Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/89

 The Hieratic Religion 73 inspiration and plain self-engrossed human neediness been played so frankly and undisguisedly by poet- who must first live and afterwards compose poetry. Once more I must tax your patience and return to Dawn's epithet dakshina, or "baksheesh." In Rig-Veda 3. 58. I Dawn, under the name of Dak- shina is called the Daughter of Heaven, and Agni, the God of Fire, is called the Son of Dakshina. What is really meant is, that Agni is the son of Dawn. We have here a double ritual touch which becomes clear only through deep sympathy with the economy of the sacrifice. Why should Agni, "Fire," be the son of Dawn? Is it that Dawn means "light," and light is fire? That would be the far-fetched poetic derivation; I wish to accuse no scholar of having made it. Poetically we think of fire espe- cially as an evening phenomenon, not as a phenome- non of the sober morning. I doubt whether the farmer, as he splits kindling for the breakfast fire of a cold winter morning, cheers himself with the poetic thought that the breakfast fire is the son of Dawn. Our farmers are not temperamentally inclined that way. But it is another matter with the sac- rificer who must beautify and beatify all his acts, and throw into them a dash of cajolery. The fact is that the god Agni is also a prized and much extolled divinity of the morning, because the first act of the