Vedic Mythology c5.s2.t4.14

c5.s2.t4.14

WEBER¹³ expresses the view that this deity in the earliest period specially designated the howling of the Storm (the plural therefore meaning the Maruts), but that as the roaring of fire is analogous, Storm and Fire combined to form a god of rage and destruction, the epithets of the Śatarudrīya being derived partly from Rudra = Storm and partly from Agni = Fire. H. H. WILSON thought that Rudra was ‘evidently a form of either Agni or Indra’¹⁴. L. v. SCHROEDER¹⁵ regards Rudra as originally the chief of the souls of the dead conceived as storming along in the wind (cp. p. 81). OLDENBERG is of opinion that Rudra probably represented in his origin a god of mountain and forest, whence the shafts of disease attack mankind¹⁶.