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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s1: § 1. Agni

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s1

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§ 1. Agni

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AGNI is clearly in the eyes of the priest only second to Indra in importance: in the Rigveda he has some 200 hymns for himself alone.¹ From Indra, however, he is essentially distinguished by his nature; he is intimately connected with the element of which he is the deity, and his nature is therefore far less anthropomorphic; moreover, what there is of human in him is derived, not from the conception of the warrior god, but from that of the ideal priest: if both gods are expected to send fortune and happiness to their votaries, Indra gives rather victory in battle and power, Agni the prosperity and happiness of the home. Moreover, while Agni is assimilated in much to Indra and as usual is accorded several of his feats and his powers, Indra remains comparatively unaffected by the qualities of Agni. Indra also is not, like Agni, the messenger between gods and men, an office, which, if it makes Agni in some ways a god of the closest intimacy with the life of men, still does tend to reduce his status, and renders him in some sense inferior to the other gods. Nor is Soma the normal drink of Agni: he is indeed a Soma-drinker, but only in a minimal degree for a great god, and often because of his connexion with Indra.

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¹ For Indo-European fire gods, see von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, i. 466 ff.

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The appearance of Agni is clearly merely a description of the fire, and in one passage he is truly called headless and footless: elsewhere he is called butter-faced, butter-backed, butter-haired, flame-haired or tawny-haired. He has three or seven tongues, which receive in the later literature names of their own; his steeds are similarly given seven tongues. He has butter for his eye, four or a thousand eyes, and a thousand horns. He is also an archer. He is likened to, or identified with, a bull or horse or bird, an eagle or Haṅsa: even once he is called a raging serpent. Again he² is a hatchet or a car.

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² RV. i. 79. 1.

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His food is ghee, but he also devours the woods, and eats thrice a day. Or he is the mouth by which the gods eat the sacrifice. He is invoked to come to sit on the strew to receive the offerings for himself, or the gods.

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Agni's brightness is often mentioned; he is like the sun, dispels darkness, and bears the epithet 'waking at dawn'. But, when he drives through the forest, shaving the earth like a barber a beard, his path is black. His flames roar terribly, and his light reaches the sky. But he has also a car drawn by two or more horses, with which he brings the gods to receive the offerings of men.

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Agni’s mythic parents are Dyaus and Pṛthivī, or Tvaṣṭṛ and the Waters. But he is also produced by the gods whose father, however, he is; he is brought into existence by Indra or Indra and Viṣṇu, or by the Dawn, and is the son of Iḍā, the personification of the sacrificial food. All these accounts are open to obvious explanations and are of no consequence. More important is the birth from the two fire sticks, the upper being deemed the male, the lower the female, and in mythical form being described as Purūravas and Urvaçī, from that famous pair of lovers. They are also called two mothers, and many plays on the curious infant and his mothers occur.¹ As friction is engendered by the action of the hands in turning the one stick in the other, he is credited with ten mothers, the ten fingers. As force is needed for his production, Agni is the son of strength. He is born ever new and is called the youngest, but still is old as being born for ever. Here and there occurs, in the Brāhmaṇa literature, the idea that the fire at the end of a year is outworn, but the idea that the fire is at the beginning of each year to be formally renewed in a special rite is not to be recognized. For the sacrifices such as the Agniṣṭoma, the four-monthly rites, and the animal offering, the fire is solemnly produced anew by friction, but there is no evidence that the winter solstice was felt to be a time when the fire as such was in need of any special renewal. If such an idea existed,² it has not left any clear trace in Vedic ritual.

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¹ The long period of gestation (RV. v. 2) is probably an allusion to the long latency of fire in the wood, ere evoked by friction. The old mode of lighting the fire was preserved in the rite of rekindling on March 1 the fire of Vesta in Rome and in the occasional use of this method in kindling the ‘need fire’ in Germany (von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 596 f.).

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² Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 77 ff. Cf. his theory of Dawn as the Goddess of a New Year (above, Part II, Chap. 8, § 7). Cf. von Schroeder (*Arische Religion*, ii. 485), who regards Agni as reborn at the opening of spring, comparing the return of Apollo in spring (p. 523).

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As Agni springs from the wood, it is regularly stated that he dwells in plants. On earth too he has a place in the navel (*nābhi*) of the earth, a reference doubtless to the hole in the high place of offering in which the fire is deposited: hence Agni is the navel of immortality.

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Agni is also born from the waters: he is the embryo of the waters, kindled in the waters, a bull who has waxed great in the waters, and he descends from the clouds. In these cases it is probable that the waters of the clouds are meant: in this aspect he is Apāṁ Napāt, who has become practically a separate deity. On the other hand, there is a widely prevalent view that the waters are terrestrial: several late hymns of the Rigveda tell of the flight of Agni because of unwillingness to perform the sacrifice, and his being found among the waters and the plants, and this legend is a common-place of the Brāhmaṇa period. In the Atharvaveda the Agni in the waters is clearly distinguished from the lightning, and is made terrestrial. The Rigveda itself recognizes the existence of Agni in the streams. In the ritual there are many traces of the same view of Agni as in waters other than those of the clouds.

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At the dedication of tanks of water and similar rites, offerings are made to Agni in the waters;¹ the Brahman student, when he performs the bath marking the end of his period of pupilship, takes water from a vessel, appropriating to himself the bright form of Agni and repelling the other forms of Agni, which have entered into the water.² The waters used at the royal consecration are regarded as being full of Agni.³ In the ceremony of the piling of the fire altar, when it is desired to diminish the heat of Agni, cooling plants and a frog are placed on the altar, and Agni is asked to enter the waters of which he is the gall.⁴ It is clear, therefore, that the view that Agni is connected with the waters of the earth is an old one, but it must be noted that at no period is his connexion with the waters of the air forgotten: we find it expressly asserted in a Sūtra⁵ text which shows that it was perfectly well understood. It is impossible, therefore, to accept the view of Oldenberg that the connexion of Agni in the terrestrial waters is the normal one, as opposed to the Agni of the aerial waters: both conceptions are clearly found equally authenticated. The explanation of the belief in the presence of Agni in the terrestrial waters may be a transfer from the belief in his presence in the aerial waters, but it can also be accounted for in other ways. Thus the phenomenon of the lightning coming down to and entering the waters may well have played a more important part than the more elaborate idea, clearly valid for the Brāhmaṇa period, which sees in the plants the closest connexion with the waters, and which pictures a cycle from the water to the plants, from the plants to the flame, from the flame to the smoke, from the smoke to the cloud, and thence to the water again.

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¹ ÇGS. v. 2. 5.

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² PGS. ii. 6. 10.

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³ AB. viii. 6.

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⁴ TS. iv. 6. 1. 2; VS. xvii. 6.

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⁵ ĀpÇS. v. 16. 4.

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In the third place Agni has a birth in the heaven; he is born there and was brought down by Mātariçvan, who is doubtless his lightning form. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁶ calls him at once heavenly and in the waters. Agni, however, is often as the god contrasted with the lightning. Agni as heavenly is the sun, born in the morning. The Aitareya⁷ says that on setting the sun enters into Agni, and in the Rigveda⁸ Agni unites himself with the rays of the sun. But this side of the nature of Agni is little referred to: the sun was too great and prominent a deity to be treated merely as a form of Agni.

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⁶ vii. 7. 2.

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⁷ viii. 28.

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⁸ v. 37. 1; vii. 2. 1.

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The three births of Agni are constantly referred to: he is made threefold, has three heads, tongues, stations. The order of his abodes is variously stated, as heaven, earth, the waters; or earth, heaven, the waters; or sky, air, and earth. Hence we must doubtless trace the view of the Nairuktas preserved for us by Yāska,⁹ which makes the whole Vedic pantheon reducible to the three gods, Agni, Indra or Vāyu, and Sūrya. The second member of the triad must be taken to have replaced the lightning, which would be more easy, since the lightning has no mythic name to give it substance, and, therefore, the god of the middle space is better represented by a deity of more concrete nature. On the other hand, it would be an error to underestimate the importance of lightning in Vedic mythology, on the ground that it is too transient in character to serve as the basis of mythology.¹

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⁹ Nir. xii. 19.

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¹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 112 f.; Hardy, *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, p. 64; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 368; ii. 129 ff.

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Still more important is the fact that the three forms of Agni explain the practice that in the ritual Agni is worshipped on three altars, the Gārhapatya, the Āhavanīya, and the Dakṣiṇa,² which are kept quite distinct from the ordinary household fire. The alternative view that these fires are to be regarded as the source of the myth of the three forms of Agni can hardly be taken seriously. More plausible is connexion with fire as the sun, as domestic, and as driving away evil spirits, as von Schroeder suggests.³

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² It is connected with the dead, and they with the winds and the air. Hence it corresponds to the aerial, as the Āhavanīya to the celestial Agni.

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³ *Arische Religion*, ii. 487 f.

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Though the birth of Agni is most often triple, yet in many passages he is given but two births, the one on earth, the other in the sky, or, less often, the one in heaven and the other in the waters. The idea is already found in the Rigveda that Agni descends into the waters, and that from the plants he arises again, and, from the distinction of the aspects of fire, we arrive at the frequent Vedic idea that the god is to sacrifice to himself, or bring himself to the sacrifice, or descend with the gods to the sacrifice. Moreover, by another view Agni is kindled not only by men or earth, but by the gods in heaven:⁴ this doubtless points at once to the necessity of some kindler for the Agni of the heaven as for him of earth, and to the tendency to see in the gods the precise analogues of pious sacrificers among men. But from yet another point of view Agni is manifold, since there are many fires on earth: the unity of the conception, however, as in the case of Dawn triumphs: the other fires are likened to the branches of the tree, Agni. This manifold nature of his origin is sometimes developed in detail, as when he is said to be born from the heavens, the waters, stones, woods, and plants.⁵ The rock whence it is born may be the stone from which he is struck out or the cloud: he dwells also in man as animal heat, in beast and birds, in biped and quadruped.⁶ He is the germ therefore of all that is.

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⁴ RV. vi. 2. 3; cf. AB. ii. 34.

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⁵ RV. ii. 1. 1.

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⁶ RV. x. 5. 1; AV. iii. 21. 2; xii. 1. 19; 2. 33; TS. iv. 6. 1. 3.

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The three births of Agni give rise to the legend of his three brothers, or his brothers generically, who again with him make up the four Hotṛs, of whom three die according to the Kāṭhaka Saṁhitā.⁷ The legend of death seems purely imaginative. Of the gods Varuṇa is once his brother, and Indra is his twin brother. From Indra Agni borrows, as we have seen, some of his feats, such as vanquishing the Paṇis. In one hymn Agni is mentioned with Soma. He lends himself also to identifications with other gods: thus in the evening he is Varuṇa, rising in the morning Mitra, as Savitṛ he traverses the air, as Indra he illumines the sky; so the Atharvaveda ¹ tells us. He has various forms and many names, he embraces all the gods, and once even in the Rigveda ² he is successively identified with twelve gods and five goddesses.

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⁷ xxv. 7. Cf. TS. ii. 6. 6; Bṛhaddevatā, vii. 61 with Macdonell's note.

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¹ xiii. 3. 13.

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² ii. 1. 3–7.

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Agni is not without martial traits, but his activity is quite different from that of Indra, who wars on the Asuras and on the Dāsas. Agni is in place of that the destroyer of the demons; with iron teeth he consumes the sorcerers, he drives away the goblins, he is the slayer of Rakṣases *par excellence*. Indra borrows this feature of his character from him, and it is also attributed to the Açvins, Bṛhaspati, and Soma, but the primary claim of fire to destroy the wizards and the demons is an obvious one, and recorded by anthropology ³ over all the earth. It is also most strongly attested in the ritual.

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³ Frazer, *Balder the Beautiful*, i. 325 ff.

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The domestic side of the fire worship is revealed mainly by the constant reference to Agni as the friend in the homes of men, whence comes his description as father, or brother, or son, or even mother. He has the epithet domestic, and is styled lord of the house. He is the immortal who abides among mortal in human habitations. He is further the protector of settlers, the man who makes mortals to settle down, and he is the lord of the clan (*viçpati*). The close relation of men to him is attested by the fact that we hear expressly of the Agni of Bharata, of Devavāta, of Divodāsa, of Trasadasyu, and of Vadhryaçva. His relation to the Aṅgirases and the Bhṛgus may have been mythical, but were not so conceived in all probability in Vedic times, and he certainly stood in close relation to families like the Vasiṣṭhas. His connexion with Aryan settlement is told clearly in the legend of the advance of the Aryans to the east under the guidance of Gotama Rāhūgaṇa and Videgha Māthava,⁴ the latter of whom has been compared rashly with Prometheus; the story preserves in the clearest way possible the record of the essential connexion between the introduction of the fire cult, and the advance of Aryan settlement and of Aryan culture.

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⁴ ÇB. i. 4. 1. 10; von Negelein (VOJ. xviii. 97–9) lays stress on the function of fire as burning the wild and preparing the way for agriculture, the value of which in India is almost unlimited.

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The ritual hardly gives a clear picture of these aspects of the character of Agni as the domestic friend and father, and as the protector and leader of the people. In it stress is laid in the main on the ritual of the three fires of the more elaborate sacrifices performed for an individual, and this elaboration is old, since in the Rigveda, while the name of only one of the later fires expressly occurs, that of the Gārhapatya, there are references to the later practice of transporting the fire from one altar to another: thus Agni is said to be led round, to go round the sacrifice three times, to be led east and then west. But the importance of the domestic fire, which can be assumed for the earliest period, and which is preserved in some degree in the domestic ritual, is also attested by the fact that in the later ritual, and perhaps also in the earlier, the fire was first placed on the Gārhapatya altar, a name which indicates that the real domestic fire was the starting-point of the late development. There are fainter traces of the worship of fire not merely by an individual, but as the fire of the clan or community. In the later ritual¹ we hear of the fire of the Sabhā and the Āvasatha, which were respectively the council-house and a place of reception for those who came to the Sabhā, as it seems, and it may be conjectured from the fact that the word Sabhya as an epithet of fire is found in the Atharvaveda,² though not in the Rigveda, that we are entitled to conceive of the fire as being lighted in the Sabhā for the cult of the clan or community on the solemn occasions of the meeting of the people in council. There are parallels among other peoples of the Indo-European stock, and among the Iranians where such fires as those of the head of the clan and of the canton were known,³ but in the case of the Rigveda, the traces are scanty, unless stress can be laid on the term 'lord of the clan' applied to the god, and the title of king of the clans of men. It is, however, notorious that the Sabhā, which appears as a real institution in the Rigveda, in the later period disappears, and is reduced at most to a small council, first of warriors and priests and then of priests only,⁴ so that it is possible that an earlier public cult disappeared in the course of time. Analogy suggests this conclusion, which is merely rendered doubtful by the imperfection of the evidence which can be adduced to prove the positive existence of the cult.

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¹ ApÇS. v. 19. 2 ff.; KÇS. iv. 9. 20 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 118, 126; *contra*, Caland, VOJ. xxiii. 59 as to Āvasathya.

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² xix. 55. 6; cf. viii. 10. 7 (Gārhapatya, Āhavanīya, Dakṣiṇāgni, Sabhā, Āmantraṇa) with KS. vi. 8 (Odanapacana, Gārhapatya, Āhavanīya, Madhyādhīdevana, Āmantraṇa).

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³ Geiger, *Ostir. Kult.*, p. 472.

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⁴ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 426, 427; Foy, *Die königliche Gewalt*, p. 10.

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On the other hand we have abundant references to the activities of Agni as a sacrificer, and he serves as the model for sacrificers. He is an essential element in the transmission of the sacrifice to the gods who cannot enjoy it without him. On the one hand he brings the gods down to the sacrifice and seats them on the strew that they may enjoy the food and drink offered. On the other hand he bears the oblation to the gods in the heaven. In either case he is constantly serving as an envoy between the gods and men, and is especially often called the messenger of men, though also that of Vivasvant. The Yajurveda⁵ elevates him into the messenger of the gods, and places over against him Kāvya Uçanas as the messenger of the Asuras. A Brāhmaṇa⁶ deals with him, not as the messenger of, but as the path leading to the gods. He is called the Hotṛ, the Adhvaryu, the Brahman, and Purohita of the gods, thus combining in himself all the activities of the human priest. He is thus the one most fitted to worship the gods, he makes the oblations fragrant. But there is also a tradition that he wearied of his office, and required to be induced by promise of rich reward to be the bearer of the oblation.⁷ It seems that he had to be found in the waters and the plants, and that he was reluctant to undertake the duties. Hillebrandt,¹ who thinks that the reluctance was connected with the death of his brothers, which is not, however, quite clearly referred to in the Rigveda and which may be only a later myth, and of independent origin, deduces from the story the view that it refers to the contrast between the two periods of the year, the northern and the southern course of the sun, Uttarāyaṇa and Dakṣiṇāyana, Devayāna and Pitṛyāṇa, and that the legend explains the winning back of Agni at the end of the southern course of the sun, at the period of the winter solstice. He interprets the waters into which Agni retires as the fate of the sun at the winter solstice, an idea which, however, in India he considers to have been absorbed in that of the rainy season. The conjecture unhappily lacks any verisimilitude: the picture of the bringing of Agni to work seems no more than the conception of an individual poet of the constant theme of the mode, in which Agni comes to be employed as the sacrificer on earth.

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⁵ TS. ii. 5. 8. 5.

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⁶ TB. ii. 4. 1. 6.

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⁷ RV. x. 51–3; Oldenberg, ZDMG. xxxix. 71 ff.

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¹ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 137 ff. Von Schroeder (*Arische Religion*, ii. 523) compares Apollonine legend, but without plausibility.

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In connexion with the sacrifice three forms of Agni are distinguished in the Yajurveda,² the eater of raw flesh, the eater of corpses, and the sacrificial, and this distinction is perfectly well known in the Rigveda ³ so far as concerns the Agni which bears the offering, and the Agni which devours the bodies of the dead. The term *kravyād* alternates in the Rigveda with *kravyavāhana*, later *kavyavāhana*, and a fire named *kavyavāhana*, appears as invoked with Yama at an offering to the Manes, which is performed on the afternoon of the new moon sacrifice at the last of the four-monthly offerings. From these facts Hillebrandt deduces the theory that from the fire, with which the dead was burned, there was taken a brand to rekindle the fire for the Manes, which he believes to have existed in the time of the Rigveda under the title of the Narāçaṅsa.⁴ The procedure is clearly wholly contrary to the spirit of the ritual, which regards death as requiring the extinction of all fires which are made thereby impure, and the evidence adduced for the theory is obviously inadequate to make it even plausible.

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² VS. i. 17.

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³ x. 16. 9.

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⁴ *Op. cit.* ii. 98–107, 107–10. Cf. Oldenberg, *RV.* ii. 215 f.

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Another division of the forms of Agni is given by the Taittirīya Saṁhitā,⁵ where the Agni which bears the oblation is distinguished from that which bears the funeral offering, called *kavyavāhana*, and that associated with the goblins (*saharakṣas*).

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⁵ ii. 5. 8. 6.

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As a sacrificer Agni has this advantage over the human sacrificer that he does not make mistakes, and if he errs in any way he can put all right. Hence he is all knowing, the sage, possessed of all wisdom, and exclusively bears the epithet Jātavedas,⁶ used about 120 times of him in the Rigveda and explained there as he who knows all generations, though some modern scholars prefer the sense ‘having innate wisdom’. The priest prays, therefore, to him to accord him power of memory and wisdom. He produces wisdom, and is himself eloquent, and a cause of eloquence in others. In all other matters too he befriends his worshippers, he gives food, wealth, long life, he defeats enemies, and demons: even in battle he leads the van, which may be a reference to the carrying of fire before the host in its onslaught. He is also occasionally given the power to remit sin, to make guiltless before Aditi, to avert the anger of Varuṇa,¹ and in the later texts he is said to free from the crimes committed by man’s father and mother.²

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⁶ SBE. xxvi. pp. xxxi f.

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¹ RV. iv. 12. 4; vii. 93. 7; iv. 1. 4.

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² AV. v. 30. 4; TB. iii. 7. 12. 3, 4.

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Agni is also as a great god magnified by being declared to be above all the gods: Varuṇa, Mitra, the Maruts, and all the gods worship him. He delivers the gods in battle, he defeats the Dasyus for the Aryan, he vanquished the Paṇis and is even called breaker of forts and Vṛtra-slayer, but these aspects of his are really derived from Indra. He measures out the air and supports the vault of heaven like all the greater deities, but he has a special function of his own, the strengthening of the sun when at the Agnihotra in the morning he is produced.³ This is recognized occasionally in the Rigveda and quite frankly in the Brāhmaṇa literature. But in many cases the two acts are regarded merely as simultaneous, and the later texts⁴ discuss the question whether the Agnihotra is to be offered just before or just after the sun rise.

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³ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 109, 110.

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⁴ AB. v. 30 ff.

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Agni is said to have produced men as also are other gods, but this relationship is neither often mentioned nor prominent. It is not probable that it stood in any special relation to the act of producing Agni from the fire sticks, though that act was naturally enough compared to the production of life: it lies rather in his close association with the worship of the family, which brings him into close contact with men.

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The derivation of Agni’s name, Latin *ignis*, Lithuanian *ugnis*, is uncertain, though connexion with *aj*, ‘drive’, is not impossible. In the Avesta the name is unknown as such and it does not appear among the Mitanni gods, which speaks in favour of the view that it is a specific development of the Indian priest.⁵ But the worship of fire itself, apart from the special conception of it as Agni, is undoubtedly strongly marked in the period of the unity of the Indo-Iranians. The fire in the Avesta is the centre of a strong and developed ritual: the fire priests Āthravans are clearly the same in origin as the Vedic Atharvans, and Ātar must have been conceived as a great and powerful god, giver of food, of fame, of offspring, the friend of the house, the repeller of foes, probably known as in the lightning and the plant-born forms. Oldenberg⁶ holds that, as in Greece and in Rome Hestia⁷ and Vesta are feminine, there cannot have been an early Indo-European worship of fire of any distinct character. This is true so far as the personification of the fire is concerned, but the close connexion of the fire with the home which is emphasized by these two faiths, and which is also in harmony with the indications of Vedic religion, suggests that the cult of fire must have been a very real one in the Indo-European period, a conclusion the more natural if, as is probable, the original home of the Indo-European is to be placed in a comparatively cold climate.¹ The stress laid on the fire in India would, therefore, be changed in emphasis, as not the domestic, but the sacrificial fire became the more important in a land where the sun provided for many things which elsewhere fire was required to accomplish.

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⁵ Oldenberg, JRAS. 1909, p. 1096.

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⁶ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 102. Kretschmer (*Gesch. der griech. Sprache*, pp. 162 ff.) argues that Vesta is a mere borrowing from Greece; Warde Fowler (*Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 73–79) treats her as essentially Roman. So also Farnell, *Cults of the Greek States*, v. 364; *Greece and Babylon*, p. 133. Cf. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 584. For the Ugnis szventà of the Lithuanians see *ibid.* ii. 579 f.

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⁷ Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 526.

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¹ Cf. Wissowa, *Religion und Kultus der Römer*², p. 142; E. Meyer, *Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. p. 872. Von Schroeder’s views as to Apollo and the Charites (cf. Agni’s flames as maidens) are interesting (*Arische Religion*, ii. 497 ff.), but not conclusive. The legend of the theft of fire (Prometheus, Loki) is only faintly seen in the figure of Mātariçvan (Chap. 9, § 6) and possibly that of Bhṛgu (Chap. 19, § 1).

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