The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s2.31

v1.c16.s2.31

Of the individual deities Aryaman, who is Indo-Iranian in character, and may even be akin to the Irish ancestor Airem, has practically no distinctive feature save his friendly nature which makes him a parallel with Mitra: the word also denotes groomsman, and this idea is, it seems, associated with the god, who is thus brought into connexion with human life and marriage. His path is alluded to, whence Indian tradition regards him as the sun, but Weber as the milky way.⁷ Bhaga, as his name denotes, is the bountiful, or perhaps rather the god of good fortune, the disposition which produces in a woman luck in marriage, for a man success in the assembly, in the hunt, in dicing, or in winning pupils, and plays on the name of the god are not unnatural in a religion so full of the spirit of greed for the bounty of the patrons of the priests; Dawn is his sister, and Yāska describes him as presiding over the forenoon. His name is the equivalent of the Avestan *bagha*, ‘god,’ which is an epithet of Ahura himself, of Bagaios in Phrygia, and of the Old Church Slavonic *bogŭ*, ‘god’.¹ Aṁça is mentioned but three times in all: his name denotes the apportioner and nothing but his bounty is recorded. Dakṣa occurs about twice as often, and is a more interesting figure: in one hymn of the late tenth book² he is said to be the father of Aditi and also the son of Aditi, and the gods are made later in origin: in another passage the existent and non-existent are said to have been in the womb of Aditi, the birthplace of Dakṣa. The word means no more than ‘clever’, and there can be no doubt that he is the product of priestly ingenuity. The Ādityas and also Mitra and Varuṇa are called sons of skill, just as they are called sons of strength: from this epithet the element skill has been elevated into the name of a god, and in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa³ Dakṣa is exalted to the rank of Prajāpati: at no time can he have been anything but a mere abstraction of a type especially dear to the later priestly intelligence, which delighted in the conception of the god, who was at one and the same time the father and the son of his mother.