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Infinite be personified? Is it not equally possible, and much 
more probable, that the moral aspect of Aditi is the original 
one? that still in the Rig-Veda epoch there remain echoes of 
a primary doctrine of the Deity, under the name of the 
Infinite, as the Creator, Sovereign, and Judge of all men; 
the Aditi-hood (Aditi-tvaé) being synonymous with our 
‘godliness’? Hlse it is difficult to see how moral guilt 
could be confessed to Aditi. For how should the idea of 
moral guilt have arisen? It is impossible that it could 
have been developed from the mere consciousness of the 
mysterious in nature. A consciousness of moral guilt, as a 
matter between man and the Deity can only arise, surely, 
from a knowledge of the holiness of the Deity, a knowledge 
that could not grow from the mere contemplation of the 
mysterious Infinite. 
Besides Aditi, who is sometimes, as we have seen, invoked 
in the Veda,—as what Professor Max Miiller calls “the 
Beyond, as what is beyond the earth and the sky, and the sun 
and the dawn,” and to which he adds, that it is ‘‘a most sur- 
prising conception in that early period ‘of religious thought,’’— 
we meet with, and that more frequently, “the Adityas, literally 
the sons of Aditi, or gods beyond the visible sky,—in one 
sense the infinite gods. One of them is Varuna, others 
Mitra and Aryaman (Bhaga, Daksha, Amsa), most of them 
abstract names, though pointing to heaven and the solar 
light of heaven as their first, though almost forgotten, 
source ”’* (i.e. almost forgotten at the time the Vedic hymns 
were written). Hence, under another aspect, the Deity is 
regarded as Varuna, the sky or heavent (a name per- 
petuated in the Greek Owranos). Varuna is evidently, in 
origin, only another picture of, and so only another name for, 
that which is also called Aditi. The same characters are 
ascribed to both; both are addressed in language belonging 
only to the supreme Deity. Thus, in a hymn,{ of which 
I read Max Miiller’s translation, Varuna is addressed as 
absolute God :— 
“Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and we shall increase, O Varuna, 
the spring of thy law. Let not the thread be cut while I weave my song ! 
Let not the form of the workman break before the time ! 
“Take far away from me this terror, O Varuna! Thou, O righteous 
King, have mercy on me! Like as a rope from a calf, remove from me my 
sin ; “for away from thee I am not master even of the twinkling of an eye. 
“Do not strike us, Varuna, with weapons which at thy “will hurt the 
evil-doer. Let us not go when the light has vanished! Scatter our 
enemies, that we may live. 
* India, p. 196. + Cf. Luke xv. 21. t Rig-Veda, ii. 28. 
VOL. XIX. R 
