The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.39

c9.39

I have followed the main current of Agni's life in order to make clear the meaning of arrested personification, or arrested anthropomorphism. The Vedic poets are far from restricting themselves to this one view. Fire is not only in the sacral fire-sticks, but he is visible everywhere: as sun and lightning in the sky; as glint on the surface of the waters; as the embryo of plants and trees that willingly give it up when in flames; as the spark of flint and the rocks; and even in the heat of the body, and as vital force latent in all living things. Especially remarkable is the certainly Indo-European myth which deals very clearly with a twin descent from heaven: the descent of fire, and the descent of the heavenly fluid. In its Vedic treatment the heavenly fire is Agni of the lightning; the heavenly fluid is *soma*, the ambrosial drink: "The one (namely, the heavenly fire) Mātariçvan brought from heaven; the other (namely, *soma*) the eagle brought from the rock."¹ I have spoken before of the descent of the heavenly fluid²; the descent of Agni from heaven is doubtless connected with the lightning fire. Mātariçvan, however, who brings Agni, belongs to the class of mythic persons for whom I have reserved the attribute "opaque." Even this dramatic nature act, which the plastic spirit of the Greeks shapes for all time into the main motif of the Prometheus tragedy, appears to the Vedic poets merely as heaven's method of furnishing fire and *soma* for the sacrifice: it does not turn into a real humanised myth. And what I have deduced here in detail is true of all of Agni's traits in the Veda; he is at one moment element and phenomenon, at another person and god, at all times as clear as his own light to teach the nature of the gods.