The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.37

c9.37

He knows everything by virtue of his wisdom; he embraces wisdom as a felly does the wheel. The adjective *kavikratu*, "possessing the intellect of the sages," applies to him particularly, and the epithet *jātavedas*, "having innate wisdom," is exclusively his own. From the function of archpriest and arch-sage to godhead it is but a step. Agni is the divine benefactor of his worshipper who sweats to carry him fuel: him he protects with a hundred iron walls, or takes across all calamities, as in a ship over the sea. And then, finally, he is divine monarch, surpassing mighty heaven and all the worlds, is superior to all the other gods who worship him, or takes his place in the long line of supreme gods whom the poets indifferently, or henotheistically, as Max Müller put it, praise at convenient times with all the fervor and all the resourceful verbiage which marks the diction of the Rig-Veda: