Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/148
myth of Varuna and the Ādityas. The interpretation of Aditi as "boundlessness," or "universe," sits very well upon an assumed mother of these great gods. Aditi is later defined as "earth," a narrowing of her scope, somewhat as we of the modern languages make synonymous the terms "world" and "earth."[1]
The mythic cycle represented by Mitra-Mithra and Varuna-Ahura is important for early Vedic religion, and, more permanently, for the whole history of Persian religion. There is no chapter of Aryan religion and mythology that has stimulated the instinct of ultimate interpretation more persistently than this very one. I am of those who cannot imagine any cessation of these attempts for any great length of time. The one solid point in. the genesis of these myths is the solar character of the Aryan Mitra. In later Persian the word mithra in the form mihir is the name of the sun. As previously stated,[2] this solar Mithras passed, in the centuries after Christ, out of the bounds of Persia and started upon a career of conquest which threatened at one time to subject all Western civilisation.