the Indus, Varuna was the great god we see him in the great hymn to his honor.  But while the relation of the [=A]dityas to the spirits of Ahura in Zoroaster’s system points to this, yet it is absurd to assume this epoch as the starting point of Vedic belief.  Back of this period lies one in which Varuna was by no means a monotheistic deity, nor even the greatest divinity among the gods.  The fact, noticed by Hillebrandt, that the Vasishtha family are the chief praisers of Varuna, may also indicate that his special elevation was due to the theological conceptions of one clan, rather than of the whole people, since in the other family books he is worshipped more as one of a pair, Varuna and Mitra, heaven and sun.

ADITI.

The mother of Varuna and the luminous gods is the ‘mother of kings,’ Boundlessness (aditi)[90] a product of priestly theosophy.  Aditi makes, perhaps, the first approach to formal pantheism in India, for all gods, men, and things are identified with her (i. 89. 10).  Seven children of Aditi are mentioned, to whom is added an eighth (in one hymn).[91] The chief of these, who is, par excellence the [=A]ditya (son of Aditi), is Varuna.  Most of the others are divinities of the sun (x. 72).  With Varuna stands Mitra, and besides this pair are found ‘the true friend’ Aryaman, Savitar, Bhaga, and, later, Indra, as sun (?).  Daksha and Anca are also reckoned as [=A]dityas, and S[=u]rya is enumerated among them as a divinity distinct from Savitar.  But the word aditi, ‘unbound,’ is often a mere epithet, of Fire, Sky, etc.  Moreover, in one passage, at least, aditi simply means ‘freedom’ (i. 24. 1), less boundlessness than ‘un-bondage’; so, probably, in i. 185. 3, ‘the gift of freedom.’  Anca seems to have much the same meaning with Bhaga, viz., the sharer, giver.  Daksha may, perhaps, be the ‘clever,’ ‘strong’ one ([Greek:  dexios]), abstract Strength; as another name of the sun (?).  Aditi herself (according to Mueller, Infinity; according to Hillebrandt, Eternity) is an abstraction that is born later than her chief sons, Sun and Varuna.[92] Zarathustra (Zoroaster, not earlier than the close of the first Vedic period) took the seven [=A]dityas and reformed them into one monotheistic (dualistic) Spirit (Ahura), with a circle of six moral attendants, thereby dynamically destroying every physical conception of them.

DAWN.

We have devoted considerable space to Varuna because of the theological importance with which is invested his personality.  If one admit that a monotheistic Varuna is the ur-Varuna, if one see in him a sign that the Hindus originally worshipped one universally great superior god, whose image effaced that of all the others,[93] then the attempt to trace any orderly development in Hindu theology may as well be renounced; and one must imagine that this peculiar people, starting