The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s1.40

v1.c18.s1.40

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.