The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.74

v1.c17.74

The creation of what may be called abstract deities is not far advanced in the Rigveda, such deities as Çraddhā, ‘faith,’ and Manyu, ‘wrath,’ being confined to a few hymns of the tenth book. On the other hand, the specialisation of epithets in some cases results in the production of what is practically a new figure: thus Prajāpati, an epithet of such gods as Savitṛi and Soma, as ‘lord of creatures’ approaches the position of a creator. The Ādityas and their mother Aditi, who may be derived from them, present scarcely any physical features and, as we have seen, have therefore by Oldenberg been assigned to a Semitic source; but this hypothesis has not yet been rendered probable in a mythology which else seems so little touched by external influence. Personifications like Rātri, ‘the night,’ are mainly poetic rather than religious.