The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c15.6

v1.c15.6

The triple division is adopted by Yāska in his Nirukta,⁴ where he divides the gods into those whose place is the earth, those whose place is the atmosphere, and those whose place is the heaven, and he records that in the opinion of the school of Nairuktas the whole of the deities could be reduced to three, Agni on earth, Vāyu in the air, or, in place of Vāyu, Indra, and Sūrya in the heaven. The doctrine may have owed its origin to such passages as the Rigveda⁵ verse ‘May Sūrya protect us from heaven, Vāta from air, Agni from the earthly regions’, or the declaration of the Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā⁶ that Agni, Vāyu, and Sūrya are the children of Prajāpati, while the presence of Indra as a variant for Vāyu may be due to his affinity in one aspect to Vāyu, and still more to the fact that, if a god were to be chosen to represent the atmosphere, it was hardly possible without absurdity to omit Indra. It should, however, be noted that Yāska does not himself accept the theory of the reduction of all the gods of the several spheres to forms of one god only, and in the Naighaṇṭuka, the text on which his Nirukta comments, the lists of gods given are not based on the principle of identity adopted by the Nairuktas. Nor can the list be regarded as having any special value or authority, though in the main the assignment of the gods to the three spheres is in accordance with the indications of the Rigveda itself. Where a god has different activities, his name is repeated in more than one sphere: thus Tvaṣṭṛ and Pṛthivī appear in all three divisions, Agni and Uṣas in the terrestrial and the aerial, and Varuṇa, Yama, and Savitṛ in the aerial and the celestial.