Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/173
stops to wonder: "There is but one Agni, yet is he kindled manifold";[1] and Agni himself is made to say: "Because I can multiply myself by the power of mental concentration (yoga), therefore am I present in the bodies (of men, as vital fire)."[2]
Agni is, next to Indra, the most prominent god of the Rig-Veda, quantitatively speaking. He is the theme of more than two hundred hymns, and owes his special prominence to the personification of the sacred fire which is present at all Vedic performances. In the hieratic (in distinction from the popular) hymns of the Rig-Veda there will be few cases in which Agni is not more or less directly connected with the sacrifice. And it is well now to take this simple article, the sacrifice fire, and let it unfold its own story step by step. How it turns in the hands of these priestly poets into a person gifted with the thinly disguised qualities of fire; into a messenger mediating between men and gods; into an archpriest typical of holy rites; and finally into a god. But to the end, as we shall show, the origin of all these ideas is never forgotten; the god remains a more or less well-assorted bundle of fire qualities and fire epithets. Therefore, too, he remains to the