Vedic Mythology c5.s2.t2.1

c5.s2.t2.1

Mātariśvan is not celebrated in any hymn of the RV., and the name is found there only twenty-seven times, occurring twenty-one times in the latest portions of that Veda and otherwise only five times in the third and once in the sixth book. In these six older passages Mātariśvan is always either identified with Agni or is the producer of fire. Though the myth of Mātariśvan is based on the distinction between fire and a personification which produces it, the analysis of the myth shows these two to be identical. Nothing even in any of the later books of the RV., can be said to show clearly that the conception of Mātariśvan prevailing in the other Vedas and in the post-Vedic period, had begun to appear in that Veda.