[Footnote 25:  To this hymn is added, in imitation of the laudations of generous benefactors, which are sometimes suffixed to an older hymn, words ascribing gifts to the frogs.  Bergaigne regards the frogs as meteorological phenomena!  It is from this hymn as a starting-point proceed the latter-day arguments of Jacobi, who would prove the ‘period of the Rig Veda’ to have begun about 3500 B.C.  One might as well date Homer by an appeal to the Batrachomyomachia.]

     [Footnote 26:  x. 98. 6.]

     [Footnote 27:  vii. 102.]

     [Footnote 28:  Compare Buehler, Orient and Occident, I. p.
     222.]

     [Footnote 29:  This hymn is another of those that contradict
     the first assumption of the ritualists.  From internal
     evidence it is not likely that it was made for baksheesh.]

     [Footnote 30:  [A]suras, pit[=a] nas.]

     [Footnote 31:  Literally, ‘with ghee’; the rain is like the
     ghee, or sacrificial oil (melted butter).]

     [Footnote 32:  Some suppose even Indra to be one with the
     Avestan A[.n]dra, a demon, which is possible.]

[Footnote 33:  Otherwise it is the ‘bonds of sin’ which are broken or loosed, as in the last verse of the first Varuna hymn, translated above.  But the two views may be of equal antiquity (above, p. 69, note).  On Trita compare JRAS. 1893, p. 419; PAOS. 1894 (Bloomfield).]

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).—­THE LOWER GODS.

AGNI.

Great are the heavenly gods, but greater is Indra, god of the atmosphere.  Greatest are Agni and Soma, the gods of earth.

Agni is the altar-fire.  Originally fire, Agni, in distinction from sun and lightning, is the fire of sacrifice; and as such is he great.  One reads in v. 3. 1-2, that this Agni is Varuna, Indra; that in him are all the gods.  This is, indeed, formally a late view, and can be paralleled only by a few passages of a comparatively recent period.  Thus, in the late hymn i. 164. 46:  “Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, they say; he is the sun (the bird in the sky); that which is but one they call variously,” etc.  So x. 114. 5 and the late passage iii. 38. 7, have reference to various forms of Agni.

Indra had a twofold nature in producing the union of lightning and Agni; and this made him mysteriously great.  But in Agni is found the first triality, which, philosophically, is interpreted as a trinity.  The fire of the altar is one with the lightning, and, again, one with the sun.  This is Agni’s threefold birth; and all the holy character of three is exhausted in application where he is concerned.  It is the highest mystery until the very end of the Vedic age.  This Agni it is that is the real Agni of the Rig Veda—­the new Agni; for there