1. Name of a Vedic deity. 2. A Rishi who composed several hymns of the Rigveda. 3. A class of deities. 4. The priest who prepares the Soma.
त्रित (trita) [Printed book page 0392-c] Trita, as, m., Ved. (in the Atharva-veda also
tṛta), N. of a Vedic deity; (he is generally asso-
ciated with the Maruts, Vāyu, and Indra; and fights
like the latter with Tvāṣṭra, Vṛtra, and other
demons: he is also called Āptya, q. v., either as
produced in water by Agni, whence he is sometimes
called ‘a son of the water,’ or as son of the Ṛṣi
Āpta. In some passages of the Taittirīya-Saṃhitā he
is regarded as bestowing long life; while elsewhere
he is supposed to reside in the remotest regions of
the world, whence the idea of wishing to remove
calamity to Trita or to the remotest place possible;
cf. Ṛg-veda VIII. 47, 14. In some passages of the
Page0393-a+ 72 Veda, Indian commentators explain Trita by
tri- sthāna, ‘reaching through the triple world,’ as an
epithet of Indra or Vāyu. In later myths Trita is
described as a Ṛṣi, by whom several hymns of the
Ṛg-veda were-composed. Sāyaṇa in his introduction
to Ṛg-veda I. 105, relates that there were three Ṛṣis,
named Ekata, Dvita, and Trita, who lived in a desert
country; being parched with thirst, they looked
about for a well, and having found one, Trita entered
it to draw water, when the other two, desirous of
obtaining his property, threw him into the well and
closed up the mouth with a wheel; shut up in the
well, Trita composed a hymn to the gods, and
managed, in a marvellous manner, to perform the
Soma sacrifice, that he might drink the Soma himself
before death, or offer it to the deities in the hope of
being extricated by them: his preparation of the
Soma is described in the Mahā-bh. Śalya-parva 2095,
and he is elsewhere celebrated as an offerer of the
Soma. In various other epic legends, Ekata, Dvita,
and Trita are described as three brothers, sons of
Gautama or of Prajā-pati, = Brahmā. According to
the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa, Trita is one of the twelve
sons of Manu and Naḍvalā. Some identify the Vedic
Trita with the Vedic
Traitana, and with Thraetana
the Zend form of Feridun. His connection with
water points to a comparison with the Gr. Τρίτων,
τριτο-γενής, Τριτωνίς, Τριτο-πάτορες, &c.) (
Trita seems also to mean) a class of deities, ‘the third
ones,’ i. e. those who live in the sky (?); the priest
who prepares the Soma.
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