Mitra is a Vedic deity. She lives in the Devloka, she mounts a horse and uses the sword as a weapon. Mitra means friendship, oath or the light of the morning sun. In Indic culture, Mitra is a deity. As time passed the function of Mitra changed and is considered to be one of the protectors of treaties. Mitra-Varuna is compounded in the Dvandva, primarily as Mitra. Later on, the Brahmanas and the Vedic texts increasingly linked Mitra with the morning son and the light of the dawn. It has been that Mitra vanished in the post-Vedic texts and gradually came into existence as divinity of friendship as he detests all violence and he is personification of friendship.
Mitra as an Indo-Iranian common noun means ‘to bind’. In the Mitanni treaty and Rigveda both, the role of a Mitra is to protect. In Sanskrit the word Mitram means, oath, contract or covenant. During the post-Vedic period in India, Mitra as a noun is understood as friend which is one of the main aspects of alliance and bonding. During the post-Vedic India period, Mitra became the guardian of friendships. The term Mitra means friend in many of the languages in India. Maitrin is the feminine word form in the Marathi language.
During the months of November and December, Mitra is worshipped in Bengal. Ladies perform a puja from Kartik Sankranti in the Kartik month after which the Mitra Dev is immersed in water on the Agrahayan Sankranti day.
