Diti

Grief & Vengeance Mother of Asura

Diti is a daughter of Daksha and wife of the sage Kashyapa alongside sixteen of her sisters, including Aditi. But she is most known as the mother of the Daityas and the Maruts, the first asuras and a group of extremely aggressive warrior gods. Her most well known sons are Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha, the original two Daityas who were eventually slain by Vishnu's avatars, Varaha and Narasimha. While her grandchildren persist, Diti's greatest desire is revenge against the Devas and especially Indra, their king! While both Aditi and Diti are wives to Kashyapa, they tend to contrast each other starkly--as their names exemplify. Aditi and her sons have come to represent divinity and order while Diti and her sons represent chaotic and disruptive forces. Her children are not so much evil as they are destructive and chaotic, part of the cyclical nature of the universe. But while Aditi was nourishing and protective, Diti was cruel and obsessed with power, setting the stage for the conflict between asura and devas. At first, Diti was the only one of Kashyapa's wives to bear no children, brooding in jealousy and grief. She approached Kashyapa while he was performing his daily devotionals, asking for a son. He refused her, urging her to wait until the unholy hour of dusk had passed--a time when hordes of spirits attend to Shiva and whirlwinds carry funeral ash from the cremation grounds. But she refused to wait, tearing off his clothes and seducing him!

Afterwards, Kashyapa stated that they had sinned against the gods, Diti birthing the demonic twins Hiranyakasipu and Hiranyaksa as a result. Bent on violent conquest, her sons and their asura army overan the earth, engaging in a long war against the Adityas. But one by one, they were eventually slain, absolutely devastating Diti! From then on, she wanted to have a son powerful enough to defeat her devas nieces and nephews, begging her husband for another child and even performing penance to gain a boon for him. But Indra, realizing this son would go on to slay him, rended the unborn child into several pieces with his vajra! These pieces were born as the Maruts, powerful and vicious warriors which ironically became Indra's soldiers in battle.