24. Truly, the association of ideas is very obvious. Of the heavenly birth and descent of Fire (which name, it must not be forgot, covers the conception and manifestations of Heat generally) no doubt was entertained, whether in its patent-obvious-form, as sunlight and lightning, or in its latent-hidden—form, as the elementary principle concealed in the waters and the plants, and ever ready to escape therefrom. Now the warmth of the living body is a still clearer indication of the divine presence, and Agni may be said to have descended into men in the same way that he has descended into plants-not to mention another possibility: that of his passing into the human frame in the guise of the vegetable food it consumes, and then from generation to generation, as the "vital spark," which, being perpetuated by heredity, is not destroyed even by death. In this sense also the god is "immortal among mortals." Well may he be called, "he of many births." Numerous are the passages in which "community of race" -kindred-is claimed with gods for men, explicitly, though in a general way: thus the verse "We have in common with you, O gods, the quality of brothers in the mother's bosom " is fully explained by this other: "Heaven (Dyâus) is my father, who bore me; my mother is this wide earth (Prithivî)." The oldest Rishis are styled "heaven-born," and one poet invokes them all by name (Angiras and Manu in the number), as "knowing his race" and the fact that "it reaches up to the gods, its stock is among them." And if these claims and assertions seem too vague to be directly referred to Agni, no doubt is possible before the positive statement that he "gave birth to

men" and "found a way for his descendants" and the direction to men "to invoke him as the first father." Marvellous to watch is this dim perception of the unity of nature, the kinship of man with the entire universe (or at least our own solar system), so lately established by modern science, struggling into expression at that early age, with nothing but poetic intuition to guide.

25. We have now learned to know Agni: 1st, in heaven as the Sun; 2d, in the atmosphere, as Lightning; 3d, on earth, as the Domestic, and 4th, as the Sacrificial, Fire. We have still to be introduced to the god in his fifth aspect, in which he plays an exceedingly important part in the Hindu Arya's life: as consumer of corpses and guide of departed souls to the abodes of "the Fathers." For, unlike the Eranians, the Hindu did not hold that the impure contact of death could pollute the holy element, but on the contrary ascribed to the latter the power of purifying and sanctifying all things its flames consume or only touch. Yet the "funereal Agni" was

1 This theme, of man's celestial and fiery origin, is treated with great erudition and convincing mastery by Abel Bergaigne, in his colossal work La Religion Védique (vol. i., pp. 31 ff. chapter entitled Origine Céleste de la Race Humaine).

2 What would the Eranians have said to the modern Brahmanic custom of floating corpses down the Ganges, to be carried out to the ocean by the sacred river's sanctifying waters! This dreadful custom is especially in force at Benares, the great city near the junction of the Ganges and Djumnâ, the holiest spot of all Brahmanic India. There the dying are actually carried to the river and plunged into it to breathe their last in the sacred waters, not only singly, but at certain times in crowds. Of course all these practices were abominations to the Parsis. See Story of Media, etc., pp. 124ff.

kept separate from all other forms of fire, and was not allowed either on the sacrificial altar or on the hearth.

26. There is an entire book of the Rig-Veda-the ninth--which, contrary to all the others, is devoted to the praises of only one deity-SOMA. Like Agni, with whom he is most intimately associated, Soma has many forms, and more than one dwelling-place; like Agni, the place of his birth is not on earth; like Agni, the form under which he first presents himself is an unmistakably material one: Agni is the fire and Soma is a plant. Only, whereas Agni, under this his earthly form, was put to many and widely differing uses, the Soma plant had but one: an intoxicating beverage was prepared from it, which was offered at sacrifices, being partaken of by the worshippers and poured into the flame on the altar. And like the Fire-worship, the Soma-cult takes us back to the so-called Indo-Eranian period, the time before the separation of the two great sister-races, for we have seen the Soma, under the name of HAOMA, play exactly the same part in the worship and sacrifices of the Eranian followers of the Avesta. Indeed we probably have here one of the very few relics of an even earlier time—that of the undivided Âryan, or as it is sometimes called, "the Proto-Aryan period." For, as we noticed in its place, the Avesta bears evident traces of the use of the Haoma at the sacrifices being a concession made by Zarathushtra

1 Such is the opinion of most students of both sacred books, convincingly expressed in two special studies by that eminent and deepseeing scholar, Windischmann.

to old-established custom, not without subjecting it to a reforming and purifying process.1

27. In India, as in Erân, the Soma is mountainborn. It is said that King Váruna, who placed the Sun in heaven and Fire in the waters, placed the Soma on the mountain. Like Fire, it is brought to men by superhuman agency: "The one," says a hymn already quoted, "was brought from heaven. by Mâtarishvan, the other by the falcon from the mountain." The Soma used in India certainly grew on mountains, probably in the Himâlayan highlands of Kashmir. It is certain that Aryan tribes dwelt in this land of tall summits and deep valleys in very early times-probably earlier than that when the Rig-hymns were ordered and collected, or the already complicated official ritual which they mostly embody was rigidly instituted. From numerous indications scattered through the hymns, it appears probable that this was the earliest seat of the Soma worship known to the Aryan Hindus, whence it may have spread geographically with the race itself, and that, as the plant did not grow in the lower and hotter regions, the aridity of some parts disagreeing with it as much as the steam-laden sultriness of others, they continued to get "from the mountains" the immense quantities needed for the consumption of the gradually widening and increasing 1 See Story of Media, etc., pp. 118–121.

2 It should not be forgotten, however, that it can hardly be the identical plant. Scholars are pretty well agreed that the Aryan sacrificial liquor, though retaining the same name, may-or indeed must-have been prepared from different plants in the different lands where Aryas settled.