The Vedas contain no such orderly statements of the divine genealogies as we find in Hesoid and Homer. All is confusion, all is contradiction.* In many passages heaven and earth, Dyaus and Prithivi, are spoken of as parents of the other gods. Dyaus is commonly identified, as is well known, with Zeus by the philologists, but his legend has none of the fulness and richness which makes that of Zeus so remarkable. Before the story of Dyaus could become that of Zeus, the old Aryan sky or heaven god had to attract into his cycle that vast collection of miscellaneous adventures from a thousand sources which fill the legend of the chief Hellenic deity. In the Veda, Dyaus appears now, as with Prithivi,** the parent of all, both men and gods, now as a created thing or being fashioned by Indra or by Tvashtri.*** He is "essentially beneficent, but has no marked individuality, and can only have become the Greek Zeus by inheriting attributes from other deities ".**** Another very early divine person is Aditi, the mother of the great and popular gods called Adityas. "Nothing is less certain than the derivation of the name of Aditi," says M. Paul Regnaud.***** * Certain myths of the beginnings of things will be found in the chapter on cosmogonic traditions. ** Muir, v. 21-24. *** Ibid., v. 30. **** Bergaigne, iii. 112. ***** _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_, xii. 1, 40. M. Regnaud finds the root of Aditi in _ad_, to shine. Mr. Max Müller looks for the origin of the word in _a_, privative, and _da_, to bind; thus Aditi will mean "the boundless," the "infinite," a theory rejected by M. Regnaud. The expansion of this idea, with all its important consequences, is worked out by Mr. Max Müller in his _Hibbert Lectures_. "The dawn came and went, but there remained always behind the dawn that heaving sea of light or fire from which she springs. Was not this the invisible infinite? And what better name could be given than that which the Vedic poets gave to it, Aditi, the boundless, the yonder, the beyond all and everything." This very abstract idea "may have been one of the earliest intuitions and creations of the Hindu mind" (p. 229). M. Darmesteter and Mr. Whitney, on the other hand, explain Aditi just as Welcker and Mr. Max Müller explain Cronion. There was no such thing as a goddess named Aditi till men asked themselves the meaning of the title of their own gods, "the Adityas". That name might be interpreted "children of Aditi," and so a goddess called Aditi was invented to fit the name, thus philologically extracted from Adityas.* M. Bergaigne** finds that Aditi means "free," "untrammelled," and is used both as an adjective and as a name. * The Brahmanic legend of the birth of the Adityas (Aitareya Brahmana iii. 33) is too disgusting to be quoted. ** _Religion Vedique_, iii. 88.