18. This is a prayer often-and naturally—addressed to AGNI-Fire-the purifier and men's most intimate friend and protector, towards whom they turn with the same "respectful tenderness and affectionate familiarity" which we found so striking a feature of the Eranians' worship of the same deity under his Eranian name of Âtar.' "O Agni [the Vedic Rishi invokes], accept this log which I offer to thee, blaze up brightly and send up thy sacred smoke; touch the topmost heavens with thy mane and mix with the beams of the sun. Thou Lord of wealth, drive away from us the enemies, give us rain from heaven, and food inexhaustible, and drink a thousand-fold. Thou youngest of the gods, their messenger, thou goest, O sage, wisely between the race of gods and that of men, meaning well by both." (II., 6.) Among the hundreds of hymns to Agni treasured up in the Rig-Veda, few indeed could be found that did not contain some allusion-description, simile, epithet-to the absolutely literal and material nature of the original fire-worship in Aryan India. Dr. Muir has collected a vast number of such characteristic expressions, sometimes consisting of one or two words, sometimes of a whole descriptive sentence which, if strung, or rather grouped, together, would compose the most complete, the most vivid and picturesque portrayal of the dread, yet familiar element in its various aspects of regulated beneficial activity, of resistless power or devastating fury. "Fed by wood, with blazing, tawny mane, he sends up his smoke like a pillar to the sky, or like a wavering banner. Though headless and footless, he rushes 1 See Story of Media, etc., p. 79 f. through the woods like a bull lording it over a herd of cows, roaring like a lion or like mighty waters. He envelops the woods, consumes and blackens them with his tongue; with his burning iron grinders, his sharp, all-devouring jaws, he shears the hairs of the earth, like a barber shaving a beard. When he has yoked his wind-driven coursers to his car, the beautiful, fleet, ruddy steeds that can assume all shapes, he bellows like a bull and invades the forests; the birds are terrified at the noise when his grass-devouring sparks fly round, and his wheels mark his path with blackness. He is a destroyer of darkness and sees through the gloom of the night. The world which had been swallowed up and wrapped in darkness, and the heavens, are manifested at his appearance, and the gods, the sky, the earth, the waters, the plants, rejoice in his friendship." 19. To the beings and things that rejoice in Agni's friendship, should be added first and foremost-men. Familiar and even bold as the Aryan Hindu generally was in his intercourse with his Devas, whom he readily addressed as “friends,” Agni alone of immortals appears to him so close and dear as to be entitled "brother": "Father Heaven, guileless mother Earth, brother Agni, be gracious to us!"* 1 J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. v., pp. 211-213. The sentences, sometimes single epithets or brief similes, which are here grouped into a consecutive description, are scattered through the entire collection of hymns, and picked out of a far larger number gathered by Dr. Muir. 266 implores one poet. For, "friendly to mankind, he despises no man; kindly disposed to the people, he lives in the midst of every family" (X., 91, 2); he is a father, mother, brother, kinsman, and friend, and one of his habitual and preferred surnames is "AGNI VAISHVÂNARA," i. e., "Agni that belongs to all men." And indeed, what other deity actually dwells with man-" the immortal among the mortals "as his guest and constant companion, his assistant in humble household tasks, his lightgiver and home-maker? No wonder he is called the special protector of householders, nay the householder par excellence, making the hearth sacred and all the acts of which it is the centre and agent. Yet, dear as Agni is held in his capacity of domestic friend, he is still more revered when, as mentioned in the hymn quoted above (p. 156), he goes back and forth as "the messenger between the two worlds," or "the two races" (of gods and men), the mediator through whom alone constant intercourse between the two is kept up. But it is not the Agni of the hearth-the Domestic Fire-who fulfils this high mission; it is the Sacrificial Fire, whose holy flames are not desecrated by any mean office, but are enkindled at every prayer time-dawn of day, noon, and sunset are the three regular prayer times, the AGNIHOTRAS-to receive and consume the offerings of the worshippers, principally melted butter, milk curds, and cakes. Melted butter especially was poured abundantly on the flames, as it produces a brilliant and vigorous blaze, hence such epithets bestowed on Agni as "butter-haired," "butter-backed," "butter-formed," and "gleaming with butter." As no sacred function-from great, solemn religious ceremonies like the coronation of kings or other public special occasions to the humblest householder's family prayers-could be performed without one or more sacrifices, it was but natural that Agni should have been said to know all about sacrifices and ritual, indeed to have instituted sacrifice, first among the gods, then among men, have been entreated to conduct the sacrifice in flawless order and make it acceptable to the gods, and that among the many honorary titles bestowed on him, should have been that of "divine HOTAR" or priest: "Agni rectifies all these mistakes which we ignorant men commit against your prescriptions, O ye most wise gods. Those matters relating to sacrifice which we mortals of feeble intellects, with our imperfect comprehension, do not understand, may Agni, the venerated priest [hotar] who knows all these points, adjust, and worship the gods at the proper seasons." (X., 2, 4-5.) 20. The kindling of the fire on the altar was itself the most sacred of all religious ceremonies and a complicated one, requiring time and exertion. For the fire originally was not lit from another flame or blown into life from embers, but produced anew by friction out of two peculiarly shaped pieces of wood. This proceeding was given a mysterious-or rather mystical-significance and called "the Birth of Agni." The parents of the ever newly born god (therefore "the eternally young, or "the youngest -YAVISHTHA) were the "two sticks," or pieces of wood," the ARANÎ-out of which friction called. forth the spark. The simple apparatus might be called a fire-drill or fire-churn, since the action consisted in rapidly twirling the upper piece (generally made of Ashvattha-wood, Ficus Religiosa,—hence its sacredness, see p. 29) in the lower hollowed piece, of some softer wood. The incongruity between the sacredness ascribed to the action, the mysteriousness of the result, and the almost ludicrously commonplace tool, appears to have struck those earnest worshippers, in whom faith by no means excluded thought, somewhat as a puzzle, which, however, their sense of reverence prevented them from carrying to the extent of scoffing or scepticism. Innumerable are the passages which most simply and realistically describe the familiar process, then express an almost childlike wonder that a god should have such homely, feeble beginnings. "This process of generation has begun; let us rub out Agni as heretofore. This god is deposited in the two pieces of wood. He is produced of them like a new-born infant." In one place wonder is expressed that a living being should spring out of dry wood; in another, that, born of a mother that cannot suckle him, he should grow so rapidly and at once begin his work as messenger. "This I declare, O Heaven and Earth," one poet exclaims, horrified, "the son, no sooner born, devours his parents. But," he hastens to add, "I, a mortal, cannot judge a god; Agni is wise and knows." 21. So far, nothing can be plainer than the material nature of the god. There is even very little anthropomorphism about it. It is the pure, undisguised element of Fire. Nor is any abstraction |