Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/179

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Transparent and Opaque Gods 1:63

riﬂes, and seats them on the strewn grass. He thus becomes familiar with the roads that connect heaven and earth, and becomes the regular messenger bo- twcen the two. In this capacity he is associated with the Angiras, a race of mythic semi-divine priests whose name seems to be identical with Greek rip/yaks}: (angel), “ messenger.” They also mediate between gods and men, and naturally Agni is an Angiras, the ﬁrst seer Angiras, the ancient Angiras, the most inspired of the Angiras.

Agni ofﬁciates at the sacriﬁce and becomes the divine counterpart of the earthly priesthood: house- priest, servingpriest, and priest in general, as states the very ﬁrst stanza of the Rig—Veda. As such he also inspires, or invents the brilliant speech and thought of prayer, and, what is very important, he frees from sin. For the sacriﬁce, of course, is the staple means of conciliating the gods when they are supposed to be angry. The idea of priesthood blends with that of seer and sage. He is so expert and well~travelled as to assume in a very pronounced sense the qualities of omniscience and ornnipresemse.il

He knows everything by virtue of his Wisdom ; he embraces wisdom as a felly does the wheel. The

adjective ems/errata, “ possessing the intellect of the 1 Cf. I'Ioltzmann’s essay, cited above, p. 5.