A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.115

c7.115

Another abstraction, and one of a very peculiar kind, is the goddess Aditi. Though not the subject of any separate hymn, she is often incidentally celebrated. She has two, and only two, prominent characteristics. She is, in the first place, the mother of the small group of gods called Ādityas, of whom Varuṇa is the chief. Secondly, she has, like her son Varuṇa, the power of releasing from the bonds of physical suffering and moral guilt. With the latter trait her name, which means "unbinding," "freedom," is clearly connected. The unpersonified sense seems to survive in a few passages of the *Rigveda*. Thus a poet prays for the “secure and unlimited gift of *aditi*.” The origin of the abstraction is probably to be explained as follows. The expression “sons of Aditi,” which is several times applied to the Ādityas, when first used in all likelihood meant “sons of liberation,” to emphasise a salient trait of their character, according to a turn of language common in the *Rigveda*. The feminine word “liberation” (*aditi*) used in this connection would then have become personified by a process which has more than one parallel in Sanskrit. Thus Aditi, a goddess of Indian origin, is historically younger than some at least of her sons, who can be traced back to a pre-Indian age.