The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.48

c7.48

Once more I must tax your patience and return to Dawn's epithet *dakshiṇā*, or "baksheesh." In Rig-Veda 3. 58. 1 Dawn, under the name of Dakshinā is called the Daughter of Heaven, and Agni, the God of Fire, is called the Son of Dakshinā. What is really meant is, that Agni is the son of Dawn. We have here a double ritual touch which becomes clear only through deep sympathy with the economy of the sacrifice. Why should Agni, "Fire," be the son of Dawn? Is it that Dawn means "light," and light is fire? That would be the far-fetched poetic derivation; I wish to accuse no scholar of having made it. Poetically we think of fire especially as an evening phenomenon, not as a phenomenon of the sober morning. I doubt whether the farmer, as he splits kindling for the breakfast fire of a cold winter morning, cheers himself with the poetic thought that the breakfast fire is the son of Dawn. Our farmers are not temperamentally inclined that way. But it is another matter with the sacrificer who must beautify and beatify all his acts, and throw into them a dash of cajolery. The fact is that the god Agni is also a prized and much extolled divinity of the morning, because the first act of the sacral day is to kindle the fire that shall convey the oblations to the other gods. This is so familiar a fact of Vedic religion as to require no illustration. The truly significant thing is, that it creates a theme in the poetic treatment of the sacrifice, namely: Agni is the son of Dawn, because immediately after Goddess Dawn is beheld God Fire is kindled. In a beautiful hymn to God Savitar, the motive or promotive power behind the sun, the doings of the early morn are described in real poetry: