The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.89

c8.89

The Ādityas and the Amesha Spents have been compared often, perhaps over-confidently. It is not necessary, in order to feel unconvinced by Professor Oldenberg's chain of consequences, to deny a certain nebulous cluster of ancillary or subsidiary divinities which hovered about the persons of the supreme Indo-Iranian twin-gods Ahura-Mithra, Varuna-Mitra. As a matter of fact the Amesha Spents are not the Ādityas. I do not believe that the Ādityas, indefinite in number and gradual in their development in India, represent that cluster, or even its very gradual Hindu substitutes. Several Ādityas, notably Mitra, Bhaga, and Aryaman recur in the Avesta, but are not listed as Amesha Spents. Either Macdonell's or my own hypothesis¹ as to the origin of the Ādityas presupposes that their origin as a class of gods is gradual and secondary. The Amesha Spents, on the other hand, are sheer abstractions. I confess that there is not in me the faith to see in them anything as concrete as personified planets. The mere names of the "Immortal Holy Ones" show what I mean. They are: Vohu Manah, "Good Mind"; Asha Vahishta, "Best Righteousness"; Khshathra Vairya, "Wished-for Kingdom," or "Good Kingdom"; Spenta Armaiti, "Holy Harmony"; Haurvatāt, "Soundness," "Health"; and Ameretat, "Immortality." It is a beautiful, heavenly hierarchy, but it is unmythological, non-naturalistic to the bone. If anywhere, then here is the place where sprang up purely symbolic gods in the manner of the symbolic creations in Bunyan's *Pilgrim's Progress*.