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 856

262
VEDIC HYMNS.
How wilt thou tell it to the host of the Maruts, how to the bright heaven, when thou art asked? How to the quick Aditi?
Here Aditi cannot be the goddess, partly on account of the masculine gender of turấya, partly because she is never called quick. Aditi must here be the name of one of the Adityas, or it may refer back to sûré brihaté. It can hardly be joined, as Professor Roth proposes, with sárdhaya marútâm, owing to the intervening sûré brihaté.
In several passages áditi, as an epithet, refers to Agni :
IV, 1, 20 (final). visveshâm áditih yagñlyânâm visvesham atith manushi âm.
He, Agni, the Aditi, or the freest, among all the gods ; he the guest among all men.
The same play on the words áditi and Stithi occurs again: VII, 9, 3. ámarah kavih aditih vivásván su-samsát mitrah Stithih siváh nah, kitrá-bhânuh ushásâm bhâti ágre.
The wise poet, Aditi, Vivasvat, Mitra with his good company, our welcome guest, he (Agni) with brilliant light came at the head of the dawns.
Here, though I admit that several renderings are possible, Aditi is meant as a name of Agni, to whom the whole hymn is addressed, and who, as usual, is identified with other gods, or, at all events, invoked by their names. We may translate aditih vivásvân by the brilliant Aditi,' or
the unchecked, the brilliant,' or by the boundless Vivasvat,' but on no account can we take aditi here as the female goddess. The same applies to VIII, 19, 14, where Aditi, unless we suppose the goddess brought in in the most abrupt way, must be taken as a name of Agni; while in X, 92, 14, áditim anarvánam, to judge from other epithets given in the same verse, has most likely to be taken again as an appellative of Agni. In some passages it would, no doubt, be possible to take Aditi as the name of a female deity, if it were certain that no other meaning could be assigned to this word. But if we once know that Aditi was the name of a male deity also, the structure of these passages becomes far more perfect, if we take Aditi in that sense :
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