SmartSurat  #  Hinduism

Agni

Agni, the Vedic god of fire (cf. English ' ignite ') is addressed in nearly a third of the hymns of the Rug Veda. The Aryans were well aware of both the importance of fire and its destructive nature: it could be a good servant when manipulated in sacrificial rites and when contained at the domestic hearth, but when out of control it will consume and destroy. Agni was central to sacrificial ritual because it was fire which transformed the sacrificial offering into a form accessible to the gods. And it was this offering to the gods which brought about the reciprocal divine bestowal of the very things important to the people in their daily existence. Agni guaranteed access to the gods:        Agni earned the prayers of the ancient sages and of those of the present, too; he will bring the gods here. Through Agni one may win wealth, and growth from day to day, glorious and most abounding in heroic sons. Agni, the sacrificial ritual that you encompass on all sides - that one goes to the gods.        Thus, it is by the medium of fire that the world of humankind and the world of the divine were believed to coalesce. Like most Vedic deities Agni should not be seen as peculiar to one role, the sacrificial one; for whenever and wherever there is fire in the sense of light, heat, combustion and energy, this is the realm of Agni. Agni is the cosmic symbol of the transformation of the gross to the subtle on all levels. This is exemplified well in the process of combustion in the body when gross food is turned into subtle energy. And on a more cosmic level we have the presence of life-giving energy in the fire of the sun.        The Aryans believed Agni to be the mysterious presence in the fire-sticks which caused ignition. Indeed, the fire-sticks which lit the sacrifice were said to be his parents, though he was born three times, not only in the fire-sticks kindled by man, but also in the lightning of the storm cloud and in the sun itself. Fire is found in so many forms and Basham wisely drew an analogy of the ubiquitous nature of fire and the later tendency in Hinduism to search for a unifying principle of the many in existence - the move to monism:        Agni, in fact, was here there and everywhere. Was there only one Agni, or were there many Agnis? How could Agni be one and many at the same time? Questions like these are asked in the Rug Veda, and show the earliest signs of the tendency towards monism, which was to bear fruit in the Upanisads.        Zaehner, too, reiterates such a thought but adds the dimensions of opposites in the character of Agni. It was to be the transcending of such opposites, such dualities in life, which would be the means of reaching the unity of Brahman in the period of the Vedanta:      On the macrocosmic scale he surpasses all things in greatness, on the microcosmic he is the friend and kinsman of men: he is both very great and very small, very old and very young, uniting within himself the opposites in a manner that was later to become utterly characteristic of Hindu thought.         This exemplifies well the complexities of Vedic deities and warns against an attempt to see them only on a this-worldly dimension. Since they symbolize the fundamental forces within the cosmos they can be perceived at a variety of levels: Agni at the hearth, for example, and Agni the life-giving force of the universe.