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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c22.s1: § 1. The Priests of the Fire Cult

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c22.s1

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§ 1. The Priests of the Fire Cult

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With the cult of fire are connected three great families of priests, the Aṅgirases, the Atharvans, and Bhṛgus, in all of whose cases it is at first sight impossible, and in any case difficult, to decide whether we have to do with real traditions of priestly families of the past, or with deities who have fallen in rank and become confounded with men. The case of the Aṅgirases is of special interest. Agni is not rarely called an Aṅgiras, but he is also called the chief or the most inspired Aṅgiras, and the name Aṅgiras is used in one passage of the god on the one hand, and on the other of the ancestor of the invoker of the god. On the other hand, Indra also is described as veriest Aṅgiras, and in his feat of the overthrow of Vala the Aṅgirases play a great part by their singing and their prayers. In point of fact the myth is sometimes attributed to them and not to Indra at all, or he is given a secondary role in it. They appear in the myth of the Paṇis as obtaining the cows: this is, it is probable, simply another side of the overthrow of Vala and the release of the cows, and Bṛhaspati who is credited with the same feat is once called Āṅgirasa, and once even Aṅgiras. They are repeatedly called fathers by the poets, they are associated with Manu and are once with the Atharvans and the Bhṛgus connected with Yama:¹ but they appear also with the Ādityas, Rudras, and Vasus, Soma is offered to them, they are invoked,² and they are praised as sacrificers who attained Agni and won by the sacrifice immortality.

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¹ RV. x. 14. 3-6.

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² RV. ix. 62. 9; iii. 53. 7; x. 62.

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A very important feature of the mythology is the quarrel of the Ādityas and the Aṅgirases, of which the Brāhmaṇas give full accounts: the Aṅgirases proposed to win their way to heaven by sacrificing, and to make the Ādityas act for them: they sent Agni to bid the Ādityas perform that function, but the Ādityas cleverly forestalled the Aṅgirases by undertaking the offering at once, so that the Aṅgirases had to officiate for them to their indignation. They received, however, from the Ādityas for their work the fee of a white horse, which is clearly the sun.³

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³ ÇB. iii. 5. 1. 13 ff.; AB. vi. 34; KB. xxx. 6; PB. xvi. 12. 1; GB. ii. 6. 14; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 166 ff. See also JB. iii. 187 f.; BÇS. xviii. 22 f.

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On the other hand, there is abundant proof that the Aṅgirases were treated by the poets as a real clan, and that many Vedic personages claimed to be descended from them: we cannot really doubt that there was such a family: in the Atharvaveda⁴ we have clear enough evidence that the Atharvans and the Aṅgirases were two sets of priests who contributed the former the auspicious, the latter the black magic side of that Veda. We find many points in the ritual such as the Aṅgirasām Ayana, the Aṅgirasāṁ Dvirātra, and many individual inventors of ceremonies who claimed to be Aṅgirases.

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⁴ Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. pp. xvii ff.

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The view of Hillebrandt¹ is that the Aṅgirases were originally a family which was rather outside the main Vedic tradition, as shown by their lack of prominence in the books ii–ix, and which practised the cult of its ancestors, so that, when the Aṅgirases came into the Vedic tradition at all, they carried with them their ancestors as semi-divine. With this view may be compared that of Weber² that we have in them Indo-Iranian priests. The alternative view³ is that they were originally regarded as a race of beings higher than men, and intermediate between them and the gods, as attendants of Agni who as Aṅgiras is the messenger⁴ between the sky and the earth, the name being identic with the Greek ἄγγελος. The evidence is too slight to allow of any certain conclusion, except that the conception of Aṅgiras in the historical period clearly generated a family, if there was not originally a family involved.

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¹ *Ved. Myth.* ii. 159 ff.

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² *Ind. Stud.* i. 291 ff.

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³ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 143.

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⁴ Louis H. Gray (JAOS. xlii. 332–4) treats them as intermediaries or shamanists. He sees in the late Bharadvāja Dhanvantari a priest in whom the cloud deity is embodied, but this is to go far beyond the evidence.

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The Virūpas who occur in close connexion with the Aṅgirases are clearly merely a subdivision of that family: the eponymous Virūpa also occurs.

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Other priests mentioned in conjunction with each other and usually allied either with the Aṅgirases or in the performance of the winning of the cows, which is the special deed of the Aṅgirases, are the Daçagvas and the Navagvas. The latter are the more often mentioned, and their name contains as first element the sacred number nine, so that the Daçagvas are probably a later invention. They seem to be a group of nine and ten priestly ancestors: possibly the second element in their name suggests, however, according to Bloomfield,⁵ the idea that they are persons who win nine or ten cows apiece: usually, however, the latter part of the word is interpreted as from the root denoting to go, and the compound then means going in sets of nine or ten respectively, unless indeed Navagva is *nuntius*.⁶

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⁵ JAOS. xvi. p. cxxv; AJP. xvii. 426.

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⁶ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 144. For astronomical theories, see Tilak, *Arctic Home in the Vedas*, pp. 160 ff.; A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, i. 451 ff. Cf. Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 282 f.

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The Atharvans are mentioned in the Rigveda thrice only in the plural, and eleven times in the singular. The essential feature of Atharvan is that he produces Agni, to become the messenger of Vivasvant. He practised devotion along with Manu and Dadhyañc, and was helped by Indra. According to the Atharvaveda,⁷ Atharvan brought to Indra a cup of Soma, received from Varuṇa a mystic cow, and dwells in heaven. The Atharvans as a family appear with the Aṅgirases, Navagvas, and Bhṛgus and live in heaven, destroying goblins. In some passages the word certainly simply means priest as when Atharvans receive cows from Açvatha as gifts,¹ and a Bṛhaddiva Atharvan² seems to have been a real poet. In the ritual they appear to have used honey as real priests. Plants are described as connected with them in the Atharvaveda, as they are connected with the Aṅgirases, but the Atharvans seem clearly not to be connected with witchcraft and similar practices. The alternation of the compounds Atharvāṅgiras and Bhṛgvaṅgiras points to their being closely related to the Bhṛgus, but there is no adequate evidence for the theory of Hillebrandt³ that the Bhṛgus are the clan and Atharvan its priest.

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⁷ xviii. 3. 54; v. 11; vii. 104; xi. 6. 13.

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¹ RV. vi. 47. 24.

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² RV. x. 120. 9.

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³ *Ved. Myth.* ii. 173 ff.

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The word is probably, not certainly, to be identified with the Āthravan of the Avesta, which must mean fire priest, the Avestan Ātar being akin to *athar-yu*, flaming, used as an epithet of Agni. There is therefore every reason to see in the Atharvans the elevation to divine rank of fire priests of old time.⁴

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⁴ Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. p. xxiii, n. 2; Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 141. Cf. also JB. iii. 269.

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A special figure is that of Dadhyañc Ātharvaṇa, who is mentioned once in book vi, which is specially fond of the Atharvans, and elsewhere only in books i, ix, and x. The essential legend of him is that with the head of a horse he declared to the Açvins the mead.⁵ Further, Indra is said to have found in Çaryaṇāvant the head of the horse hidden in the mountains, and to have slain ninety-nine Vṛtras with the bones of Dadhyañc. He is the son of Atharvan and the kindler of fire, and he obtains cows from Indra, and opens cowstalls by Soma's power. It is clearly difficult to make much of this figure; the telling of the mead which is made into the delivery of philosophic doctrine by the theologians is interpreted more prosaically by Hillebrandt⁶ as referring to the use of honey in the ritual by the Atharvans, which seems clearly attested. But the horse-head suggests connexion with the steed Dadhikrāvan, and the name may either mean 'united with curd' or 'turning towards curd in pleasure'. Bergaigne⁷ considers that he is to be taken as the Soma, but this is hardly enough to account for his curious form and myth. It has been suggested that he is the lightning, the horse's head indicating speed, the voice the thunder, and the bones the thunderbolts; the connexion of lightning with Soma would explain the reference to Soma, to Indra, and to Agni. The suggestion is ingenious, but the mixed form of the deity suggests that there is at work some conception of demoniac kind: the demons of the Vedic religion often have the confusion of human and animal form, but not the deities.

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⁵ RV. i. 84. 13, 14; 116. 12; 117. 22; 119. 9.

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⁶ *Ved. Myth.* ii. 174.

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⁷ *Rel. Véd.* ii. 456-60; Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, pp. 142, 143. Cf. also JB. iii. 64; *JAOS.* xviii. 17.

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The Bhṛgus occur but twenty-three times in all in the Rigveda, and despite the fact that they are marked with the Atharvans and Aṅgirases as Fathers, they show certain clear distinctions of character from the Aṅgirases. While the latter are essentially active in the business of the finding of the cows, or aid Indra at least by their songs in it, the task of the Bhṛgus is confined to the discovery of the fire, its lighting up, and its care. Moreover, in the Brāhmaṇa literature the father of Bhṛgu is Varuṇa,¹ while Aṅgiras is connected with Agni. They appear side by side with the Druhyus as apparently an historical people,² and possibly, when Bhṛgu appears with the Yatis in a friendly relation to Indra, real facts may be alluded to.³ On the other hand, they drive away a personage named Makha, of whom little or nothing else is known.⁴ From Mātariçvan, who shares with them the credit of establishing the fire, they differ, in that they do not fetch it down from the sky but diffuse the use on the earth.

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¹ AB. iii. 34. 1; PB. xviii. 9. 1; JB. i. 42; ii. 202.

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² RV. vii. 18. 6.

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³ RV. viii. 3. 9; 6. 18; cf. AV. v. 19. 1; AB. ii. 20. 7.

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⁴ RV. ix. 101. 13. He is identified with the sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇas; Hopkins, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 41 f.

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In the ritual there are clear references to real Bhārgavas and to their practices as at the fire-piling and the mode of dividing the offerings: the Aitaçāyana Ājāneyas in a curious story appeared as cursed by their father, and as therefore becoming the worst of the Bhṛgus.

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The word Bhṛgu clearly means shining, from the root *bhrāj*: it is therefore natural enough that there should be a considerable body of opinion in favour of the view that Bhṛgu is originally the designation of the fire,⁵ or more especially the lightning, and the Greek Phlegyai have been compared as fire priests.⁶ The comparison is not certain; it is, however, clear that the Bhṛgus are mythical fire-priests, possibly, but not probably, the historic reminiscence of an actual family.⁷

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⁵ Von Schroeder (*Arische Religion*, ii. 486) sees in the story of Bhṛgu’s hauteur and his visit to hell a faint echo of the Prometheus legend.

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⁶ Kuhn, *Herabkunft des Feuers*, pp. 21, 22; Weber, *ZDMG.* ix. 240 ff.; Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 207.

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⁷ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, pp. 100, 141.

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