3. Goddess Asunīti

The term asu means the vital air, the presence of which makes beings alive and the departure makes one dead.^[1] The force that conveys this vital air from one’s body to the another world is personified as the deity Asunīti.^[2] Whether Asunīti is a male deity or a female one is a confusion. Though the word is derived from the root nī meaning to carry with the suffix ktin which is a feminine suffix and thus, the word asunīti is of feminine gender, but, Sāyaṇācārya has once^[3] interpreted it as a female deity and in another context^[4] as a male deity. However, the Bṛhaddevatā^[5] enumerates Asunīti amongst female deities. In this regard, Max Müller^[6] states, “there is nothing to show that Asunīti is a female deity.”

Asunīti has her origin in the Ṛgveda.^[7] There, she has been referred to very scantily. In the Atharvaveda also, her name is mentioned only for two times.^[8] That she guides the vital force of each sense organ to the respective presiding deity of the senses, like Sūrya of the eyes is mentioned in both the Vedas.^[9] In the Ṛgveda,^[10] it is categorically mentioned that after death, the eyes of the same go to Sūrya and the breath to the wind. In the Ṛgveda,^[11] Asunīti is spoken of as taking the asu of the dead person to the three regions, viz. earth, atmosphere and the heaven. In the same Veda,^[12] the forefathers are spoken of as having asu. In the Atharvaveda,^[13] Asunīti is regarded as svarāṭ, i.e. autocratic and is prayed to give bodily shape to the forefathers who have entered the wide atmosphere. Similarly, in the Ṛgveda also, she is beseeched to prolong one’s life,^[14] to enable the dead one to look at the sun-shining again^[15] and to return the vital air for the continuation of life.^[16]

Thus, it is observed that the character of Asunīti is delineated with the same characteristic features in the Ṛgveda and the Atharvaveda and by nature, she belongs to the eschatological deities like Yama, Rudra, Nirṛti and Agni.