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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s5: § 5. Aja Ekapād

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s5

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§ 5. Aja Ekapād

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Aja Ekapād, 'the one-footed goat', is mentioned five times with Ahi Budhnya, and but once alone. The deities with whom he is mentioned are the ocean, the stream, the aerial space, the thundering flood, and all the gods, and his aerial connexion seems clear despite the preference for the celestial region evinced by the Naighaṇṭuka.³ In the later literature he appears as making firm the two worlds, according to the Atharvaveda,⁴ and as born in the east according to the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa,⁵ and in the domestic ritual he is once joined with Ahi Budhnya. Native tradition, but only at a very late date, makes him out to be a form of Agni or the sun.⁶

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³ v. 6.

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⁴ xiii. 1. 6.

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⁵ iii. 1. 2. 8.

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⁶ Durga on Nir. xii. 29.

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It is difficult from these scanty facts to make anything out as to the nature of the god: Roth⁷ taking Aja, not as 'goat' which is its proper sense, but literally as 'driver', saw in him the storm; Bergaigne⁸, rendering Aja as 'unborn', thinks he is a mysterious deity of the isolated world; Hardy⁹ finds in him as usual the moon; Victor Henry¹⁰ and Bloomfield¹¹ the sun, while Macdonell¹² suggests the interesting, and, so far as the evidence allows, satisfactory, hypothesis that the lightning form of Agni is meant, the goat denoting his swift coming, and the one foot the solitary streak which smites the earth. This view is clearly preferable to that of Oldenberg,¹³ which sees in the figure the myth of a goat which holds apart the worlds, an idea which has no adequate support in the reference in the Atharvaveda.

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⁷ *Nir.*, pp. 165, 166; cf. Weber, *Rājasūya*, p. 53, n. 4, who suggests the whirlwind.

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⁸ *Rel. Véd.* iii. 23.

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⁹ *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, pp. 41, 42.

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¹⁰ *Les Hymnes Rohita*, p. 24.

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¹¹ SBE. xlii. 664.

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¹² *Ved. Myth.*, p. 74.

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¹³ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 71.

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