Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/175

 Transparent and Opaque Gods I 59

human race.’[ The new—born infant is hard to catch; he is born of a mother who cannot give him suck. The child as soon as born devours the parents.

With a different touch, because powerful exertion is required to produce Agni by friction, he is ire- quently culled “ Son of Strength.”

The pronounced ritualist quality of the poetry of the Rig-Veda ﬁxes Agni as a divinity of the morn- ing, rather than of the night. Interpretations of Rig» Veda passages which involve reference to something like the cosy family hearth, the tea-kettle simmering, the wind soughing outside, are generally moonshine. Nor is his deﬁnite association with the morning just what we should expect it to be from our point of View; no suggestion, perchance, of the merry dairy- maid milking the cows, or the housewife busy with a comfortable breakfast. Familiar, home-life touches are not absent altogether even in the Rig-Veda; they are more abundant in the “House-books” (GrhyauSutras). But in the main Agni is cosmic and ritualistic, and little else. He dispels the dark- ness, destroys the demons of night. He throws open the gates of darkness ; earth and sky are seen when Agni is born in the morning. He is even

1 See above, p. 139.