The Prehistoric Gods 131
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doubt but what Aditi is a wellwexecuted abstraction of some kind. In the pastI have suggested1 that the word a‘a’izfycz meant originally “of yore,” and that this set of antique gods whose most substantial members are prehistoric were thus fitly named “ gods of yore ” or “gods of old.” We may perhaps con~ trast with this the description of Indra as “later born ” (magma/am), in a legend told in Taittiri‘ya Brahmana (2.. 2. Io). From the word ddz'ryn,conceived as a metronymic, the feminine Aditi might be easily abstracted. If this is well taken we must assume that the Veda had forgotten the meaning of cidz'z‘ya in the sense of “ of yore.” This was necessarily the case before some speculative genius might invent the mother Aditi. Another exPlanation, that of Professor Macdonell," has perhaps the advantage of greater simplicity. He starts from the expression aditdz pundit, which is applied several times to the Adityas. This, he thinks, may have meant origi- nally “ sons of freedom,” perhaps better “sons of guiltlessness ”; such an expression may have led to the personification of Aditi as a female mother of Adityas. At all events Aditi may be safely re garded as later drippings from the very sappy
‘ See my essay, TIE: Syméafic Gods, in Studias in Honor of B. L.
Gildarsieew, p. 45. 9 Vaa’ic Mythology, p. 1:22.
