Devalok ← All gods
Also calledSons of AditiDvadasha AdityaAryamanBhagaAmshaDaksha

At a glance

TraditionVedic
Who they areThe sons of Aditi. The Rigveda names six, then counts seven, then eight
The sixMitra

Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Daksha and Amsha

Who The Adityas is

The Adityas are the sons of Aditi. The Rigveda gives them six whole hymns and names them in many more, and it never quite decides how many they are. One verse lists six: Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Daksha and Amsha. A late verse says there are seven. Another says Aditi bore eight.

The poets call them kings. They are bright and pure like running water. They have many eyes, and they do not sleep or even blink. Nothing is far from them. They look inside people and see the good and the evil there, and they cannot be fooled. They collect what is owed.

People do not fear them for this. One poet asks them to spread their shelter as birds spread their wings over their young. With the Adityas behind him, he says, a man is like a fighter in a coat of mail. He asks them to look down as a guide looks from the river bank, and to lead him to an easy ford. He even hands them his bad dreams and asks that these be carried far away, to Trita Aptya.

Varuna and Mitra are the great ones of the family and have pages of their own. The lesser brothers are known mostly by their names. Aryaman means "comrade". He is named about a hundred times, nearly always beside Mitra and Varuna. In the wedding hymn he and Bhaga lead the groom's friends along a straight and thornless path, and they give the bride to her husband.

Bhaga means "the giver" and also "the share". He has one hymn, a morning prayer. Rich and poor alike call on him at dawn, and the poet says that even the king himself asks, "Give me my share."

Amsha means "portion" and is hardly more than a name. Daksha means "skill". In the old list he is a son of Aditi, and one hymn says, without explaining, that he is her father as well.

As birds spread their wings over their young, spread your shelter over us, Adityas.

From the Vedas to the Puranas

What became of The Adityas

In the later books the Adityas become twelve, and they become the sun. The Shatapatha Brahmana and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad say that the twelve Adityas are the twelve months of the year, and from then on Aditya is simply a name for the sun.

The Rigveda had left the number open at six, seven or eight. The Brahmanas fix it. When the sage Yajnavalkya is asked who the Adityas are, he answers that they are the months, which move on and carry everything away with them.

The epics and Puranas give the twelve their names. The Vishnu Purana lists Vishnu, Shakra who is Indra, Aryaman, Dhatri, Tvashtri, Pushan, Vivasvat, Savitr, Mitra, Varuna, Amsha and Bhaga, all sons of Kashyapa and Aditi. The Mahabharata gives nearly the same twelve and adds that the youngest, Vishnu, is the greatest. The Vishnu Purana also tells how they came to be born: they were gods of an earlier age who chose Aditi as their mother. It then sets one Aditya in the sun's chariot for each month of the year.

The single brothers went different ways. Varuna became lord of the sea. Mitra faded into his name. Aryaman is called the chief of the ancestors in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna says, "Among the Adityas I am Vishnu," and "among the Fathers I am Aryaman." He is still named in the wedding verses. Bhaga is remembered for a wound. In the story of the sacrifice from which Rudra was shut out, Bhaga looks at the pierced offering and loses his eyes. Daksha left the family altogether and became a father of creatures, the father of Aditi and of Sati.

Few people worship the brothers by name today. Yet every prayer to the sun as Aditya is addressed to them, and Varanasi keeps twelve sun shrines, Lolarka the best known, which the Kashi Khanda of the Skanda Purana calls the twelve Adityas of the city.

See how the Vedic gods became the Puranic ones →

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VedicSurya VedicAditi VedicAgni