Page:The religions of India.djvu/49

Rh were at length devised by which what was gross in the merely physical idea of a god Agni and a god Soma might be refined into more spiritual conceptions. They were invested with a subtle and complicated symbolism ; they were impregnated, so to speak, with all the mystic virtue of sacrifice; their empire was extended far beyond the world of sense, and they were conceived as cosmic agents and universal principles.

Agni, in fact, is not only terrestrial fire, and the fire of the lightning and the sun ; ^ his proper native home is the mystic, invisible heaven, the abode of the eternal light and the first principles of all things.^ His births are infinite in number, whether as a germ, which is indestructible and ever begotten from itself, he starts into life every day on the altar from a piece of wood, whence he is extracted by friction (the arani), and in which he sleeps like the embryo in the womb ; ^ or whether, as son of the floods, he darts with the noise of the thunder from the bosom of the celestial rivers, where the Bhrigus (personifications of the lightning) discovered him, and the Agvins begat him with aranis of gold.* In point of fact, he is always and everywhere the same, since those ancient days when, as the eldest of the s^ods, he was born in his hi^^hest dwelling^, on the bosom of the primordial waters, and when the first religious rites and the first sacrifice were broudit forth along with him.^ For he is priest by birth in heaven as well as on earth,^ and he officiated in that capacity in the abode of Vivasvat ^ (heaven or the sun), long before MatariQvan (another symbol of the lightning) had brought him down to mortals,^ and before Atharvan and the Angiras, the primitive sacrificers, had installed

1 Rig- Veda, x. ?,2>, 6, 11. x. 46, 2 ; i. 58, 6 ; iii. 2, 3 ; x. ^S,, 2 Rig-Veda, x. 45, i ; 121, 7 ; vi. lO ; 184, 3. 8, 2 ; ix. 113, 7, 8. 5 Rig. Veda, i. 24, 2 ; iii. i, 20; =* Rig- Veda, x. 5, I ; iii. 29 ; i. 6S,, x. 88', 8 ; 121, 7, 8 ; iv. i. 11-18. 2; X. 79, 4, &c. Being born thus ^ Rig- Veda, i. 94, 6; x. no, 11 ; every day, he is called the youngest 150. of the gods. 7 Rig. Veda, i. 58, I ; 31, 3. ^ Rig- Veda, ii. 35 ; iii. i ; ii. 4, 2; ^ Rig.Veda,i.93,6 ; iii. 9, 5; vi. 8, 4.