Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/145

Rh other races. Again, the gods were represented in the children of Aditi, and this might be taken either in a high and refined sense, as if Aditi were the infinite region from which the solar deities rise, or we may hold that Aditi is the eternal which sustains and is sustained by the gods, or the Indian imagination could sink to the vulgar and half-magical conception of Aditi as a female who, being desirous of sons, cooked a Brahmaudana oblation for the gods, the Sadhyas. Various other gods and supernatural beings are credited with having created or generated the gods. Indra's father and mother are constantly spoken of, and both he and other gods are often said to have been originally mortal, and to have reached the heavens by dint of that "austere fervour," that magical asceticism, which could do much more than move mountains. The gods are thus by no means always credited in Aryan mythology with inherent immortality. Like most of the other deities whose history we have been studying, they had struggles for pre-eminence with powers of a titanic character, the Asuras. "Asura, 'living,' was originally an epithet of certain powers of Nature, particularly of the sky," says Mr. Max Müller. As the gods also are recognised as powers of Nature, particularly of the sky, there does not seem to be much original difference between Devas and Asuras. The opposition between them