Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/150

136 the meaning of the title of their own gods, "the Adityas." That name might be interpreted "children of Aditi," and so a goddess called Aditi was invented to fit the name, thus philologically extracted from Adityas.

M. Bergaigne finds that Aditi means "free," "untrammelled," and is used both as an adjective and as a name. This vague and floating term was well suited to convey the pantheistic ideas natural to the Indian mind, and already notable in the Vedic hymns. "Aditi," cries a poet, "is heaven; Aditi is air; Aditi is the father, the mother, and the son; Aditi is all the gods; Aditi is that which is born and which awaits the birth." Nothing can be more advanced and metaphysical, nothing farther from what is probably the early character of human thought. Meanwhile, though Aditi is a personage so floating and nebulous, she figures in fairly definite form in a certain myth. The Rig-Veda (x. 72, 8) tells us the tale of the birth of her sons, the Adityas. "Eight sons were there of Aditi, born of her womb. To the gods went she with seven; Martanda threw she away." The Satapatha Brahmana throws a good deal of light on her conduct. Aditi had eight sons; but there are only seven gods whom men call Adityas. The eighth she bore a shapeless lump, of the dimensions of a man, as broad as long, say some. The Adityas then trimmed this ugly duckling of the family into human shape, and an elephant