Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/172

 I 56 The Religion of the Veda

Whence, forsooth, arose he, and whence was he created?

The breath of gods and source of life is Vita. This god doth journey whithcrsoe’er he listeth, His sound is heard but no one sees his figure... With our oblation let us this Vata honor !

But there is one figure that looms far above all others in ancient Hindu religious history from Veda to Mahabharata, as the classical illustration of how a phenomenon of nature may he itself and personal god at one and the same time. It is the god Agni “Fire,” who is element and god at the beginning and remains so to the end. Richard Wagner adepts in the Nibelungen tetralogy the doubtful interpretation of the Norse god Loge (Loki) as ﬁre; Wotan calls upon this reduhaired, impish god to appear when he wishes to hedge with ﬁre his erring child Brunhilde. This is interesting, because it shows how even the modern poetic fancy may get itself to bridge over, un~ critically, as behooves the poet, the great gap that is between the reality of nature and the unstable spec- ulation of myth-makers. Native Hindu theologians in their scholastic mood ﬁnd time to worry over the fact that a god like Agni can be devouring element and intelligent god at one and the same time. Even the Epic poet in the Mahabharata