Agni

(South and Central Asian mythology)

One of the three chief gods in the Rig Veda, he personified fire and was at the centre of ancient worship. The fire altar was orientated towards the East, the direction of sunrise, the ever new beginning. As the bestower of immortality and the cleanser from sin after death, Agni acted as a mediator between gods and men.

Born from a lotus created by Brahma, the god of fire is pictured as red, with two faces and seven tongues to lick up the butter used in sacrifices. When in the Mahabharata, an epic dating from the beginning of the first millennium, Agni is depicted as having exhausted his vigour by consuming too many oblations, he renewed his strength in consuming the Khandava forest, with the assistance of Krishna and Arjuna and in defiance of Indra. No longer the object of a separate cult Agni is invoked by Hindu lovers and by men for virility.

The Hindu god of fire and guardian of humanity.

[Sanskrit Agniḥ, from agniḥ, fire.]

For more information on Agni, visit Britannica.com.

Agni is the Hindu god of fire, from whose name are derived the English words "igneous" and "ignite."

The harnessing of fire was one of the first crucial steps humans had to take in order to advance. The fire sacrifice is one of the earliest of religious rituals, brought down through the famous Khyber Pass around 1500 bce by Indo-European Aryans and imposed upon the existing culture of India. This migration began what we now call intellectual Hinduism. The world's first scripture, the Hindu Rig Veda, appeared at about this time. It told of Agni, the magician of fire, existing on Earth not only to consume but also to give warmth and to help in cooking food. In the atmosphere, he is the lightning. In the sky, the sun. Inhabiting all three levels of the cosmos-Earth, sky, and atmosphere-he is able to bear prayers and sacrifices to the gods.

Gradually Agni became internalized. Fire is a mystery and burns within Earth and the sun. But the fire of life also burns within each human. Sometimes it even breaks out in fever during times of emotional turmoil or illness. Agni, then, dwells within as well as without.

Although the Sanskrit doctrine of tat tvam asi, "thou art that" (See Brahman/Atman), had not yet been fully developed, it was a small but formative step to picture Agni as the fire of life itself. Within humans burned the fire that is at the very heart of the universe.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), the Indian spiritual master, has written:

The Vedic deity Agni is the first of the powers that have issued from the vast and secret Godhead. Agni is the form, the fire, the forceful heat and flaming will of this Divinity. [The word Agni] means a burning brightness, whence its use for fire. When man, awakened from his night, wills to offer his inner and outer activities to the gods of a truer and higher existence and so to arise out of mortality into the far-off immortality, it is this flame of upward aspiring Force and Will that he must kindle; into this fire he must cast the sacrifice.

Thus Agni, oldest of the Hindu gods, evolved into a metaphor for creativity and spiritual yearning.

Sources: Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991. Sri Aurobindo. The Immortal Fire. Auroville, India: Auropublications, 1974.

A major Hindu god who appears originally in the ṛg Veda (see ṛg Veda) as one of the asuras (see Asuras) or Ādityas (see Aditi and the Ādityas)—Mitra, Varuṇa, Aryaman, Rudra, Uṣas, Indra—at the most obvious level, Agni is the god of fire. He is often opposed to Varuṇa (see Varuṇa), the god of waters, in philosophic dialogues. Sacrifice is associated with Agni; he carries sacrificial offerings to the gods. In a deeper sense he is the divine will without which nothing can happen in the universe. He is a hidden god—the divine fire in plants, in the earth, in animals, in the elements, in humans; he is the divine light by which we see, by which we are conscious. The sacrifice, of which Agni is at once the priest and the flame and the offering itself, is central to Hindu life. Thus, when he is depicted it is as a red man out of whose mouth shoot flames. He has three legs and seven arms and rides on a ram.

Many myths of Agni are related to his hidden aspect. In the Mahābhārata (see Mahābhārata), the gods roamed the world looking for Agni, who had hidden in the elemental waters. His hiding place was revealed by a frog, who had been burned by the god's heat. Agni was furious at the frog and decreed that he would no longer possess the sensation of taste. He then hid in a fig tree but was betrayed by the elephant, whose tongue he bent backward as punishment. After hiding in several other places and being betrayed by several other animals, whom he cursed, Agni was discovered in the sami tree, the wood of which is still used to create the fire of sacrifice. The gods asked Agni to father Skanda (sometimes said to have been fathered by Śiva), whose six heads represent what the Hindus see as the six seasons of the year (see Kārttikeya, see Śiva).

For other uses, see Agni (disambiguation).

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Agni
God of Fire
Devanagari	अग्नि
Affiliation	Deva
Consort	Svaha
Mount	Ram
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Agni is a Hindu and Vedic deity. The word agni is Sanskrit for "fire" (noun), cognate with Latin ignis (the root of English ignite), Russian огонь (ogon), Polish "ogień," Lithuanian - ugnis - all with the meaning 'fire' -, with the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root being h₁égni-. Agni has three forms: fire, lightning and the sun. ^[1]

Agni is one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire^[2] and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger from and to the other gods. He is ever-young, because the fire is re-lit every day, yet he is also immortal.

Agni, the Vedic god of fire who presides over the earth, has made the transition into the Hindu pantheon of gods, without losing his importance. With Vayu and Surya, who presided over the air and sky, he is one of the supreme gods in the Rig Veda. The link between heaven and earth, he is associated with Vedic sacrifice, taking offerings to the other world in the fire. His vehicle is the ram. ^[3]

His cult survived the change of the ancient fire worship into modern Hinduism. The sacred fire-drill (agnimathana) for procuring the temple-fire by friction – symbolic of Agni's daily miraculous birth – is still used.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Depictions 2 In other faiths and religions 3 See also 4 References

Depictions

In Hindu art, Agni is depicted with two or seven hands, two heads and three legs. He has seven fiery tongues with which he licks sacrificial butter. He rides a ram or in a chariot harnessed by fiery horses. His attributes are an axe, torch, prayer beads and a flaming spear.^[4]

Agni is represented as red and two-faced, suggesting both his destructive and beneficent qualities, and with black eyes and hair, three legs and seven arms. He rides a ram, or a chariot pulled by goats or, more rarely, parrots. Seven rays of light emanate from his body. One of his names is Saptajihva, "having seven tongues".^[4]

In other faiths and religions

Classical Elements v • d • e

Greek   Air   Water Aether Fire   Earth   Hinduism (Tattva) and Buddhism (Mahābhūta)   Vayu/Pavan (Air/Wind)   Ap/Jala (Water) Akasha (Aether/Space) Agni/Tejas (Fire)   Prithvi/Bhumi (Earth)   Japanese (Godai)   Air/Wind (風)   Water (水) Void/Sky/Heaven (空) Fire (火)   Earth (地)   Tibetan (Bön)   Air   Water Space Fire   Earth   Medieval Alchemy   Air   Water Aether Fire   Earth Sulphur Mercury Salt

In Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, he is a lokapāla guarding the Southeast. Jigten lugs kyi bstan bcos: which translates, "Make your hearth in the southeast corner of the house, which is the quarter of Agni". He also plays a seizurish role in most Buddhist homa fire-puja rites. A typical praise to Agni starts "Son of Brahma, Lord of the World, King of fire gods empowered by Takki, Whose supreme wisdom burns all delusion [...]" ^[5]

See also

• Hindu deities
• Apris
• Atar (Zoroastrian yazata of fire)

References

Sculpture of Agni from Musée Guimet

1. ^ Agni, the Vedic God of Fire
2. ^ Mythology, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Principal Myths and Religions of the World, by Richard Cavendish ISBN 1-84056-070-3, 1998
3. ^ > Bowker, John. World Religions. New York: DK Publishing, Inc. 1997
4. ^ ^{a b} The Book of Hindu Imagery: Gods, Manifestations and Their Meaning By Eva Rudy Jansen p. 64
5. ^ A Manual of Ritual Fire offerings p20, Sharpa Tulku / Michael Perrott LTWA, 1987 ISBN 81-85102-66-X

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Agni is also an important entity in ayurveda.It is considered to be the one which is responsible for the sustenance of life. Agni helps in the various physiological functions of the body.

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