Among the Gods and Goddesses of the Rig Veda, Aditi is an outstanding figure of the Godhead, and her preeminence is arresting and rich with features as we shall see in this dissertation. She does not easily lend herself to classification among Nature-powers with the result that most of the western scholars have been admittedly baffled in fixing her identity. There is a fair measure of agreement among them that this deity represents a personification of some impersonality that pervades the physical universe. In working out this clue, some of them have indeed stumbled upon the fringe of what appears to be her true nature, but they have stopped short and refrained from further pursuit lest, perhaps, they may be led to findings which might upset the apple-cart of conclusions of their scientifically learned investigations. We propose, in this Paper, to proceed from where they have left, with the necessary alterations, and arrive at a fuller truth, as far as is possible to gather from the Vedas themselves.

Scholars like Oldenburg would have it that she is a personification of the idea of freedom from bondage. Explaining etymologically, they point out that the root di signifies to cut, to limit and hence, Aditi, its privative, means that which is not limited, not bound. Muir goes on to develop this idea of boundlessness and states: “Aditi an ancient God or Goddess, is in reality the earliest name invented to express the Infinite; not the Infinite”, he hastens to add, “as the result of a long process of abstract reasoning, but the visible Infinite, the endless expanse beyond the earth, the clouds, beyond the sky.” Max, Muller too is satisfied that Aditi is simply the ‘infinite expanse visible to the naked eye’. Roth goes a step further and writes that Aditi, the mother of the Gods, Adityas, “eternity or the eternal, is the element which sustains them (Adityas) and is sustained by them…the eternal and the in-violable element in which the Adityas dwell and which forms their essence, is the celestial light…the Adityas, the Gods of this light, do not therefore by any means coincide with any of the forms in which light is manifested in the universe. 

Source: Incarnate World