The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s5.3

v2.c41.s5.3

In Greece, in addition to Hephaistos, Hestia must, it seems, be accorded an origin as fire, especially the fire on the hearth, not the hearth with its fire as Farnell ² suggests. He bases this view on the identity of the words for hearth and for the goddess, but there seems no reason whatever for accepting this suggestion, which derives Hestia from *vas*, dwell, when it is at least as natural to assume that the name of the fire on the hearth was used to denote the hearth, and connexion with *vas* or possibly some other root with the signification of shining or burning is easy.³ Moreover the earliest literary references point singularly clearly to a conception like that of Agni; the Homeric Hymns ⁴ tell of Hestia as the goddess who haunts the house of Apollo in Pytho and from whose locks sweet unguents trickle down, and of her sitting in the middle of the house, taking the fat of sacrifice. Euripides ⁵ definitely calls her the lady of fire and associates her with Hephaistos. At Delphi we find her associated with the deathless fire in the Amphictyonic oath. Moreover the maintenance of a sacred fire in the Prytaneion at Athens, and the fact that it was regarded as in a sense the source of the Ionic colonies, because they carried thence the sacred fire, show clearly enough that the essential element in the idea is the fire, not the hearth. Nor is there any evidence for the suggestion ⁶ that the hearth in Mediterranean lands was built of sacred stones or that its sanctity is a reflex of the pillar cult of pre-Hellenic times. The parallelism of the expressions ‘Hephaistos is laughing’ and ‘Hestia is laughing’, used of the crackling of the fire, suggests essential identity of both deities with fire.