the command of a god, ii. 38, 3; 6; viii. 40, 8; or simply ánu vratám, according to law and order:

i. 136, 5. tám aryama abhí rakshati rigu-yántam ánu

vratam.

Aryaman protects him who acts uprightly according to law. Cf. iii. 61, 1; iv. 13, 2; v. 69, 1.

The laws or ordinances or institutions of the gods are sometimes taken for the sacrifices which are supposed to be enjoined by the gods, and the performance of which is, in a certain sense, the performance of the divine will.

i. 93, 8. yáh agnishómâ havíshâ saparyất devadrîkâ mánasâ yáh ghriténa, tásya vratám rakshatam pâtám ámhasah.

He who worships Agni and Soma with oblations, with a godly mind, or with an offering, protect his sacrifice, shield him from evil!

i. 31, 2. tvám agne prathamáh ángirah-tamah kavíh devẩnâm pári bhûshasi vratám.

Agni, the first and wisest of poets, thou performest the sacrifice of the gods.

iii. 3, 9. tásya vratani bhûri-poshínah vayám úpa bhûshema dáme a suvriktí-bhih.

Let us, who possess much wealth, perform with prayers the sacrifices of Agni within our house.

In another acceptation the vratas of the gods are what they perform and establish themselves, their own deeds:

iii. 6, 5. vrata te agne mahatáh mahani táva krátvâ ródasî (íti) a tatantha.

The deeds of thee, the great Agni, are great, by thy power thou hast stretched out heaven and earth.

viii. 42, I. ástabhnât dyẩm ásurah visvá-vedâh ámimîta varimanam prithivyah, a asidat ví và bhúvanini sam-rất ví và ít tấni várunasya vratấn.

The wise spirit established the sky, and made the width of the earth, as king he approached all beings,—all these are the works of Varuna.

vi. 14, 3. turvantah dásyum âyávah vrataíh sikshantah

avratám.

Men fight the fiend, trying to overcome by their deeds him who performs no sacrifices; or, the lawless enemy.

Lastly, vratá comes to mean sway or power, and the expression vraté táva signifies, at thy command, under thy auspices:

i. 24, 15. átha vayám âditya vraté táva ánâgasah áditaye syâma.

Then, O Âditya, under thy auspices may we be guiltless before Aditi.

vi. 54, 9. pushan táva vraté vayám ná rishyema kádâ

kaná.

O Pûshan, may we never fail under thy protection.

x. 36, 13. yé savitúh satyá-savasya vísve mitrásya vraté várunasya devah.

All the gods who are in the power of Savitar, Mitra, and Varuna.

v. 83, 5. yásya vraté prithivĩ námnamîti yásya vraté saphá-vat gárbhurîti, yásya vraté óshadhîh visvá-rûpâh sáh nah parganya máhi sárma yakkha.

At whose command the earth bows down, at whose command the earth is as lively as a hoof (?), at whose command the plants assume all shapes, mayest thou, O Parganya, yield us great protection!

In our passage I take vratá in this last sense.

Dâtrá, if derived from dâ, would mean gift, and that meaning is certainly the most applicable in some passages where it occurs:

ix. 97, 55. ási bhágah ási dâtrásya dâtã.

Thou art Bhaga, thou art the giver of the gift.

In other passages, too, particularly in those where the verb dâ or some similar verb occurs in the same verse, it can hardly be doubted that the poet took dâtrá, like dátra or dáttra, in the sense of gift, bounty, largess :

i. 116, 6. yám asvina dadáthuh svetám ásvam—tát vâm dâtrám máhi kîrtényam bhût.

The white horse, O Asvins, which you gave, that your gift was great and to be praised.

i. 185, 3. aneháh dâtrám áditeh anarvám huvé.

I call for the unrivalled, the uninjured bounty of Aditi.

vii. 56, 2I. mã vah dâtrất marutah níh arâma.

May we not fall away from your bounty, O Maruts!

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iii. 54, 16. yuvám hí stháh rayi-daú nah rayînẩm dâtrám rakshethe.

For you, Nâsatyas, are our givers of riches, you protect the gift.

vi. 20, 7. rigísvane dâtrám dâsúshe dâh.

To Rigisvan, the giver, thou givest the gift.

viii. 43, 33. tát te sahasva îmahe dâtrám yát ná upadásyati, tvát agne varyam vásu.

We ask thee, strong hero, for the gift which does not perish; we ask from thee the precious wealth.

x. 69, 4. dâtrám rakshasva yát idám te asmé (íti). Protect this gift of thine which thou hast given to us. viii. 44, 18. îsishe varyasya hí dâtrásya agne svah-patih. For thou, O Agni, lord of heaven, art the master of the precious gift. Cf. iv. 38, 1.

Professor Roth considers that dâtrá is derived rather from dâ, to divide, and that it means share, lot, possession. But there is not a single passage where the meaning of gift or bounty does not answer all purposes. In vii. 56, 21, mã vah dâtrất marutah níh arâma, is surely best translated by, 'let us not fall away from your bounty,' and in our own passage the same meaning should be assigned to dâtrá. The idea of dâtrá, bounty, is by no means incompatible with vratá, realm, dominion, sway, if we consider that the sphere within which the bounty of a king or a god is exercised and accepted, is in one sense his realm. What the poet therefore says in our passage is simply this, that the bounty of the Maruts extends as far as the realm of Aditi, i. e. is endless, or extends everywhere, Aditi being in its original conception the deity of the unbounded world beyond, the earliest attempt at expressing the Infinite.

As to dấtra occurring once with the accent on the first syllable in the sense of sickle, see M. M., ' Über eine Stelle in Yâska's Commentar zum Naighantuka,' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1853, vol. vii. P. 375.

viii. 78, 10. táva ít indra ahám â-sásâ háste datram kaná a dade.

Trusting in thee alone, O Indra, I take the sickle in my hand.
This dấtra, sickle, is derived from do, to cut.

Aditi, the Infinite.

Verse 12, note *. Aditi, an ancient god or goddess, is in reality the earliest name invented to express the Infinite; not the Infinite as the result of a long process of abstract reasoning, but the visible Infinite, visible by the naked eye, the endless expanse beyond the earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky. That was called A-diti, the un-bound, the un-bounded; one might almost say, but for fear of misunderstandings, the Absolute, for it is derived from diti, bond, and the negative particle, and meant therefore originally what is free from bonds of any kind, whether of space or time, free from physical weakness, free from moral guilt. Such a conception became of necessity a being, a person, a god. To us such a name and such a conception seem decidedly modern, and to find in the Veda Aditi, the Infinite, as the mother of the principal gods, is certainly, at first sight, startling. But the fact is that the thoughts of primitive humanity were not only different from our thoughts, but different also from what we think their thoughts ought to have been. The poets of the Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions. They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all, but they were by no means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that their Agni was born like a babe from the friction of two fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap of Aditi. Some poet would take hold of the idea of an unbounded power, of Aditi, originally without any reference to other gods. Very soon these ideas met, and, without any misgivings, either the gods were made subordinate to, and represented as the sons of Aditi, or where Indra was to be praised as supreme, Aditi was represented as doing him homage.

viii. 12, 14. utá sva-rage áditih stómam índrâya gîganat. And Aditi produced a hymn for Indra, the king. Here Professor Roth takes Aditi as an epithet of Agni, not as the name of the goddess Aditi, while Dr. Muir rightly takes it in the latter sense, and retains stómam instead of sómam, as printed by Professor Aufrecht. Cf. vii. 38, 4

.

6

The idea of the Infinite, as I have tried to show elsewhere, was revealed, was most powerfully impressed on the awakening mind, by the East *. It is impossible to enter fully into all the thoughts and feelings that passed through the minds of the early poets when they formed names for that far, far East from whence even the early dawn, the sun, the day, their own life, seemed to spring. A new life flashed up every morning before their eyes, and the fresh breezes of the dawn reached them like greetings from the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds, beyond the dawn, beyond "the immortal 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 ví-ushtau áyah-sthûnam út-itâ suryasya, a rohathah varuna mitra gártam átah kakshathe (íti) áditim dítim 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, what is yonder and what is here.

If we keep this original conception of Aditi clearly before us, 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 Adityas, 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,

* Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, p. 499.