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 854

260
VEDIC HYMNS.
adite sarvá-tâta, yám bhadréna sávaså kodáyasi praga-vata rádhaså té syama.
To whom thou, possessor of good treasures, grantest guiltlessness, O Aditi, in health and wealth“, whom thou quickenest with precious strength and with riches in progeny, may we be they! Cf. II, 40, 6; IV, 25, 5; X, 11, 2.
The principal epithets of Aditi have been mentioned in the passages quoted above, and they throw no further light on the nature of the goddess. She was called devî, goddess, again and again ; another frequent epithet is anarván, uninjured, unscathed. Being invoked to grant light (VII, 82, 10), she is herself called luminous, gyótishmatî, I, 136, 3; and svărvatî, heavenly. Being the goddess of the infinite expanse, she, even with greater right than the dawn, is called úrûkî, VIII, 67, 12; uruvyákas, V, 46, 6; uruvraga, VIII, 67, 12; and possibly prithvi in I, 72, 9. As supporting everything, she is called dharayatkshiti, supporting the earth, I, 136, 3; and visváganyà, VII, 10, 4. To her sons she owes the names of rấgaputra, II, 27, 7; suputra, III, 4, 11; and ugráputra, VIII, 67, 11: to her wealth that of sudravinas, I, 94, 15, though others refer this epithet to Agni. There remains one name pastyä, IV, 55, 3; VIII, 27,5, meaning housewife, which again indicates her character as mother of the gods.
I have thus given all the evidence that can be collected from the Rig-veda as throwing light on the character of the goddess Aditi, and I have carefully excluded everything that rests only on the authority of the Yagur- or Atharvavedas, or of the Brâhmanas and Aranyakas, because in all they give beyond the repetitions from the Rig-veda, they seem to me to represent a later phase of thought that ought not to be mixed up with the more primitive conceptions of the Rig-veda. Not that the Rig-veda is free from what seems decidedly modern, or at all events secondary and late. But it is well to keep the great collections, as such,
On sarvátâti, salus, see Benfey's excellent remarks in Orient und Occident, vol. ii, p. 519. Professor Roth takes aditi here as an epithet of Agni.
Digitized by
Digitized by Google