The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s1.45

v1.c18.s1.45

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.