Aditi throws away and then brings back to the gods. Mitra, Varuṇa, and Indra are called Ādityas, and the same name is given to Savitṛ and to Sūrya. Sometimes the Ādityas form a group in conjunction with other gods like the Maruts, Rudras, Vasus, and Ṛbhus, or again they seem occasionally to include all the gods. From Varuṇa they appear to have derived the moral duties of punishing sin and rewarding the good; they spread fetters for their enemies, but protect their worshippers as birds spread their wings over their young. They are bright, golden, many-eyed, unwinking, and sleepless, kings with inviolable ordinances, pure, and overseers of Holy Order.
In comparison with his future greatness Viṣṇu appears of slight importance in the Ṛgveda, in which only five hymns and part of a sixth are given to him. His great feat is his triple stride, the third of which places him beyond the ken of man or the flight of birds. Yet it is also described as an eye fixed in heaven, where there is a well of honey, where Indra dwells, and where are the many cows desired of the worshipper. In his striding Viṣṇu moves swiftly but also according to law; he is an ordainer who, like Savitṛ, metes out the earthly spaces; or, again, he sets in motion, like a revolving wheel, his ninety steeds with their four names, who can be nothing else than the year. These traits reveal him beyond doubt as a sun-god, whether his name be explained as "the Active," from the root viṣ, or as "One Who Crosses the Backs of the Universe."[1] His three strides were interpreted by Aurṇavābha, one of the earliest expounders of Vedic mythology, as the rising, culminating, and setting of the sun, but Śākapūṇi, another exegete, already gave the far more probable version of earth, atmosphere, and sky.
The steps taken by Viṣṇu are for man in distress, or to bestow on him the earth as a dwelling-place, or to make room for existence, and in this conception lies, no doubt, the germ of the dwarf incarnation of Viṣṇu. His closeness to man is also attested by his connexion with Indra and the Maruts. Urged by Indra, Viṣṇu, having drunk of the soma, carried off one hundred buffa-
- ↑ See M. Bloomfield, in American Journal of Philology, xvii. 428
