Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 837

NOTES.
I, 166, 12.
243
sea which brought us hither." The dawn seemed to them to open golden gates for the sun to pass in triumph, and while those gates were open, their eyes and their mind strove in their childish way to pierce beyond the limits of this finite world. That silent aspect awakened in the human mind the conception of the Infinite, the Immortal, the Divine.' Aditi is a name for that distant East, but Aditi is more than the dawn. Aditi is beyond the dawn, and in one place (I, 113, 19) the dawn is called 'the face of Aditi,' áditer ánîkam. Thus we read :
V, 62, 8. híranya-rûpam ushásah vi-ushtau ayah-sthanam út-ità sûryasya, a rohathah varuna mitra gártam átah kakshâthe (Iti) áditim ditim ka.
Mitra and Varuna, you mount your chariot, which is golden, when the dawn bursts forth, and has iron poles at the setting of the sun : from thence you see Aditi and Diti, i. e. what is yonder and what is here.
If we keep this original conception of Aditi clearly before our mind, the various forms which Aditi assumes, even in the hymns of the Veda, will not seem incoherent. Aditi is not a prominent deity in the Veda, she is celebrated rather in her sons, the Âdityas, than in her own person. While there are so many hymns addressed to Ushas, the dawn, or Indra, or Agni, or Savitar, there is but one hymn, X, 72, which from our point of view, though not from that of Indian theologians, might be called a hymn to Aditi. Nevertheless Aditi is a familiar name; a name of the past, whether in time or in thought only, and a name that lives on in the name of the Âdityas, the sons of Aditi, including the principal deities of the Veda.
Aditi and the Adityas. Thus we read :
I, 107, 2. úpa nah deváh ávasã ã gamantu angirasâm sáma-bhih stůyámånåh, Indrah indriyalh marútah marútbhih adityalh nah aditih sarma yamsat.
May the gods come to us with their help, praised by the songs of the Argiras,--Indra with his powers, the Maruts with the storms, may Aditi with the Adityas give us protection!
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