Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/187

Rh CHAP, of all the gods. The fact is startling; but, in Professor Miiller's words, *' the thoughts of primitive humanity were not only different from our thoughts, but different also from what we think their thoughts ought to have been. The poets of the Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradic- tions. They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all ; but they were by no means startled at the idea, that their Indra had a mother, or that their Agni was born like a babe from the friction of two fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap of Aditi." Hence Aditi was contrasted with Diti, the un- bounded with the definite, while it became more and more a name for the distant cast from which all the bright gods seem to come, and for the boundless space beyond the east, drawing a sharp distinction between " what is yonder, and what is here." ^ But the process could not be stopped at this point. The gods had been called dakshapitar, the fathers of strength, the mighty ; and the same equivocation which made Odysseus spring from Autolykos converted the epithet Daksha into the father of the gods. It followed that Aditi was sprung from Daksha, or Daksha from Aditi, who also owed his existence to Bhu, being, and the conclusion was reached that " Not-being and Being are in the higher heaven, in the birth-place of Daksha, in the lap of Aditi." But more especially Aditi became the mother of the bright gods, of Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, and, in fact, of the seven Adityas, although their names are not definitely given in the hymns of the Rig Veda.'^ On the one side, then, Diti was growing into " a definite

Groivth of Religion, Professor Max type of the Adityas," adding that " this Miiller contends that the name Aditi might even^ explain the destruction of belongs to the oldest age of Vedic the eighth Aditya, considering that the thought, being found in invocations eighth day of each parvan, owing to its together with Uyaus, Prilhivi, Sindhu, uncertainty, might be represented as and other really primitive deities, all of exposed to decay and destruction." — whom, and not the Adityas only, are Rig Veda Sanhita, i. 241. The eighth said to be her children, pp. 227-229. Aditya is named Martanda, a being He regards it therefore as one of the destitute of any modifications of shape, oldest names of the dawn, "or, more i.e. without hands or legs — in short, a correctly, of that portion of the sky mere lump. The name means probably from whence every morning the light the egg of death (mritya). Martanda and life of the world flashed forth." differs from his brothers, the seven or eight in number, is a question of and in his mortality. He is, thcre- which Professor Max Miiller, whom fore, a mere circle, the golden egg of here I have simply to follow, admits the the heaven, the sun which sets (dies) difficulty. The number seven, though daily ; and is therefore said to be a sacred number, is not more sacred than "thrown out by Aditi from the corn- other numbers in the Rig Veda, and he pany of the gods and the splendours contents himself with suggesting "the of the invisible world into the inferior, seven days or tilhis of the four parvanas visible, and material world, to live and
 * In his lectures on the Origin and of the Uinar month as a possible proto-
 * WTiy the Adityas should be seven Adityas, in his form, or lack of form,