Pantheon. 

Eventually of course Mithras was to end up right here in a temple of his own in a little street in the City of London brought here by the Roman soldiers to the ancient Britons. And his was a cult that was very popular, and was to last for many, many years.

But in the meantime if you were take a short walk from India to Rome, or rather from the Indian galleries to the Roman galleries right here in the British Museum you could actually see an image of the Roman Mithras as he slays a demon bull in his role as friend god to protect the people.

Every room in the Museum is filled with hundreds of stories. Stories about people, their lives, their imaginations. From across the world, and even across time.

All you have to do is step in and listen to the stories.