The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.28

c9.28

After having been kindled Agni is placed upon the altar or, if we trust the testimony of the ritual texts of the Veda, upon three altars.¹ Fagots are now piled on, fat oblations are poured in; he waxes big; his tongues, three, or seven, shoot up; he has four eyes, or a thousand eyes—both things mean that he is sharp-sighted; his jaws are sharp; and his teeth shine golden, or his iron grinders clutch. Then the figure is changed: he is flame-haired, tawny-haired, tawny-bearded; his glowing head faces in all directions. Ghee, or melted butter, is his food: he is therefore called ghee-backed, ghee-faced, ghee-haired. Once, even more boldly, Agni himself says, ghee is his eye. This is the point where Agni begins to take on a little more of the flesh and blood of personality upon the skeleton of his elemental qualities. For he receives the offerings neither passively nor selfishly. At as late a time as that of the great Epic, the Mahābhārata² he is made to say: "The ghee that is poured into my mouth, in the way prescribed in the Veda, nourishes the Gods and the Manes . . . called by my mouth the Gods and the Manes come to eat the ghee."