<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">DEGRADATION.
The degradation of deities — Indicated in names — Legends of
their fall — Incidental signs of the divine origin of demons
and devils.
The atmospheric conditions having been prepared in the
human mind for the production of demons, the particular
shapes or names they would assume would be determined
by a variety of circumstances, ethnical, climatic, political,
or even accidental. They would, indeed, be rarely acci-
dental; but Professor Max Miiller, in his notes to the
Rig- Veda, has called attention to a remarkable instance
• in which the formation of an imposing mythological figure
of this kind had its name determined by what, in all pro-
bability, was an accident There appears in the earliest
Vedic hymns the name of Aditi, as the holy Mother of
many gods, and thrice there is mentioned the female name
Diti. But there is reason to believe that Diti is a mere
reflex of Aditi, the a being dropped originally by a re-
citer's license. The later reciters, however, regarding
every letter in so sacred a book, or even the omission of
a letter, as of eternal significance, Diti — this decapitated
Aditi — was evolved into a separate and powerful being,
and, every niche of beneficence being occupied by its god
or goddess, the new form was at once relegated to the
newly-defined realm of evil, where she remained as the <span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">mother of the enemies of the gods, the Daityas. Un- </span></pre>
<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">happily this accident followed the ancient tendency by
which the Furies and Vices have, with scandalous con-
stancy, been described in the feminine gender.
The close resemblance between these two names of
Hindu mythology, severally representing the best and
the worst, may be thus accidental, and only serve to show
how the demon-forming tendency, after it began, was able
to press even the most trivial incidents into its service. But
generally the names of demons, and for whole races of
demons, report far more than this; and in no inquiry
more than that before us is it necessary to remember
that names are things. The philological facts supply
a remarkable confirmation of the statements already made
as to the original identity of demon and deity. The word
'demon* itself, as we have said, originally bore a good
