Aditi

   Aditi (she who has no limit) is one of the few goddesses mentioned by name in the RIG VEDA, the earliest extant Indian text. There she is said to be the mother of the ADITYAS, a group of seven (sometimes eight or 12) important divinities, including VARUNA and MITRA. However, the list of her children varies in other texts; SURYA, the Sun God; AGNI, the god of fire; or even INDRA, the king of the gods, is referred to as aditya, that is, “hav-ing Aditi as mother.” Aditi is said to have sprung from the RISHI DAKSHA (although in Rig Veda, Daksha is also simultaneously her son). There is no iconography of Aditi (see ICONS).

   Further reading: Joel Peter Brereton, The Rgvedic Adityas (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Soci-ety, 1981); Cornelia Dimmitt and J. A. B. van Buitenen, Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978); E. Washburn Hopkins, Epic Mythology (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986); M. P. Pandit, Aditi and Other Deities in the Veda (Pondicherry: Dipti, 1970); W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Puranic (Calcutta: Rupa, 1973).