Adit

“ No one has ever said anything truer.”
From the depths of the eastern sky Aditi arises each morning. To the eyes of the ancient seers the dawn seemed to open the gates of another world into which they begged to enter—into the abode of the gods. We can understand that as the sun and all the solar deities rise from the east, Aditi was said to be the mother of Mitra, Vishnu, Savitar, and Varuna. ”

“ Again, the gods were represented in the children of Aditi, and this might be taken either in a high and refined sense, as if Aditi were the infinite region from which the solar deities rise, [10] or we may hold that Aditi is the eternal which sustains and is sustained by the gods, [11] or the Indian imagination could sink to the vulgar and half-magical conception of Aditi as a female who, being desirous of sons, cooked a Brahmaudana oblation for the gods, the Sadhyas. [12] Various other gods and supernatural beings are credited with having created or generated the gods. ”

“ Thereupon having bowed unto her along with the king of celestials he conferred the pair of ear-rings upon her and related unto her the destruction of the demon Naraka. Well-pleased, Aditi, the mother of Gods with her thoughts wholly devoted unto Hari, the protector of the universe, began to chant his glories:—"Salutation unto thee, O thou having lotus eyes, who removest all fear of the devotees, who art eternal, the soul of all creatures, the creator of all and identical with all. Thou art at one with the three qualities and the creator of mind, intellect and senses. ”

“ For well these Sons of Aditi know to keep enmities aloof, Unrivalled, giving ample room, they save from woe. 6. Aditi guard our herd by day, Aditi, free from guile, by night, Aditi, ever strengthening, save us from grief! 7. And in the day our hymn is this: May Aditi come nigh to help, With loving-kindness bring us weal and chase our foes. 8. And may the Asvins, the divine Pair of Physicians, send us health: May they remove iniquity and chase our foes. 9. May Agni bless us with his fires, and Surya warm us pleasantly: May the pure Wind breathe sweet on us, and chase our foes. ”

“ These are only faint figures in comparison with Aditi, if that deity is to be reckoned among the personifications of abstract concepts. She is singularly without definitive features of a physical kind, though, in contrast to the other abstractions, she is commonly known throughout the Ṛgveda. She is expanded, bright, and luminous; she is a mistress of a bright stall and a supporter of creatures; and she belongs to all men. ”

“ Methinks thou deservest a boon." Hearing these words of his, Marichi's son, Kaçyapa, said,—"Aditi, the gods and I myself, crave of thee this,—and, O bestower of boons, it behoveth thee well pleased to confer on us this boon, O thou of excellent vows! Do thou, O sinless one, become born as my son in Aditi, O adorable deity! Do thou become the younger brother of Sakra, O destroyer of Asuras. It behoveth thee to help the celestials afflicted with grief. And this place through thy grace will attain the name of Siddhāçrama. The work, O lord of the celestials, hath been accomplished. ”

“ Never in all the world were there such great and mighty men as the Adites. Each of them was twelve cubits high, and they were so strong that if any of them stamped on the ground he sank up to his knees.
The Adites raised great monuments in the land which they inhabited. Wherever these Cyclopean edifices exist, they are called by the Arabs the constructions of the Adites.
God ordered the prophet Hud (Eber) to go to the Adites and preach to them the One true God, and turn them from idolatry. ”

“ Aditi is the dawn who, confined one knows not where, succeeds at last in breaking bonds and appears radiantly in the open heaven, delivering and delivered, breaking the jail in which the hours of darkness have confined the world. Aditi is the dawn, freed and giving freedom. ”

“ Occasionally we even find shadowed forth the pantheistic idea of a deity representing not only all the gods, but Nature as well. Thus the goddess Aditi is identified with all the deities, with men, with all that has been and shall be born, with air, and heaven (i. 89) ; and in a cosmogonic hymn (x. 121) the Creator is not only described as the one god above all gods, but is said1 to embrace all things. This germ of pantheism developed through the later Vedic literature till it assumed its final shape in the [71] Vedānta philosophy, still the most popular system of the Hindus. ”

“ The Aditya represent an earlier and purer form of religion: "While in hymns to the other deities long life, wealth, power, are the objects commonly prayed for, of the Aditya is craved purity, forgiveness of sin, freedom from guilt, and repentance." ”

“ We must, however, if we would discover their earliest character, abandon the conceptions which in a later age, and even in that of the heroic poems, were entertained regarding these deities, According to this conception they were twelve Sun-gods, there being evident reference to the twelve months. But for the most ancient period we must hold fast to the primary significance of their names. They are inviolable, imperishable, eternal things. Aditi, Eternity, or The Eternal, is the element which sustains them, or is sustained by them. ”

“ In the Krita (golden) age of old, O king, the exalted deity Aditya (once) came down from heaven into the world of men. Having seen before the assembly-house of Brahma the Self-created, Aditya was cheerfully wandering over the Earth in human form, desirous of beholding what could be seen here. It was on that occasion, O son of Pandu, that the god of day spoke unto me, O bull of the Bharata race, of that celestial Sabha (assembly) of the Grandsire, immeasurable and immaterial and indescribable, as regards form and shape, and capable of delighting the heart of every creature by its splendour. ”

“ Do thou now, O thou of the six attributes, ascend from hence!" And accordingly Vishnu of mighty energy took his birth in Aditi. And assuming the form of a dwarf, he presented himself before Virochana's son. ”

“ A corresponding Aryan root dī̆ is presupposed by Sanscrit a-diti, ‘unlimited in time and space, unending, endless’ (the name of the goddess Aditi) . Other Teutonic derivatives of the same root are Zeile and Ziel, which also point to the ‘limitless in time or space’. ”

“ For fifty years did the prophet Hud speak to the Adites, and their reply to his exhortations is preserved in the Koran, "O Hud, you produce no evidence of what you advance; we will not abandon our gods because of your preaching. We mistrust your mission. We believe that one of our gods bears a hatred against you." ”

“ The eternal and inviolable element in which the Adityas dwell, and which forms their essence, is the celestial light. The Aditvas, the gods of this light, do not therefore by any means coincide with any of the forms in which light is manifested in the universe. They are neither the sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the eternal sustainer of this luminous life, which exists, as it were, behind these phenomena. ”

“ The daughters of Daksha are, O tiger among men and prince of the Bharata race, Aditi, Diti, Danu, Kala, Danayu, Sinhika, Krodha, Pradha, Viswa, Vinata, Kapila, Muni, and Kadru. The sons and grandsons of these, gifted with great energy, are countless. From Aditi have sprung the twelve Adityas who are the lords of the universe. And, O Bharata, as they are according to their names, I shall recount them to thee. They are Dhatri, Mitra, Aryaman, Sakra, Varuna, Ansa, Vaga, Vivaswat, Usha, Savitri, Tvashtri, and Vishnu. The youngest, however, is superior to them all in merit. ”

“ We find in the Vishnu Purana, that Devaki (the virgin mother of the Hindoo Saviour Crishna, whose history, as we have seen, corresponds in most every particular with that of Christ Jesus) is called Aditi, [475:4] which, in the Rig-Veda, is the name for the Dawn. Thus we see the legend is complete. Devaki is Aditi, Aditi is the Dawn, and the Dawn is the Virgin Mother. "The Saviour of Mankind" who is born of her is the Sun, the Sun is Crishna, and Crishna is Christ. ”

“ Traditionally, we regard the Twelve as all adult men, with one possible exception, during the period of their association with the Redeemer. A man full grown in the year 30 could hardly have travelled about, as Adai is represented as doing, in the years 100–104. ”

“ Syriac tradition is clear enough on the point, of course. According to this, Mar Adai (who is variously described as either the Apostle Thaddeus, or as one of "the seventy") came during the first century to Edessa and planted Christianity there. His disciple, Mari, starting from thence, became the true evangelist of Persia; descending even into Fars, until he "smelt the smell of the Apostle Thomas," [4] the traditional evangelist of India. ”

“ Was this mythology transmitted by oral tradition only?
[Pg 239] Ans. This must have been the case for a long time; as the oldest of the Eddas was compiled only in the eleventh century, and the stories which it contains of the Northern gods and heroes, had been long familiar to the people in the recitations of their bards. The Scandinavian Skalds or bards were, like the Celtic, historians as well as minstrels.
Ques. Who composed the Eddas?
Ans. It is impossible to say. The oldest, or poetic Edda, was compiled by Sâmund Sigfûsson, an Icelandic priest, about the middle of the eleventh century. ”

“ Adam, was reproduced in Noah, Elijah, and other Bible celebrities, 44; no trace of the story of the fall of, in the Hebrew Canon, after the Genesis account, 99. Aditi, "Mother of the Gods," 475; a personification of the Dawn, 475; is identified with Devaki, 475. Adonis, is born of a Virgin, 191; has title of "Saviour," 191, 217; is slain, 191; rises from the dead, 218; is creator of the world, 249; his temple at Bethlehem, 220; his birth on December 25th, 364; a personification of the Sun, 484; in Hebrew "My Lord," 485. Æolus, son of Jupiter, 125. Æon, Christ Jesus an, 427 ”

“ What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. ”

“ But the effects of Adad’s power so artistically set forth in this hymn are secondary, as placed beside the dignity of the god himself. The word of Adad is absolute and all-powerful. He is a god of great wrath. He is a real bull-god, of heaven and earth. He can put the heavens out of sight. He can make day as black as the darkest night. He can split the earth with his lightning. He can flood the land with water. He can pelt its inhabitants with stones. Yet in all this he consults with father Bêl.
Obverse
1. [ḥad] -ê-a mu-zu an [-zak-ku]
In the lightning flash thou proclaimest thy name! ”

“ When we inquire whom Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are named after, and press questions in reference to Tyr, Odin, Thor and Freyja, we get at best but a wise and knowing look. Are we, then, as a nation, like the ancient Jews, and do we bend the knee before the gods of foreign nations and forsake the altars of our own gods? What if we then should suffer the fate of that unhappy people—be scattered over all the world and lose our fatherland? In these Eddas our fathers have bequeathed unto us all their profoundest, all their sublimest, all their best thought. ”

“ I must tell it you, Addie. . . . It was during those last days, those terrible days in Paris. Eduard, my husband, was in Paris and . . . and he had been threatening me. . . . You remember, you must remember: I told you as much as that, didn't I? . . . He had come to look for me in Paris. He hated me . . . and he hated, oh, how he hated Henri! . . . Henri, my poor brother, my brother! . . . Addie, Addie, let me tell you everything! . . . Whatever people may have thought, whatever people may have said, none of it's true, it's all false! ”

“ Still following the legend, we see Addai, one of the "Seventy," despatched by Thomas to Edessa after the resurrection of Christ, with the result that the king is immediately healed; whereupon he and a great number of his people are converted to Christianity. Addai is said to have laboured at Edessa to the end of his life, and to have died a natural death. He is succeeded by Aggai, who suffers martyrdom under Ma'nu, a heathen son of Abgar, his legs being broken while he is sitting at church. ”

“ And they ministered with him in the church which Addæus had built at the word and command of Abgar the king, being furnished with supplies by the king and his nobles, partly for the house of God, and partly for the supply of the poor. Moreover, much people day by day assembled and came to the prayers of the service, and to the reading of the Old Testament, and the New of the Diatessaron. [58] They also believed in the restoration of the dead, and buried their departed in the hope of resuscitation. ”

“ In the environs, too, of the city churches were built, and many received from him ordination to the priesthood. [59] So that even people of the East, in the guise of merchants, passed over into the territory of the Romans, that they might see the signs which Addæus did. And such as became disciples received from him ordination to the priesthood, and in their own country of the Assyrians they instructed the people of their nation, and erected houses of prayer there in secret, by reason of the danger from those who worshipped fire and paid reverence to water. ”