Bhagaभग

Bhaga (भग) is the Āditya of fortune — not blind luck, but the just apportionment of goods, the share that comes to each. His name simply means portion or allotment, and the hymns invoke him as the distributor: men ask Bhaga that they may be bhagavant, possessed of a share, prosperous. A morning hymn of the Ṛgveda calls on him repeatedly at daybreak, the hour when the day's fortunes are dealt out, and he is named in the wedding liturgy as a giver of the bride's prosperity.

The blinded god

The later tradition attached to Bhaga a single memorable misfortune. When Daksha's great sacrifice was broken up in vengeance for the insult to Shiva, the rampaging Virabhadra mutilated the assembled gods — and Bhaga, who had looked on approvingly, had his eyes put out. The blindness of the god of fortune was an irony the tradition did not fail to notice: distributing shares, he does so without sight.

A name that outlived the god

As a cult figure Bhaga barely outlasted the Vedic age, surviving in the list of the twelve Ādityas and little more. His name, however, proved indestructible. From it come bhāgya, fortune or destiny, and above all Bhagavān, the possessor of shares or blessed one — the standard Hindu word for the Lord. The same ancient noun travelled west into the Iranian and Slavic languages, where its descendants include the common Slavic word for god. Few faded deities are so thoroughly embedded in the everyday speech of a billion people.