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them as a divinity distinct from Savitar. But the word aditi, 'unbound,' is often a mere epithet, of Fire, Sky, etc. Moreover, in one passage, at least, aditi simply means 'freedom' (i. 24. 1), less boundlessness than 'un-bondage'; so, probably, in i. 185. 3, 'the gift of freedom.' Ança seems to have much the same meaning with Bhaga, viz., the sharer, giver. Daksha may, perhaps, be the 'clever,' 'strong' one ([Greek: dexios]), abstract Strength; as another name of the sun (?). Aditi herself (according to Müller, Infinity; according to Hillebrandt, Eternity) is an abstraction that is born later than her chief sons, Sun and Varuna.[92] Zarathustra (Zoroaster, not earlier than the close of the first Vedic period) took the seven (=A]dityas and reformed them into one monotheistic (dualistic) Spirit (Ahura), with a circle of six moral attendants, thereby dynamically destroying every physical conception of them.
DAWN.
We have devoted considerable space to Varuna because of the theological importance with which is invested his personality. If one admit that a monotheistic Varuna is the urVaruna, if one see in him a sign that the Hindus originally worshipped one universally great superior god, whose image effaced that of all the others,[93] then the attempt to trace any orderly development in Hindu theology may as well be renounced; and one must imagine that this peculiar people, starting with monotheism descended to polytheism, and then leapt again into the conception of that Father-god whose form, in the end of the Rig Vedic period, out-varunas Varuna as encompasser and lord of all. If, on the other hand, one see in Varuna a god who, from the 'covering,' heaven and cloud and rain, from earliest time has been associated with the sun as a pair, and recognize in Varuna's loftier form the product of that gradual elevation to which were liable all the gods at the hands of the Hindu priests; if one see in him at this stage the highest god which a theology, based on the worship of natural phenomena, was able to evolve; then, for the reception of those gods who overthrew him from his supremacy, because of their greater freedom from physical restraints, there is opened a logical and historical path—until that god comes who in turn follows these half-embodied ones, and stands as